I agree with the concept that unwritten rules are ludicrous, and I cannot believe baseball allowed itself to glorify the fact that its players had such thin skin for so long.
I believe in trying to win always. For instance, if you're in a no-hitter, and you believe bunting is the best way to get on base, do so, even if the score is 10-0 against you. Forget the pitcher's accomplishment. This is professional sports. We're out here for ourselves. It's not bush league to try to get on base, and if it is then why don't we shame hitters for taking ball four in a perfect game? You should've swung through it to give the pitcher the best chance of preserving his individual accomplishment.
That's a silly line of thinking, and I'm not sure how it ever became mainstream. If it's so bush league to try your hardest to get on base, why don't we blame managers for not taking their best players out at the end of no-hitters? After all, we're not trying our hardest, in an effort to preserve an achievement for a player who doesn't even play for us, so why should we leave the stars in the game to risk injury? I'm deliberately bringing up extreme examples, because it highlights the nonsense that comes when actually taking these unwritten rules to their logical extremes.
I feel the same way about all unwritten rules that limit teams from trying their hardest to win, but the same logical extension technique can be applied to lots of other unwritten rules that used to exist in baseball. If celebrating individual accomplishments is so frowned upon, how come we award MVPs and HOF plaques? What a bush league thing to have a Hall of fame. If the hidden ball trick is so bush league, then I guess trying to deke a runner at second base into not knowing where the ball is ought to be frowned upon.
When you apply the same logic as the old unwritten rules to generally accepted baseball scenarios, they begin to split apart at the seams into the blatant hypocrisy they always were. Try your hardest to get on base some times, but not other times. It's okay to celebrate your individual achievements sometimes, but not on the field during the game. It's okay to call timeout mid at bat to try to bother the pitcher, but not okay to step on the pitchers mound to try to bother the pitcher, etc..
I always had a grudge against the unwritten rules. I felt like a conspiracy theorist or something, feeling I was the only one who could see the hypocrisy happening right in front of me. I'm very happy they're beginning to fade. In my opinion, that makes baseball better for everybody.
Thanks Robbie and I appreciate your interesting take. I tend to feel otherwise about bunting during a no-hitter late in a 10-0 game. It'd be hard to argue that bunting would give the team a better chance to win. But I do agree that competition lasts from the first pitch to the last. Otherwise let's playing rec softball!
You're probably right. If bunting and rather easily getting on base increases your Win Probability from a rounded zero to a different rounded zero, it's probably not worth it. However, if the score is within about six, there should be no taboo at all against bunting. Let's try to win here.
I should probably shift my focus toward your most recent piece, but I have to note that your hypothetical of a bullpen no-hitter (it was in fact a perfect game through 6) broken up by a bunt came to fruition yesterday. TJ Friedl had the temerity. An instance of the old code not being recognized.
Thanks David. I am not much of a believer that there's some sort of deep Ohio rivalry between Cleveland and Cincinnati. The game pretty much meant nothing to either team in terms of playoff position. It was only the 7th inning and the game as in doubt. As it turns out Friedl's bunt helped the Reds comeback to at least tie the game that they ended up losing anyway. Not much of an argument against it and I'm glad TJ had the temerity!
I think the "bunting to break up a no-hitter" one might be the most compelling question. (In general, instead of railing about how stupid the unwritten rules are, I like to think of them as moral questions. After all, did they not all come into being for a reason, good or not?) Anyway, on the bunting, my opinion is that if the intent is to break up the no-hitter and it's actually a bad baseball play, there could not be anything more bush league, nothing in worse taste. If it's a somewhat good baseball play, I would still lean towards the player not doing it.
Note that Posnanski, while very much against unwritten rules, does give space for considerations beyond just trying to win a game, like the value of a player going for 4 home runs. So, if these should be respected, shouldn't they be respected from an opponent's point of view, too? Not that you're trying to let the other guy win and set the record, but sportsmanship to me means being aware of the situation and the potential for the record. (A no-hitter is a kind of record.)
If you absolutely have to bunt to try to win the game, even if there's a no-hitter, then I say go for it. Have no problem with it. But I wouldn't expect the bunting player to enjoy doing it. In horse racing, it is customary for the trainer and jockey who spoil a Triple Crown in the Belmont Stakes to express regrets afterwards.
I do agree that drilling an innocent party after his pitcher is thought to have intentionally hit one of your teammates is very questionable, and hitting an innocent party because someone on his team has been too good at hitting home runs, wrong. But the more interesting grey area for me is if it's ever o.k. to drill someone because he himself has peeved you off. I cautiously say yes. Or, at the very least, acknowledge that I have wished for this as a fan.
Thanks for the post!
So, "unwritten rules," maybe not. But PCness? Never!
MLB hitters really love their stats right? Even if they don't, let's pretend they do for the purpose of my example. If we assume MLB players love their statistics, that logically means if they are bunting, that means they believe it's their best way to get on base. If they believe it's their best way to get on base, then how can bunting in a no-hitter ever be a bad baseball play? Of course the intent is to break up the no-hitter. The intent of every plate appearance is to break up the no-hitter, and if it's not, then why are you playing the game? Just sit in the dugout, refuse to walk up to the plate, and be called out.
Perhaps this is me being a product of my environment, but I believe that trying to win at all times is a virtue, not a sin. I disagree that it's good sportsmanship to artificially ease an opposing player's path to a no-hitter. Force the defence to worry about all possible offensive options for all 27 outs of a game. This bunting situation isn't like a jockey breaking up a triple crown and apologizing afterwards. This is like a jockey guaranteeing the incumbent champion that they won't use the whip unless ahead already. It's actively hindering the offence's chances to get a hit, and in a way beating a team purposefully not playing at their absolute best dampens the accomplishment of a no-hitter a little bit.
I can elaborate on the answer you gave to the baseball question, although probably not supplying anything you haven't already thought of, or couldn't think of with five minutes reflection. I'll do that, but first, on the "values" question, I suspect we would just go around and around and not make any progress. I see it the way that I see it, you see it the way that you see it, and I basically don't think there's a right answer. I will say, however, that it's easier to argue your position. Ballplayers should always apply the same standard, and anything else is irrational, you offer.
I don't want to be overly attached to the position that I took, so in one sense, fleshing it out and clarifying it isn't genuine. It wasn't fleshed out in my mind to begin with. I will say, however, that it is a real one, reflecting my feelings. I actually think we come closer to the truth when we start from a somewhat inexplicable conviction and try to explain it, rather than when we just reason from the bottom up. Taking that approach (maybe not for sports and narrow questions, but in philosophy), everything the least bit off center seems preposterous, and isn't pursued.
Anyway, I was carving out a very narrow case when I would do anything but the percentage play in deference to the no-hitter. As you remember, I didn't say bunts for base hits should be absolutely off the table. This is not my saying that Brett Favre did well when he let his buddy Michael Strahan take the single-season sack record. This is not my even saying that Gene Garber should have just thrown Pete Rose fastballs when Rose had a hit streak on the line in his last at-bat (Rose was infuriated at Garber's final slider). This is my saying that if you could go both ways, I think you should swing the bat. I am not advocating non-effort. Conceding to the opponent does make records hollow. On that we agree.
I suppose there is an element to my feeling that I feel bunting is not macho, and hitters should meet pitchers head on. It also just seems to be making a production and creating a stink when there's another way. Yes, you can do that, but do you really have to?
Taking this outside baseball, I would say my rule for life is to be true to myself, and that means doing what I want to do. But that doesn't mean, although people say I'm stubborn as a mule, I never bend to obligation. Being true to myself means reading the best books for my education, the books I choose to read. But if someone gives me a book, I will still make every effort to read it if I can find the time, the book isn't too long, and I think it might have some merit. To me, caving is a bit like eschewing the bunt in a no-hitter. Strictly speaking, I am selling out. I am deviating from the equivalent principle of doing everything I can to win that ballgame. But in truth, it's damned if you do, damned if you don't. I think, if all are honest, even in sports, they will be surprised to see to how many circumstances they yield, and surprised to see how often they fail to act robotically.
As I suggest, for the most part, I think your point was stupendously obvious, and while as usual, I appreciated the art with which you made it, for that reason, I did not think it had to be made, except perhaps to keep me honest and note that I didn't really have a coherent rational for dropping the principle. Where I thought perhaps you brought up something more interesting was in the notion that a "no bunts" no-hitter (which is really all of them) is in some way tarnished. Even if some no-hitters were accomplished where the opponent refused to bunt and others accomplished where the opponent was open to bunting, or even bunted and failed, I would say that it is like 0.1% tarnished, the advantage would be so small. But the question made me think about how these unwritten rules insert themselves into the actual rules. Essentially, a parameter for a no-hitter is that the other team didn't bunt, we might say, if this operated universally. A rule can even FORMALLY be put in that there are no bunts in no-hitter games after the 5th inning. I might also point out that an understood parameter for a no-hitter (Hideo Nomo aside) is that the game not be in Colorado, or that the ball can't luckily fall in for a hit. But I think, with this perspective, we might start on defining an unwritten rule, or start on defining types of unwritten rules. Which is one better than the vague discussion.
As for the "baseball" part, there is indeed a great conflict between the imperatives of trying to get a hit and trying to win the game. The bunt is almost always the play if the first is your goal, almost never the play if the second is. Except once in a blue moon, bunts can't go for extra-base hits, and make it much less likely that you will draw a walk, so they don't seem a good play. They have become rare enough that if you saw one attempted in the context of a no-hitter, it would immediately make you suspicious the batter was pursuing a hit and breaking up the no-hitter at the expense of trying to win the game. Just the same way one might put two and two together if a batter is drilled when we know there is a back story between him and the opposing team. The sheer rarity of the event makes you suspicious.
One thing I forgot to include was that I think it would take a real man (pardon the expression) to accept a bunt that broke up a late no-hitter, no matter the circumstances or the justification for it. I think that's interestingly revealing about human nature. Of course, I don't KNOW this, but thinking about similar types of things I've felt, and similar types of things I've observed in others, the pitcher might say all the right things to the press after the game, but in the privacy of his mind, I bet several times a day, he's resenting what his opponent did. I think about when I got injured a couple of times colliding with other players. The other guys did nothing really wrong. Maybe I didn't resent what they did (as that would have been wholly irrational), but I remembered the guys involved, trust me. I do think, in the case of the bunt to break up the no-hitter, there is the feeling that the other guy tried to cheat you, whether that's fair or unfair. So it's human nature on the other side to not want to provoke that kind of feeling.
Thanks again for the thoughts here David. The Horse Race Triple Crown apology thing made me laugh. That's like a tennis player getting a net cord winner and raising his racket as if to say 'sorry'. Not sorry!
I agree with the concept that unwritten rules are ludicrous, and I cannot believe baseball allowed itself to glorify the fact that its players had such thin skin for so long.
I believe in trying to win always. For instance, if you're in a no-hitter, and you believe bunting is the best way to get on base, do so, even if the score is 10-0 against you. Forget the pitcher's accomplishment. This is professional sports. We're out here for ourselves. It's not bush league to try to get on base, and if it is then why don't we shame hitters for taking ball four in a perfect game? You should've swung through it to give the pitcher the best chance of preserving his individual accomplishment.
That's a silly line of thinking, and I'm not sure how it ever became mainstream. If it's so bush league to try your hardest to get on base, why don't we blame managers for not taking their best players out at the end of no-hitters? After all, we're not trying our hardest, in an effort to preserve an achievement for a player who doesn't even play for us, so why should we leave the stars in the game to risk injury? I'm deliberately bringing up extreme examples, because it highlights the nonsense that comes when actually taking these unwritten rules to their logical extremes.
I feel the same way about all unwritten rules that limit teams from trying their hardest to win, but the same logical extension technique can be applied to lots of other unwritten rules that used to exist in baseball. If celebrating individual accomplishments is so frowned upon, how come we award MVPs and HOF plaques? What a bush league thing to have a Hall of fame. If the hidden ball trick is so bush league, then I guess trying to deke a runner at second base into not knowing where the ball is ought to be frowned upon.
When you apply the same logic as the old unwritten rules to generally accepted baseball scenarios, they begin to split apart at the seams into the blatant hypocrisy they always were. Try your hardest to get on base some times, but not other times. It's okay to celebrate your individual achievements sometimes, but not on the field during the game. It's okay to call timeout mid at bat to try to bother the pitcher, but not okay to step on the pitchers mound to try to bother the pitcher, etc..
I always had a grudge against the unwritten rules. I felt like a conspiracy theorist or something, feeling I was the only one who could see the hypocrisy happening right in front of me. I'm very happy they're beginning to fade. In my opinion, that makes baseball better for everybody.
Thanks Robbie and I appreciate your interesting take. I tend to feel otherwise about bunting during a no-hitter late in a 10-0 game. It'd be hard to argue that bunting would give the team a better chance to win. But I do agree that competition lasts from the first pitch to the last. Otherwise let's playing rec softball!
You're probably right. If bunting and rather easily getting on base increases your Win Probability from a rounded zero to a different rounded zero, it's probably not worth it. However, if the score is within about six, there should be no taboo at all against bunting. Let's try to win here.
I should probably shift my focus toward your most recent piece, but I have to note that your hypothetical of a bullpen no-hitter (it was in fact a perfect game through 6) broken up by a bunt came to fruition yesterday. TJ Friedl had the temerity. An instance of the old code not being recognized.
Thanks David. I am not much of a believer that there's some sort of deep Ohio rivalry between Cleveland and Cincinnati. The game pretty much meant nothing to either team in terms of playoff position. It was only the 7th inning and the game as in doubt. As it turns out Friedl's bunt helped the Reds comeback to at least tie the game that they ended up losing anyway. Not much of an argument against it and I'm glad TJ had the temerity!
I think the "bunting to break up a no-hitter" one might be the most compelling question. (In general, instead of railing about how stupid the unwritten rules are, I like to think of them as moral questions. After all, did they not all come into being for a reason, good or not?) Anyway, on the bunting, my opinion is that if the intent is to break up the no-hitter and it's actually a bad baseball play, there could not be anything more bush league, nothing in worse taste. If it's a somewhat good baseball play, I would still lean towards the player not doing it.
Note that Posnanski, while very much against unwritten rules, does give space for considerations beyond just trying to win a game, like the value of a player going for 4 home runs. So, if these should be respected, shouldn't they be respected from an opponent's point of view, too? Not that you're trying to let the other guy win and set the record, but sportsmanship to me means being aware of the situation and the potential for the record. (A no-hitter is a kind of record.)
If you absolutely have to bunt to try to win the game, even if there's a no-hitter, then I say go for it. Have no problem with it. But I wouldn't expect the bunting player to enjoy doing it. In horse racing, it is customary for the trainer and jockey who spoil a Triple Crown in the Belmont Stakes to express regrets afterwards.
I do agree that drilling an innocent party after his pitcher is thought to have intentionally hit one of your teammates is very questionable, and hitting an innocent party because someone on his team has been too good at hitting home runs, wrong. But the more interesting grey area for me is if it's ever o.k. to drill someone because he himself has peeved you off. I cautiously say yes. Or, at the very least, acknowledge that I have wished for this as a fan.
Thanks for the post!
So, "unwritten rules," maybe not. But PCness? Never!
I have a question for you David.
MLB hitters really love their stats right? Even if they don't, let's pretend they do for the purpose of my example. If we assume MLB players love their statistics, that logically means if they are bunting, that means they believe it's their best way to get on base. If they believe it's their best way to get on base, then how can bunting in a no-hitter ever be a bad baseball play? Of course the intent is to break up the no-hitter. The intent of every plate appearance is to break up the no-hitter, and if it's not, then why are you playing the game? Just sit in the dugout, refuse to walk up to the plate, and be called out.
Perhaps this is me being a product of my environment, but I believe that trying to win at all times is a virtue, not a sin. I disagree that it's good sportsmanship to artificially ease an opposing player's path to a no-hitter. Force the defence to worry about all possible offensive options for all 27 outs of a game. This bunting situation isn't like a jockey breaking up a triple crown and apologizing afterwards. This is like a jockey guaranteeing the incumbent champion that they won't use the whip unless ahead already. It's actively hindering the offence's chances to get a hit, and in a way beating a team purposefully not playing at their absolute best dampens the accomplishment of a no-hitter a little bit.
I can elaborate on the answer you gave to the baseball question, although probably not supplying anything you haven't already thought of, or couldn't think of with five minutes reflection. I'll do that, but first, on the "values" question, I suspect we would just go around and around and not make any progress. I see it the way that I see it, you see it the way that you see it, and I basically don't think there's a right answer. I will say, however, that it's easier to argue your position. Ballplayers should always apply the same standard, and anything else is irrational, you offer.
I don't want to be overly attached to the position that I took, so in one sense, fleshing it out and clarifying it isn't genuine. It wasn't fleshed out in my mind to begin with. I will say, however, that it is a real one, reflecting my feelings. I actually think we come closer to the truth when we start from a somewhat inexplicable conviction and try to explain it, rather than when we just reason from the bottom up. Taking that approach (maybe not for sports and narrow questions, but in philosophy), everything the least bit off center seems preposterous, and isn't pursued.
Anyway, I was carving out a very narrow case when I would do anything but the percentage play in deference to the no-hitter. As you remember, I didn't say bunts for base hits should be absolutely off the table. This is not my saying that Brett Favre did well when he let his buddy Michael Strahan take the single-season sack record. This is not my even saying that Gene Garber should have just thrown Pete Rose fastballs when Rose had a hit streak on the line in his last at-bat (Rose was infuriated at Garber's final slider). This is my saying that if you could go both ways, I think you should swing the bat. I am not advocating non-effort. Conceding to the opponent does make records hollow. On that we agree.
I suppose there is an element to my feeling that I feel bunting is not macho, and hitters should meet pitchers head on. It also just seems to be making a production and creating a stink when there's another way. Yes, you can do that, but do you really have to?
Taking this outside baseball, I would say my rule for life is to be true to myself, and that means doing what I want to do. But that doesn't mean, although people say I'm stubborn as a mule, I never bend to obligation. Being true to myself means reading the best books for my education, the books I choose to read. But if someone gives me a book, I will still make every effort to read it if I can find the time, the book isn't too long, and I think it might have some merit. To me, caving is a bit like eschewing the bunt in a no-hitter. Strictly speaking, I am selling out. I am deviating from the equivalent principle of doing everything I can to win that ballgame. But in truth, it's damned if you do, damned if you don't. I think, if all are honest, even in sports, they will be surprised to see to how many circumstances they yield, and surprised to see how often they fail to act robotically.
As I suggest, for the most part, I think your point was stupendously obvious, and while as usual, I appreciated the art with which you made it, for that reason, I did not think it had to be made, except perhaps to keep me honest and note that I didn't really have a coherent rational for dropping the principle. Where I thought perhaps you brought up something more interesting was in the notion that a "no bunts" no-hitter (which is really all of them) is in some way tarnished. Even if some no-hitters were accomplished where the opponent refused to bunt and others accomplished where the opponent was open to bunting, or even bunted and failed, I would say that it is like 0.1% tarnished, the advantage would be so small. But the question made me think about how these unwritten rules insert themselves into the actual rules. Essentially, a parameter for a no-hitter is that the other team didn't bunt, we might say, if this operated universally. A rule can even FORMALLY be put in that there are no bunts in no-hitter games after the 5th inning. I might also point out that an understood parameter for a no-hitter (Hideo Nomo aside) is that the game not be in Colorado, or that the ball can't luckily fall in for a hit. But I think, with this perspective, we might start on defining an unwritten rule, or start on defining types of unwritten rules. Which is one better than the vague discussion.
As for the "baseball" part, there is indeed a great conflict between the imperatives of trying to get a hit and trying to win the game. The bunt is almost always the play if the first is your goal, almost never the play if the second is. Except once in a blue moon, bunts can't go for extra-base hits, and make it much less likely that you will draw a walk, so they don't seem a good play. They have become rare enough that if you saw one attempted in the context of a no-hitter, it would immediately make you suspicious the batter was pursuing a hit and breaking up the no-hitter at the expense of trying to win the game. Just the same way one might put two and two together if a batter is drilled when we know there is a back story between him and the opposing team. The sheer rarity of the event makes you suspicious.
One thing I forgot to include was that I think it would take a real man (pardon the expression) to accept a bunt that broke up a late no-hitter, no matter the circumstances or the justification for it. I think that's interestingly revealing about human nature. Of course, I don't KNOW this, but thinking about similar types of things I've felt, and similar types of things I've observed in others, the pitcher might say all the right things to the press after the game, but in the privacy of his mind, I bet several times a day, he's resenting what his opponent did. I think about when I got injured a couple of times colliding with other players. The other guys did nothing really wrong. Maybe I didn't resent what they did (as that would have been wholly irrational), but I remembered the guys involved, trust me. I do think, in the case of the bunt to break up the no-hitter, there is the feeling that the other guy tried to cheat you, whether that's fair or unfair. So it's human nature on the other side to not want to provoke that kind of feeling.
Thanks again for the thoughts here David. The Horse Race Triple Crown apology thing made me laugh. That's like a tennis player getting a net cord winner and raising his racket as if to say 'sorry'. Not sorry!