Much to the general dismay of PSA, the Girinder has shown a great propensity for sacrifice bunting this season. I certainly can't remember a Yankee team ever bunting this frequently. At the same time, the general knowledge has spread that, on average, sacrifice bunting is a bad strategy. So in the midst of that fifteen-inning slog the other night, there was much glee expressed when the Orioles attempted sacrificing a leadoff runner to second in the bottom of one of the extra innings. I tried to make the case that this was actually a good idea, but the late hour and the mind-numbing play of the Yankees offense combined to make my arguments more incoherent than they even normally are. I figured I'd try to set my arguments out a little more clearly. Basically, I think PSA is engaging in a little binderism of itself in its unqualified condemnation of the sac bunt, and I've found some evidence to back it up.

Actually, there are two basic arguments that come up against bunting. One of them is that outs are the most valuable possession of a team and they should not be thrown away needlessly. Even granting that a sac bunt does increase the probability of scoring one or two runs (depending on the number of people on base) at that moment, you're shortening how much time you have left at the plate. I don't have the stats to back this up, but Girardi calling for a sac bunt in a tie game in the second inning has to be an incredibly bad call. This argument, though, begins to be less compelling in the late innings of tight games in which it becomes more likely that a single run will win the game. I'd like to focus on where it is least compelling, illustrated by the Orioles' situation: in the bottom of the ninth (or later inning) in a tie game, you know with certainty that single run wins the game. If you are in fact put into a more advantageous position to score with a sac bunt, then you should take it.

This is where the other argument comes in. As Wraithpk pointed out in these charts, the probability of scoring a run actually drops on average going from a man on first with no outs to a man on second with one out. It doesn't actually drop much at all (I looked at the wrong charts the other night myself,) from 44% to a touch less than 42% in the most recent era, but at best that seems to make it a wash, and you've lost an out with which to work.

Given no other information, then, this sort of sac bunt probably doesn't make sense. However, a manager does have other information in this situation, and blindly letting himself be guided by that 2% change in probability when the game could be won outright is just as bad as ignoring that difference when there are still 24 outs to work with. Some of the information available is detailed in a link after the jump.

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In case anyone missed it, Thursday's New York Times Bats Blog has a post about ranking the Steinbrenner era Yankees by WAR. Unsurprisingly, Jeter tops the list with 69.9. I'd have liked to have seen a straight Top 25 list or the like, but I like the perspective. 

The second reader's comment there has an excellent point. If you are evaluating a player's value to his team, you should include post-season stats. Does anyone here have the resources (access to Elias or whatever) and time/desire to come up with a WAR rating for Steinbrenner-era Yankees that includes post-seasons? I think that would be fascinating.

First, a quick introduction. I've been conscious of being a fan of the Yankees since I was a six-year-old boy standing in the front of Angee's Restaurant in Olean, NY with my Dad and a bunch of strangers watching a shortstop with a funny name hit a lazy fly ball over a ridiculously tall left field wall. (My favorite memory of Bucky Dent is not that, however. That would be the home run I watched him hit on Thurmon Munson day several months later, while I was recuperating in a hospital bed from a tonsilectomy.) I don't remember a whole lot of the next couple weeks; I remember far too much of the next 18 years.

I mention all this merely to indicate the purity of my motives in asking the following question. As with any Hot Stove seas, there's a lot of talk about what sort of contracts various free agents deserve. What I'd like to know, though, is what y'all think about the status of the contracts given to the pitchers acquired by the Yankees last offseason. Sabathia and Burnett certainly lived up to their contracts this year, but have they done enough to satisfy you  for the next four and six years respectively? In other words, if neither one were to put up another winning season for the remainder of their contracts, would you still consider their signings a success? I suspect fans of a number of other teams would (though I wonder what Red Sox fans have given Dice-K a full pass for 2007.) If not, how much more do you need to see from them before you're satisfied?