Do you have to bunt to win the World Series, like Alex Rodriguez says?
During a recent baseball telecast, ESPN announcer and former big-league star Alex Rodriguez said that the difference between a playoff team and a World Series champion was the ability to bunt.
Fellow announcer Jessica Mendoza agreed and went on to say teams need to bunt during the regular season because it’s harder than people realize and you’re unlikely to develop that skill in the playoffs.
Here’s why Rodriguez and Mendoza would say that:
Once you get to the postseason, weaker teams and pitching staffs have been eliminated — so you better know how to advance base runners without benefit of a hit because sooner or later you’ll run into a good pitcher having a good night and hits will be hard to come by.
Sooner or later you’ll have play small ball and that means you need to work on those skills all year long.
This is one of the theories used to explain the Moneyball A’s lack of postseason success: An offense based on walks and home runs might work during the regular season but then sputter in the postseason when facing better pitchers.
That’s the theory and one I’ve occasionally thrown out there myself, but is it true?
World Series champions and small ball
Look up numbers and the first thing you notice is that it’s really boring, so God bless the people who find this stuff fascinating and put it together for the rest of us.
Baseball has changed a lot since the turn of the century, so let’s start in 2001 and see what it takes to win a World Series in the analytics era.
If we begin in 2001, that gives us 18 World Series champions to consider. Let’s start by examining how those championship teams did when it came to getting down bunts during the regular season. Were Rodriguez and Mendoza right?
Turns out the rankings were all over the place.
Seven of the 18 World Series championship teams were in the top third of their league when it came to putting down bunts, five were in the middle and six teams were at the bottom of the barrel or close enough to get a good view.
OK, so much for the “You-must-bunt-during-the-regular-season to-win-the World-Series” theory. Bunting a lot didn’t appear to hold teams back, but it also didn’t look like bunting was mandatory.
So let’s cast the net a little wider: if the ability to advance runners without a hit is important, how about the stolen base? If championship teams didn’t bunt, did they swipe bags?
After throwing in stolen bases, playing “small ball” in the postseason looked a little better.
Of the 18 championship teams 12 were in the top third of their league in either bunts or stolen bases, so it does appear that the ability to manufacture runs comes in handy during the postseason.
But that still leaves six championship teams that didn’t bunt or steal all that much during the regular season and still won it all.
How do we explain their success?
So maybe it is walks and home runs
If you believe the key to winning baseball games is piling up walks and home runs, you have some evidence on your side. Six of our 18 World Series champions were in the top five in their leagues when it came to homers and walks (excluding intentional bases on balls).
But that leaves 12 teams that were middle of the pack or worse in one of those categories and two World series champions that ranked in the bottom third of their league in both categories.
As every good Royals fan already knows, a team does not have to walk or hit a ton of home runs to win a championship.
How about fundamentals?
One of the theories I’ve heard around the ballpark is that a lot of different teams and styles of play have won the World Series, but all those teams had one thing in common: They had good fundamentals.
Makes sense. It’s hard to go all the way if you’re missing cut-off men, throwing to the wrong base and giving the other team extra outs.
This theory stands up a little better than A-Rod’s.
Of the 18 World Series champions looked at, 11 were in the top five of their league when it came to avoiding errors. But that still leaves four teams who were in the middle of the pack and three teams in the bottom third of their league when it came to avoiding mistakes in the field.
If we want to find the one thing all championships have in common, we have to keep looking.
It’s gotta be the pitching
Of the 18 World Series champs, 13 had pitching staffs that ranked in the top five of their leagues in team ERA during the regular season. The other five ranked in the middle, none ranked in the bottom third.
Clearly, good pitching covers up a lot of weaknesses.
But that still leaves five teams that won it all with middle-of-the-road pitching staffs.
The only thing that really matters
Clearly, this is not a comprehensive study.
We’ve only looked at 18 World Series teams and a few factors; although they were factors that some people claim are the key to winning ballgames. Look at different teams and different factors and don’t be surprised if you get different results.
But even this brief look makes it clear that a lot of different teams playing different styles of baseball have managed to win a ring. Even so, can’t we find one thing that all 18 World Series teams had in common?
Yup, and it’s pretty simple:
During the regular season, all 18 championship teams scored more runs than they allowed, but it didn’t seem to make a lot of difference how they did it.
A team might be short on power, but make up for that by avoiding strikeouts. A team might not score a lot of runs, but make up for that by keeping the score low with pitching and defense.
You can win by scoring runs or preventing the other team from scoring runs; get overly fixated on offense you’re missing half the game.
And whatever style of baseball a team plays, getting hot at the right time makes a big difference. The best team in baseball won’t last long if they hit a postseason cold streak and a team that barely squeaked into the playoffs can win a ring if they get hot at the right time.
Bottom line: There’s more than one way to skin a cat or win a World Series and don’t let anyone tell you different.
Not even Alex Rodriguez.