The lost art of bunting has been rediscovered by Manny Acta's Indians.
Chuck Crow / The Plain DealerWhether it's the surprise bunt by Ezequiel Carrera to beat the Reds last Friday or the more mundane sacrifice to set up runs, Manny Acta's Indians have embraced all ways of getting their offense moving --- which is working just fine in the AL Central standings. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Bunting is a lost art in baseball. At times, it is also a reviled one.
"You have to convince the guys they can do it," said Indians manager Manny Acta. "Sometimes, it makes them feel like less of a man."
Acta's predecessor, Eric Wedge, had an unreasonable bias against the bunt in all aspects but the sacrifice. "That's not real baseball," he said of squeeze bunts and other surprise short-ball plays.
One wonders how real was the monster mash baseball of muscle-bound lummoxes in the years before testing for steroids began. The greatest records in the game were cheapened and tainted, but, as the commercial said, "Chicks dig the long ball."
The sacrifice bunt, because everyone knows it is coming, is probably harder to execute than a bunt that is intended to be a hit. Many of the new metrics in baseball argue that the sac bunt is overrated because with it a team gives up one-third of its outs in an inning to move a player one base closer to home.
On the "push" bunt, to the opposite side of the field, or the drag bunt, to the "pull" side, the element of surprise is in the batter's favor. The drag bunt, dribbled down the first-base line by a left-hander and the third by a righty, is almost impossible to stop if the infielders are playing back and the ball gets past the pitcher. The batter drops the bunt while already on the move.
Just the threat of a bunt by a speedy contact hitter can force infielders to creep closer to the plate, reducing the angles they can take to ball if the batter swings away.
On the great Indians teams of the 1990s, Kenny Lofton, Omar Vizquel and Roberto Alomar were all good bunters. No one thought the ploy weakened their competitive fiber. But the lure of the three-run homer was greater in a power lineup.
In the old days, when players policed the game and umpires issued far fewer warnings for brushback pitches, the bunt could be a macho play. A well-executed drag bunt down the first-base line might allow a vengeful batter to trample the offending pitcher as he bent to field the ball.
As for Acta, he is an adaptable man who tailors his offense to his players' talents. He did not bunt much in two seasons and part of a third as Washington Nationals manager. He had the same station-to-station, slow team there as Wedge did during most of his Indians tenure. But Acta was not doctrinally opposed to the surprise bunt, and certainly not for the testosterone-fueled reasons of Wedge.
"This year, we have the game and speed in order to do it," Acta said.
The Indians have brought the bunt for a base hit out of hiding this season. They beat the Red Sox early in the season with a suicide squeeze, executed by Asdrubal Cabrera, the man of an hourglass full of big moments this season. The squeeze was an effective play by manager Ozzie Guillen's Chicago White Sox in their world championship season of 2005.
Like Acta, Guillen is a Latin, familiar with winter baseball in the Caribbean. "That is how you play in winter ball," Acta said.
The Indians also beat Cincinnati last Friday on rookie Ezequiel Carrera's drag bunt on the first pitch of his first at-bat in the big leagues. Leadoff man Michael Brantley tacked on another drag bunt for a hit before the Reds series was over.
The grotesque obsession of some players with their image is the problem. They put an unfair connotation on the play. This is not confined to baseball.
The physics of basketball demonstrate that an underhand free throw produces a softer shot with a higher arc, making the ball more likely to go in, than an overhand shot. Yet because it is sneeringly called a "granny" shot, manly players persist in their sub-50 percent efforts with the set-shot approach. Shaquille O'Neal, Chris Dudley and Jerome Lane, former Cavalier bricklayers all, are ready examples.
There is less of a stigma to "bunting," in the form of laying up, on par-5 holes in golf. Weight training, technology and ego, however, encourage the Roy McAvoy gamble from "Tin Cup." As for the risk of going for the green, McAvoy said, "Greatness courts failure."
That much is true. But with offense down in baseball and the value of every base increasing, smartness courts finesse. The people devoted to macho posturing should get over themselves.
Follow Bill Livingston on Facebook and on Twitter @LivyPD