I am often critical and dismissive of the bunt. I have the Earl Weaver quote on the front page of this blog for a reason. The bunt, by and large, is a give-up play and usually the payoff does not equal what it costs you.
I should clarify this stance though. And this article over at Beyond the Boxscore got me thinking about the one time I do like the bunt...when you're bunting for a hit.
As it turns out, the Orioles had two of the best players in the game when it came to bunting for hits: Adam Jones and Cesar Izturis.
Jones went 7 for 12 when bunting for hits (.583 hit percentage), leading all of baseball in bunt hit percentage and Izturis went 7 for 17 (.412 hit percentage), good for 10th. If you can drop bunts and get hits that often, you do it. Those guys can drop a bunt whenever they feel like it. (The article is really interesting, well worth reading all of it.)
However, Buck Showalter did show a tendency for using the bunt as a sacrifice play, more than I was comfortable with, to be honest. According to the 2011 Bill James Handbook, although the three Orioles managers were at the helm for about the same number of games, Showalter actually employed the sac bunt 13 times, more than Dave Trembley (10). But less than Juan Samuel (18).
These numbers are a bit higher from what Showalter has done in the past and perhaps with the additions of Derrek Lee, Mark Reynolds and J.J. Hardy, Buck won't feel so inclined to try to manufacture runs. I'd like to think so.
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