Last week, I used some different metrics to quantify bunting performance in 2010. In this post, I would like to build on what I found after researching the first part of this post. The clear issue with using data from only one year is that it becomes susceptible to small sample sizes, and since bunt attempts occur on such a small percentage of swings, that issue is magnified in this case. In order to get a better feel for bunting skill, I've set up the statistics I used last week for 2008 and 2009 data. Before I get into go on, I'd like to revisit the league averages that I showed at the beginning of last week's post.
Attempt%
Fair%
Foul%
Missed%
2008
.020
.501
.425
.074
2009
.020
.509
.421
.070
2010
.019
.505
.416
.080
.019
.502
.423
.075
Hit%
Out%
Sac%
Double Play%
2008
.189
.285
.515
.011
2009
.177
.288
.528
.007
2010
.188
.286
.517
.009
.184
.286
.520
.009
The league-wide samples stay pretty consistent year to year, which is good for establishing baselines for these metrics. However, the samples that I used in last week's post (20 bunt attempts or 10 fair bunts) did not correlate very well year-to-year. Notable R^2 are as follows: hit% - .514, out% - .226, sac% - .528, Bunt Runs/100 - .178. The one that surprised me the most, however, was coefficient of determination for fair bunt%. That was only .065, which I found strange considering fair bunt% appears to be a distinct skill. Bear in mind that even though we're looking at three years' worth of data, it's still a small sample size. In order to get players that were qualified bunters in back-to-back years, I had to eliminate all but 82 of the individual seasons. I was particularly puzzled by the low correlation for fair bunts, which I figured would be a detectable skill even in the limited sample.
| Rank | Name | Swing# | Attempt% |
| 1 | Willy Taveras | 1625 | .118 |
| 2 | Carlos Gomez | 2178 | .114 |
| 3 | Julio Borbon | 1049 | .104 |
| 4 | Emilio Bonifacio | 1666 | .093 |
| 5 | Erick Aybar | 2420 | .092 |
| 6 | Nyjer Morgan | 2181 | .091 |
| 7 | Juan Pierre | 2386 | .086 |
| 8 | Gregor Blanco | 1293 | .081 |
| 9 | Alexi Casilla | 1290 | .078 |
| 10 | Luis Castillo | 1652 | .076 |
My love for the fair bunt% statistic is slightly diminished after seeing how poorly it correlated in my data, but I still think that it's an important statistic to look at. Below are the 10 leaders and trailers for fair bunt%; Chris Young (of the Diamondbacks) is really in a league of his own.
| Rank | Name | Attempts | Fair Bunt% |
| 1 | Ramon Santiago | 65 | .769 |
| 2 | Joey Gathright | 78 | .692 |
| 3 | David Eckstein | 78 | .679 |
| 4 | Clayton Kershaw | 62 | .677 |
| 5 | Zach Duke | 64 | .672 |
| 6 | Scott Podsednik | 68 | .662 |
| 7 | Cole Hamels | 53 | .660 |
| 8 | Franklin Gutierrez | 51 | .627 |
| 9 | Ryan Dempster | 80 | .625 |
| 10 | Elvis Andrus | 103 | .621 |
| 1x | Chris Young | 51 | .157 |
| 2x | Rajai Davis | 78 | .295 |
| 3x | Corey Hart | 69 | .333 |
| 4x | Omar Infante | 55 | .364 |
| 5x | Melky Cabrera | 65 | .369 |
| 6x | B.J. Upton | 73 | .370 |
| 7x | Emilio Bonifacio | 155 | .381 |
| 8x | Emmanuel Burriss | 70 | .386 |
| 9x | Brendan Ryan | 75 | .387 |
| 10x | Ted Lilly | 66 | .394 |
The next set of leaderboards are for hit%, out%, and sac% out of fair bunts.
| Rank | Name | Fair Bunts | Hit% |
| 1 | Ichiro Suzuki | 37 | .568 |
| 2 | Lastings Milledge | 25 | .480 |
| 3 | Jacoby Ellsbury | 38 | .474 |
| 4 | Gregor Blanco | 60 | .450 |
| 5 | Angel Pagan | 36 | .444 |
| 6 | Jose Reyes | 40 | .425 |
| 7 | Rafael Furcal | 48 | .417 |
| 8 | Alexi Casilla | 60 | .417 |
| 9 | Michael Bourn | 99 | .404 |
| 10 | Carlos Gomez | 117 | .385 |
| Rank | Name | Fair Bunts | Out% |
| 1 | Josh Anderson | 26 | .615 |
| 2 | Emilio Bonifacio | 59 | .525 |
| 3 | Joey Gathright | 54 | .519 |
| 4 | Juan Pierre | 107 | .505 |
| 5 | Tony Gwynn | 39 | .487 |
| 6 | Rafael Furcal | 48 | .479 |
| 7 | Carlos Gomez | 117 | .479 |
| 8 | Emmanuel Burriss | 27 | .444 |
| 9 | Nyjer Morgan | 100 | .440 |
| 10 | Willy Taveras | 107 | .439 |
| Rank | Name | Fair Bunts | Sac% |
| 1 | Braden Looper | 25 | .960 |
| 2 | Jamie Moyer | 29 | .931 |
| 3 | Ricky Nolasco | 28 | .893 |
| 4 | Roy Oswalt | 34 | .882 |
| 5 | Hiroki Kuroda | 30 | .867 |
| 6 | Barry Zito | 35 | .857 |
| 7 | Ryan Dempster | 50 | .840 |
| 8 | Clayton Kershaw | 42 | .833 |
| 9 | Livan Hernandez | 28 | .821 |
| 10 | Derek Lowe | 37 | .811 |
Unsurprisingly, all of the sacrifice leaders are pitchers. The first position players to appear on the list are Daric Barton (.760), Yuniesky Betancourt (.724), and Jamey Carroll (.720).
| Rank | Name | Bunt Runs |
| 1 | Ichiro Suzuki | 5.41 |
| 2 | Alexi Casilla | 4.67 |
| 3 | Gregor Blanco | 4.32 |
| 4 | Jacoby Ellsbury | 3.87 |
| 5 | Angel Pagan | 3.77 |
| 6 | Michael Bourn | 2.70 |
| 7 | Rafael Furcal | 2.16 |
| 8 | Erick Aybar | 1.98 |
| 9 | Cliff Pennington | 1.94 |
| 10 | Gerald Laird | 1.84 |
| 1x | Juan Pierre | -9.54 |
| 2x | Ryan Dempster | -6.57 |
| 3x | Ubaldo Jimenez | -6.42 |
| 4x | Bronson Arroyo | -6.08 |
| 5x | Zach Duke | -5.88 |
| 6x | Mike Pelfrey | -5.69 |
| 7x | Ted Lilly | -5.54 |
| 8x | Derek Lowe | -5.44 |
| 9x | Orlando Hudson | -5.35 |
| 10x | Chad Billingsley | -5.00 |
| Rank | Name | Bunt Runs / 100 |
| 1 | Ichiro Suzuki | 9.97 |
| 2 | Angel Pagan | 8.99 |
| 3 | Jacoby Ellsbury | 8.31 |
| 4 | Alexi Casilla | 8.19 |
| 5 | Gregor Blanco | 7.65 |
| 6 | Cliff Pennington | 6.26 |
| 7 | Rafael Furcal | 6.07 |
| 8 | Coco Crisp | 5.78 |
| 9 | Gerald Laird | 5.67 |
| 10 | Jose Reyes | 5.37 |
| 1x | Mike Pelfrey | -7.00 |
| 2x | Jeff Suppan | -6.33 |
| 3x | Ubaldo Jimenez | -6.20 |
| 4x | Zach Duke | -5.66 |
| 5x | Derek Lowe | -5.54 |
| 6x | Ted Lilly | -4.87 |
| 7x | Jair Jurrjens | -4.86 |
| 8x | Cole Hamels | -4.70 |
| 9x | Ryan Dempster | -4.69 |
| 10x | Clayton Kershaw | -4.22 |
As usual, the trailers include a lot of pitchers, who don't tend to get a lot of bunt hits. The first position players that appear on the list are Chris Young (-2.54), Brendan Ryan (-2.42), Tony Gwynn (-2.29), Yuniesky Betancourt (-1.70), and Juan Pierre (-1.13). Pierre has appeared a lot in these two posts, typically as a trailer in some category. Based on the data for these three years, he doesn't have the ability to be a productive enough bunter to offset his great number of bunt attempts. In fact, of the ten players that topped the attempt% list I showed at the beginning of this post, Pierre was the only player to grade out as a below-average bunter. One other note - I'm skeptical of the bunt runs values for Pennington and Furcal since Pennington had a bunt double and Furcal had two. Bunt doubles are essentially flukes, and since doubles are worth a lot more than singles are, they skew the run value totals.
Fair bunt data are from Fangraphs. Foul and missed bunt data were generated from Joe Lefkowitz's PITCHf/x tool.