The power of "bunt for hit"?

[doug melvin]

Games were simmed, and I used personal slider bars.

[mrbill]

alright, then if I do any more on this, I'll use the personal slider bars and see if I get a result out of the leadoff hitters only (I'll leave everyone else alone).

[JonMartin5781]

Just drafted a guy with 5 "Bunt for Hit" late in the first round of the NGBL draft so I came on to these boards to find out how important that rating was. To my suprise, I found this thread started by our Rangers GM. After talking with Brian for a little bit, I set up a test to see if I could reach any conclusions.

League setup

Replay league
Current Era
2 Teams
Both share the same home park
100 for all park factors
All batters are 55 for all ratings/talents and in range.
All fielders have the same fielding %
Infielders have 90 for arm, OF'ers have 55
All players are set to 70 for speed (basically, because the guy I drafted is an 8)
All players except 1* have 3 out of 5 for the "Bunt for Hit" rating
All pitchers have 55 for talents/ratings
All strategy sliders are set in the middle, except for the one player with 5 BFH, his personal slider is set to Max.

*Test was done this way because with the whole team bunting for hits I was getting strange results.

I ran 10 seasons and here's what I came up with:

League totals:
AB: 112,531
H: 31,408
BA: .279

Leage Average Player (League total minus 5-BFH's stats)
AB: 105,742
H: 29,928
BA: .278

Player w/5 BFH:
AB: 6,789
H: 1,980
BA: .292

So, basically theres the difference that I came up with. The attatched .txt file has some more detailed stuff. It's kind of a mess, but it wouldn't allow me to post the Excel file.

One side effect of the "Bunt for Hit" option is that the player will obviously walk less. It came out to about 2 less BB per 600 PA's. The extra base hit numbers stayed about the same, I would imagine that with a larger sample the difference in EBH's would become more apparent, but with just 10 season's its hard to make anything of those numbers now. I think the advantage to batting average is pretty clear cut though.

[Left-handed Badger]

How do you guys get bunts for hits? When I play the game myself a guy with an A in BFH (almost) always taps it straight back to the pitcher. I generally am successfully 1 out of 5 (if real lucky). The only time it has a chance at working is if it is used as a sacrifice then I'll get lucky and get that hit. Well, RHB sometimes can get it. I have never had an A in bunt hits LHB ever get a bunt hit.

[RonCo]

Unfortunately, I think this bunting study has a sample size flaw that limits its success in identifying any valid correlation between batting average and bunting ratings.

[JonMartin5781]

RonCo....what would you suggest for a number of seasons for it to become more accurate?

With the spreadsheet set-up it doesn't take any time at all to do more

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by JonMartin5781

RonCo....what would you suggest for a number of seasons for it to become more accurate?

With the spreadsheet set-up it doesn't take any time at all to do more

Based on the League Average total of ~ 200 player-seasons in the current study, I would way about 100 season-samples of a 2-bunter league would probably provide numbers that could be statistically compared. If you run them, I can do a similar check on this end.

[JonMartin5781]

ahhhh......probably not going to do that many lol
I was thinking like 20 haha

thanks for the input though

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by JonMartin5781

ahhhh......probably not going to do that many lol
I was thinking like 20 haha

thanks for the input though

The other option is to increase the number of bunters you have in each season.

[RonCo]

Dola,

That's the problem with SaberOOTPmetrics (TM). It can take a lot more data than you're ready to take to really understand what the game is doing. Just like in real life. But we humans like to think the numbers tell obvious stories, even when they don't.