Bunting in general

[Pavelb1]

Do you in general favor the SABR model of rarely bunting (not counting pitchers)....or do you find yourself getting frustrated by stranding men in 1 out/ no out situations and trying to get *something* out of it?

The last model would be the one I favor.

[ohms_law]

Somewhat rare.

[Rongar]

Do you in general favor the SABR model of rarely bunting (not counting pitchers)....or do you find yourself getting frustrated by stranding men in 1 out/ no out situations and trying to get *something* out of it?

The last model would be the one I favor.

I like bunting when playing BM08 PBP...more often than not, it pays off. I use it when my hitters are finding rbi's hard to come by, there's a man on third, and less than two out. I'll even have my prime hitters bunt, in such situations, if they've proven not able to move runners otherwise, in that particular game....the "Bird in the hand" principle applies here.

The bunt's also useful to prevent one's pitcher from GIDPs, when he's at bat.

[mparks1973]

it all depends on the team i am and the era in which my team is playing in. when i play more current years i still bunt but only 1/2-1 notch above the middle mark. in the early 1900's i stretch that to either 4 1/2 to 5 notches(all the way) to the right of the middle and also the same with a speedy team unless it's a speedy team with little power in the current years then i'll play as if in the deadball era. by this i mean that i'll set bunting and steals really high and also the same for extra bases and tag up. no reason to not do that when your team won't be getting the long ball often anyway. good example of this would be '06 d-rays. they don't have much power so i set the bunting and stealing to about 2 1/2-3 above middle. so far the team is doing ok for not hitting many hr.

[dps]

I tend to try to build my teams on a "defense first" basis, so I probably have more relatively weak hitters than most human-controlled teams would. However, in a lot of cases where a bunt might be under consideration, a stolen base attempt is probably a better option if you have good team speed. Depending on your players' particular mix of skills, a hit-and-run or run-and-hit might also be a better bet.

In practice, I rarely bunt except with my pitchers.

[etothep]

depends on the situation, rarely if ever do i bunt in the first 5-6 inningings (the few times i do is usually when facing a top tier ace such as johan santana)

after the 6th it depends mostly on how my starter is doing, quality of my bullpen, & the size of the lead or deficit...im up or down by 2 runs or less i'll try to small ball it, otherwise i'm letting them swing away

[mparks1973]

with me i sim only, no pbp modes. i prefer the speed of the simming and go with the fact that i can't totally control how the ai will use my team but it does a fair job at it. that's why i use such different settings. i suppose i could even go through all the trouble of setting different strategies for every single game and probably get even better results but my teams don't do too bad considering i try to take control of pretty depleted teams or teams that are nearly overstaffed in certain positions, such as way too many outfielders or too many over the hill players to get everyone fair time to play. i personally try the 1901 brewers(smallest roster), 1962 mets(worst single season record post 1900) and 2006 d-rays.

[Parabraves]

One bit of strategy I'll throw on here is to hit and run when in doubt. It works just as well, gives you a much better shot at ending up with the batter reaching and is safe due to the major lack of strike 'em out throw 'em out DPs. It works a lot more often than a questionable bunter trying to get one down.

[ronnccox]

In PBP mode, I bunt more a lot, especially if my hitter is slow and someone's on first base because this game doles a lot of double plays. Also, the suicide bunt has always been effective for me...out of maybe 20 times, I've always been able to get a runner on third home.

[MeetDaMets]

suicide bunt has always been effective for me...out of maybe 20 times, I've always been able to get a runner on third home.

bunt defense is not very good :(