The main purpose in this section is to understand that in critical situations such as
the examples above, you want control. Batters can't really control the flight of a
batted ball but with bunting you can. From the article Why doesn't Big Papi exploit
infield shift by bunting? by Russell A Carlton (April 22, 2014) says it best:
“Expressed a little more mathematically, our reluctant bunter is saying that he
prefers a higher-variance strategy despite its lower expected value, because he might
come out ahead. It’s sort of like saying that investing all of your money in lottery
tickets is a good investment strategy because you could win 20 million dollars. The
lottery is still a really bad investment strategy when there’s a much safer, much
better expected rate of return available.”
Summary
Bunting is a mighty powerful and very effective tool in any coach’s arsenal – but
rarely utilized as a legitimate scoring tool and rarely used in the proper situations.
Ask almost any hitter and they will say they don’t like to bunt or can’t bunt. Ask
coaches and they will say they bunt – but rarely do in situations when they actually
should. Bunts are successful but only if every player on the team can bunt effectively
and confidently and that can only be accomplished by practicing it religiously.
Every coach should take it upon themselves to make sure every player can bunt AND
be comfortable doing so. Players should take it upon themselves to do likewise.
Many argue “You only get 27 outs so don’t waste them” but you only need one run to
win a game. Practice bunting and you won’t “waste” an out.