New York Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner spoke to the media on Tuesday about a variety of topics, including some takeaways from the team's recent self-evaluation period. According to Steinbrenner, one of the tweaks the Yankees intend to make is spending more time teaching players how to bunt.
"I think [manager] Aaron Boone thinks that we're not teaching young players to bunt enough," Steinbrenner said before delving into an aside concerning his own research on the matter. "A few years ago in player development, we cut back on the bunting skills, but Aaron Boone feels it's becoming a bigger part of the game again, he feels it's important. So we're going to start right up again."
Hal Steinbrenner notes that Aaron Boone has expressed a desire to teach the Yankees' young players to bunt more often:
— Yankees Videos (@snyyankees) November 7, 2023
"Aaron Boone feels that it is becoming a bigger part of the game again" pic.twitter.com/u9W0APXagq
Steinbrenner is correct that bunting has withered in popularity; Boone might end up being correct about a bunting revival, but we're not so sure. Teams averaged 0.09 sacrifice hits per game last season; 30 years ago, in 1993, they averaged 0.40 sacrifice hits per game. There was a good reason for that decline: countless studies on the merits of bunting have found that it's an inefficient strategy. If you play for one run, the pithy saying goes, you'll get one run. Teams would prefer to swing away and pursue bigger innings.
Of course, there are occasions where one run is enough and the situation dictates that the bunt might be the best play, but those tend to be overstated. Bunting to advance the winning run to third base in the bottom of the 10th is a lot different than bunting to advance a runner to second in the top of the first.
What's concerning here is that these Yankees seem to be caught in an identity crisis. Dillon Lawson, the hitting coach they fired in July, was all about controlling the strike zone and maximizing damage on swings -- that approach had worked well for his hitters in the Houston Astros system and elsewhere. After the Yankees canned Lawson, they handed the reins to longtime first baseman Sean Casey, who was presumed to have a more old-school philosophy about hitting. Their offensive output then cratered -- that can't all be attributed to Casey or his methods, of course, but it shows that turning back the clock is not necessarily going to lead to a better offense.
Skip ahead a few months, and the Yankees' owner and manager are touting giving away outs -- something that, we can assure you, parts of the Yankees lineup didn't need guidance on. Granted, there's nothing wrong with teaching players how to bunt so they have that tool at their disposal when needed … unless it interferes with improving other, more pivotal parts of their games.
The Yankees have a big offseason ahead of them, as it pertains to upgrading their offense and returning to playoff contention. The less they pretend that more bunting is part of the solution, the better off they'll be.
