Phillies 3, White Sox 2: Bunting remains a bad idea

Rick Renteria designed this game to lose it by one run, and that’s exactly what the White Sox did.

I suppose congratulations are in order.

The White Sox trailed 2-1 in the top of the seventh when they strung together two successful plate appearances against Aaron Nola for the first time all evening. Eloy Jiménez reached on an infield single — he should’ve been out, but Gabe Kapler lost the challenge earlier in the game — and Tim Anderson slashed a double to right.

Up came Yolmer Sánchez with runners on second and third.

You might be able to guess what Rick Renteria had in mind.

So did the Phillies.

Everybody guessed it: an unsuccessful safety squeeze.

Now, why would Rick Renteria play for the tie on the road when it’s an offense-friendly park and his best relievers were well-utilized over 15 innings the night before? Beats me, but it’s a bad sign when teams expect him to use that kind of self-defeating strategy and ambush it accordingly.

That failed to score a run, Matt Skole pinch-hit for Seby Zavala and struck out, and the events of the rest of the night magnified the effects of that piss-poor decision. Hell, even the Barbasol ad that played on MLBTV after the inning was in on the joke.

In the bottom of the seventh, Jace Fry showed the folly of playing for the tie when he loaded the bases with nobody out. Dylan Covey came jogging out of the bullpen and … actually fared pretty well? He got a shallow flyout, a run-scoring fielder’s choice that developed too slowly for a double play despite the best efforts of Sánchez and Anderson, and after a hit by pitch reloaded the bases, Bryce Harper bounced out.

The Sox exited the inning trailing 3-1, but Covey did well to minimize damage. So did Ross Detwiler, who held the Phillies to back-to-back solo shots by Harper and Rhys Hoskins over 5⅔ innings. The pitchers deployed by the White Sox overachieved to hold Philadelphia to three runs on four hits over eight innings.

Alas, Renteria didn’t want to score three or four runs until it was too late. The Sox mounted a rally off Nick Pivetta in the ninth because Jose Abreu reached on an error and Jon Jay sliced a single inside the left-field line to start the inning. Jiménez and Anderson struck out in the kind of sequence that reinforced Renteria’s bunting instinct, but Sánchez came to the plate in a situation where he had to swing away, and he slapped a fastball to center for a single that scored Abreu and moved the tying run 90 feet from home.

Alas, Adam Engel, pinch-hitting for the pitcher’s spot, struck out to end the game.

(That was another curious choice: Instead of pinch-running with Engel for Jon Jay, he pinch-ran with Ryan Cordell instead. A .220 hitter with an engorged strikeout rate is a .220 hitter with an engorged strikeout rate, I suppose.)

At any rate, the White Sox fell to 5-17 in the second half, and have lost five straight games where an opposing manager didn’t use a position player to throw multiple innings in a tie game.

Bullet points:

*Anderson committed the kind of careless error that drives fans nuts by not keeping his glove down on a routine grounder in the bottom of the fourth. He and Zavala made up for it by cutting down Jean Segura on a stolen base attempt, and it was an important out considering Detwiler gave up the two homers immediately afterward.

*Fly balls brought Jiménez and García together on multiple occasions, and Jiménez managed to avoid another injury-causing collision despite close calls. But one of those was a spin-laden floater, and he overran the hop for an error.

Record: 47-61 | Box score | Highlights

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Trooper Galactus

Next step in the rebuild is to hire a manager who isn’t living in baseball’s sabermetric dark ages. I get the feeling other teams just laugh at how stupid and predictable he is.

I bet Ricky’s already signed another unannounced contract extension by now…

iowasox1971

I agree that with two guys in scoring position, the bunt is not the best play there. Also, it was a good way to get Jimenez hurt. So, it shouldn’t have been done.

However, in Renteria’s defense, Yolmer is a popgun hitter who rarely hits fly balls deep enough to score someone from third. He’s hit one sacrifice fly this year. One. He had a .637 OPS going into the game, with 24 RBI. He’s also on pace to strike out over 100 times this season, so even with his lack of power, he isn’t a sure bet to make contact. So I can see why Renteria was tempted to make what turned out to be the wrong move.

Yes, Yolmer came through in the ninth inning tonight. Good for him. But trust me, the opposition loves seeing him come up. We have way too many guys like that in our lineup. That’s why we bunt too much. Next season, if we have a better roster we will see less bunting.

PauliePaulie

Why don’t you believe the analytical argument for not bunting?

iowasox1971

I agree that on a normal team, bunting is a bad idea much of the time. Yet, with this roster, bunting often makes sense.

We should never sacrifice bunt with Moncada, Abreu, Jimenez and Anderson. If Moncada and Anderson see the third baseman playing way back and want to bunt for a cheap hit, fine.

Garcia, Goins and Jay, who have high batting averages but usually hit for little power, still could sacrifice bunt in certain situations. Any of these three can bunt for a hit if he so desires.

Anybody else on the roster (with the exception of a first-half McCann), is a weak hitter and these guys don’t necessarily make a lot of contact. Why get so riled up when Engel, Cordell, Yolmer, Seby, Tilson, etc., are asked to put one down against an ace pitcher or they bunt on their own? How many times do they strike out or fail to advance runners when swinging away? Quite often!

Do we have bunting stats on the White Sox, such as how often the bunt with a guy on third has worked/not worked this year? I would guess that the success rate of scoring the run is close to, if not better than, the rate for conventional at-bats.

HallofFrank

“I would guess that the success rate of scoring the run is close to…”

I think this quote illuminates the problem. You say “the run” as if the runner at 3rd is the only one that matters. In most cases (not all, to be fair), the White Sox shouldn’t be trying to score “the run,” but multiple runs. Bunting makes that harder. 

roke1960

The problem is the Phillies knew Ricky was going to bunt. Yolmer put down a good bunt and they still didnt score the run. Ricky needs to go before this team gets competitive. But we all know that’s not happening.

iowasox1971

The Tribune had an item that said before Sunday’s game the Sox were hitting .202 with runners in scoring position in their previous 11 games. Glad that we broke out of this slump on Sunday.

burning-phoneix

I like big bunts and I cannot lie.

(Though this was not a big bunt)

roke1960

This team is just so mismanaged, both on the field and in the front office. Will it ever end?

Trooper Galactus

I’d say maybe when Jerry dies, but there’s a whole ownership group beside him that happily employs worthless sycophants and treats the team as a monetary investment above all other considerations

asinwreck

Eh, some of those guys make Jerry look young, and besides, the (unnamed, but I would guess Michael is one of them) executors of his will have the power to sell the team regardless of the desires of the other partners. If Rocky Wirtz or David Einhorn or Andrew Berlin or *insert billionaire name here* has the highest bid, the estate will take it.

Now, the question is if billionaire-to-be-named-later wants to run a club like the current ownership groups of the Astros, Twins, Dodgers, Rays, et cetera do.

Gutteridge70

Not a Ricky or bunt pbobe but in this situation I am in complete agreement with your analysis.

As Cirensica

what is pbobe? I googled it. Came up empty. I guess is a typo for “bunting is a bad idea”

lil jimmy

a phobe is a person who has a phobia.
“an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something.”

As Cirensica

Ahhh. he did write pbobe, not phobe. My lack of imagination played a role here…after all the b and the h are close in the qwerty keyboard

Yolmer

To be fair to Ricky, we should see how he manages when he has a starting lineup that can all drive the ball enough to get the sacrifice fly there. The reason he bunted is because you can’t trust Yolmer to hit the ball far enough in the air to score the run from third.

PauliePaulie

The outcomes in that situation, or the other times he’s decided to give up outs in an effort to score 1 run, are not limited to 1) Sac bunt 2) Sac fly. Especially when the infield is playing in.

roke1960

Ricky is a bunting fanatic- it’s not just Yolmer. He tries to bunt with Engel, who A) is a bad bunter, and B) has decent power, though he rarely makes contact.