The power of "bunt for hit"?

[mrbill]

I've never played out games in a solo league, but I've heard rumors and seen in my online leagues that if you can get a player with a good "Bunt for Hit" rating to actually use it often, their average rises past their "Contact" rating.

Does anyone have experience with this one?

My only real example is a batter with 75 contact and 5 bunt for hit (and 94 speed). He's hit .330-.350 in the last 3+ seasons, winning two batting titles, coming in 2nd once, and he's in 3rd in July now. I crank his settings to try bunting as often as possible. He's even only 54 in avoidng Ks, which should penalize him quite a bit (100+ Ks a season).

There are lots of other hitters in the league with 70's contact, or even 80s and a few around 90. Yet, none seem to be able to put up the average he can.

[dodgecharger1968]

I don't play games out, either, but I've had guys in the 40s of contact who can hit .280-.300 consistently with a 5 bunt for hit cranked up in strategies.

[sfgiants88]

Interesting. I may give this a try.

[Special K 9274]

Bunt for hit is actually a very underrated category. Jimmy Rollins, in my current Phillies season is 2/3 with bunt for hits, and the two times he got on base he was able to steal second.

[BlueWaldo]

What if the batter already has a hight contact rating (9/10) and has a 5/5 bunt for a hit, is it still a good idea to crank up his bunt for a hit?

[mcgsports]

Reminder to Markus to
Tone this down
One of my biggest complaints with

Earl Weaver baseball was
Bunt for hit with Maury Wills
He would bat .500

OOTP is a
Better game than that so
All should be fixed!!!

[GuamYankee]

Hmm, I do play all my games out, and in my experience the bunt for hit is often more successful in advancing the runner than just a regular bunt. Is the bunt for hit feature flawed, and should I not use it as it may be giving me an unfair advantage?

[GuamYankee]

I guess a follow up secondary question would be, should there even be a bunt for hit button? Isn't every player who bunts trying to get on base anyway in addition to trying to advance a runner?

[dodgecharger1968]

Yeah, I could see a bunt, just being a bunt, and the results of successful sacrifice or safe hit can be gauged based on the two ratings...

[dodgecharger1968]

Originally Posted by BlueWaldo

What if the batter already has a hight contact rating (9/10) and has a 5/5 bunt for a hit, is it still a good idea to crank up his bunt for a hit?

I have a feeling that a 5 bfh gives you better than 50/50 on bfh attempts, while 90 contact gives you what, .350, .375? It'll probably help your average, but if your boy's got any gap or HR power, you're giving up the possibility with a bunt. And if he's not fast, you can't assume he can steal his way to second, either (and what's up with slow guys with good bfh ratings?!). So if he's 1 or 2, yeah. If he's 3 or 4, crank it down a little bit.

[mrbill]

Sacrifice bunt is placed to make the throw to get the lead runner hard. Bunt for hit is usually down the 3B line to make the throw to 1B hard.

But, the ability to "place a bunt well" seems like an underlying talent for both of these events. Speed would also factor into the success rate of "bunt for hit", whereas just bunting ability would matter in sacrifice bunting.

Are there statistics to support a player being good at sacrificing but not getting hits, or vice versa? And if there is, is the discriminating factor "speed", or is there actually a different ability for the two types of bunts?

But, lets not go saying "bunt for hit" is broken without testing it. The test for this is obvious, two teams, all 50 ratings players, some with 1 for BFH, some with 3 BFH and some with 5 BFH. Then, split those three groups into 100 Speed, 50, and 1. Then, split those groups into bunt often, bunt average times, bunt rarely.

Compare all or at least some of the groups and see how much the difference is because of the bunt for hit rating, if you assume speed may affect the rating as well.

[dodgecharger1968]

Also, (in real life) bunt for hit is usually done with empty bases, and sacrifice, well... You can get an infield hit off a sacrifice attempt, of course, but it's not technically a bunt for hit.

[Faroo6]

Speed does factor in, but it does not mean someone with less than average speed can't bunt for a hit. Ramon Hernandez used to bunt for a hit quite often, for a catcher, when he was with Oakland. Also since he wasn't fast, the third baseman would play deep, allowing him a fairly easy hit if he placed it right.

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by mrbill

Are there statistics to support a player being good at sacrificing but not getting hits, or vice versa? And if there is, is the discriminating factor "speed", or is there actually a different ability for the two types of bunts?

But, lets not go saying "bunt for hit" is broken without testing it. The test for this is obvious, two teams, all 50 ratings players, some with 1 for BFH, some with 3 BFH and some with 5 BFH. Then, split those three groups into 100 Speed, 50, and 1. Then, split those groups into bunt often, bunt average times, bunt rarely.

I've learned in the last year to not trust any urban legend about OOTP. They are almost always based on a review of a couple players rather than a systemic look at a sample size of any worth. It's especially bothersome when the tests for these kinds of things are so simpe to enact.

[dodgecharger1968]

Originally Posted by RonCo

I've learned in the last year to not trust any urban legend about OOTP. They are almost always based on a review of a couple players rather than a systemic look at a sample size of any worth. It's especially bothersome when the tests for these kinds of things are so simpe to enact.

Yes, forgive us for sharing our experiences!

[mrbill]

I started this to feel out if there was that urban myth that "bunt for hit" was a potentially overpowered rating.

What I seem to have found is that there's anectodal evidence for it from a few people, and no proof that it doesn't exist.

If I end up with some time, I'll start running some tests.

But, to call it "overpowered", I'll need some "real-life" statistics to compare against.

I call upon someone who is interested to find something to compare OOTP to once I and/or others run some tests.

[mrbill]

First test-
Same between both teams:
All ratings 50 (hitting, pitching, fielding range (990%), speed, stealing, running), Velocity = 5
Injuries, fatigue, trading, finances off
replay league
2 teams, one league, 100 rated park
Sac Bunt rated 1
Team Strategies all at average (Important)

Different:
Just "Bunt for hit", team 1 = 5, team 2 = 1...

Batting averages over 162 game seasons - (HR, 2B, 3B, BB, Ks all very close)
Team 1 - .285, .295, .283, .266, .276
Team 2 - .265, .279, .263, .278, .272
(Avg +.009 for Team 1)

Conclusion: Fairly noticeable effect to be good at bunting for hits when only average speed

Test two:
Same as test 1, but now human controlled (settings should make this OK), and team strategies different.

Both teams set Bunt for Hit slider all the way to the right.

Batting averages over 162 game seasons
Team 1 - .277, .286, .275
Team 2 - .268, .272, .278
(Avg +.007 for Team 1)

Conclusion: More bunting attempts when not fast has a slight negative effect, but its not significant

Test three:
Same as test 2, but now both teams very rarely try to bunt, team Bunt for Hit slider all the way to the left.

Batting averages over 162 game seasons
Team 1 - .272, .275, .272
Team 2 - .287, .276, ,281
(Avg -.008 for Team 1)

Conclusion: This one kind of blows away the first two conclusions. Why did Team 2 do better? If the first two tests weren't noise, this one is wrong. That makes the first two tests look much less significant.

Test four (the one I most wanted to do):
Same as test 2 (high BfH slider setting), but now everyone on both teams is 100 speed

Batting averages over 162 game seasons
Team 1 - .261, .278, .280, .277, .273
Team 2 - .281, .274, .274, .276, .275
(Avg +.002 for Team 1)

Conclusion: Well, I'm confused by this one, I expected more of a difference, but this doesn't show any difference at all.

Test five:
Same as test 4, but now low BfH slider setting

Batting avgs for 162 games:
Team 1 - .275
Team 2 - .272
(+.003 for Team 1)

Conclusion: Not enough data, but not exciting, and I'm bored. Will do more later if it seems worthwhile.

Test six:
Same as test 4, but slider is neutral for BfH
Team 1 - .277, .293, .279, .270
Team 2 - .277, .282, .276, .280
(avg +.001 for Team 1)

Conclusion: Well, now its looking like being fast makes bunting for hit a meaningless rating. Combined with the first three tests, nothing shows much toward BfH being a useful rating. At least when ALL players on the teams attempt to bunt more.

That's it for tonight. Tomorrow I think I turn it down to 1 Speed, and try the three slider settings, and see what happens.

Also, I should try and dream up the BEST possible situation where BfH talent would stand out (i.e, 10 fielding range, 10 for throwing arms, high baserunning, high speed, high attemps for BfH). Or, the most challenging situation for BfH (i.e 90 range, 90 arms), and see if that makes the high BfH rating stand out.

Any other suggestions?

[doug melvin]

This is completely anecdotal, but my experience is (for fast players-- speed >60), Bunt for hit can add between 5 points of BA per bunt for hit points above 1. The effect explodes in the dead ball era, where it can make all the difference in the world. I've exploited this for any number of players across many historical eras (1900's, 1940's, 1960's, 1980's and fictional at the very minimum). IMO, should be toned down as well.

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by dodgecharger1968

Yes, forgive us for sharing our experiences!

Of course there is nothing wrong with sharing experiences. But putting individual cases up as definitions of how a game with such complex interactions as OOTP works, is pretty much always suspect. Sample size is imperative for understanding "reality" within context of the game. And to go a step further, as mrbill points out often, the next step is to have a "reality" in context of real baseball to compare it to. If we have sample sizes of decent size in both cases, we can actually get a picture of how well the game is modeling real life baseball.

I've often seen, however, people putting up notices of their wonderful experiences when a quick study of either the game or baseball history would indicate that this wonderful experience is really just a bug or a logic flaw.

Maybe I'm just a crumudgeon raining on thier parades, and if so, you can just put me on ignore. No problem here.

[mrbill]

Originally Posted by doug melvin

This is completely anecdotal, but my experience is (for fast players-- speed >60), Bunt for hit can add between 5 points of BA per bunt for hit points above 1. The effect explodes in the dead ball era, where it can make all the difference in the world. I've exploited this for any number of players across many historical eras (1900's, 1940's, 1960's, 1980's and fictional at the very minimum). IMO, should be toned down as well.

I think it is toned down... from the study I did, if your statement was right about +5 BA for every rating over 1, the 5 BfH team with 100 Speed should have hit 20 points better than the 1 BfH team. But, they were nearly identical over 10 seasons of data (120,000 AB).

The only two possibilities I can think of that might be worth testing on that:
- The Team BfH slider doesn't have the same effect as the Personal BfH slider, so I should move every individual's slider to the max
- The effect may only be noticeable if you sim out the games and bunt even more often than the AI would at the maximum setting

Do you play out your games or just sim them, to see this apparent effect?