I just heard one of those sports phrases that makes my skin crawl.  Sure there are cliches.  Who likes to hear those?  But you can't expect much more than that, lest ye provide the opponent with bulletin board material (quickly becoming a cliche in its own right).  I'm not talking about cliches though.  I'm talking about those old sports axioms that have been accepted as common knowledge.  Today on ESPN radio, Kirk Herbstreit (cohost with Mike Tirico for today) just gave us a "the way it's supposed to be played" sighting when speaking of baseball.

Now we all know the inferences made when we hear this phrase.  Heck, Herbstreit elaborated for the benefit of the nine people who have yet to hear of this concept.  Bunting to get the guy over to win 2-1 is how baseball is meant to be played.  I try to be poignant whilst informative, so merely posting a Youtube video of Dr Cox saying "Wrong wrong wrong wrong,  Wrong wrong wrong wronnnnnng" doesn't fit the latter criteria.

Whenever we have heard the name Barry Bonds and the associated word "cheater," you probably thought the inference was steroids.  Wrong!  Barry is just one of many cheaters like Alex Rodriguez, Vladimir Guerrero, Albert Pujols, and Adam Dunn who hit the ball so that the defense can't catch it.  That's simply not fair.  Umpires, out of sheer fear, won't call these batters out for failing to bunt.  It's a crisis!

More over, why win 7-3, when you could win 2-1.  Heck, even if you sacrificed your offensive opportunities and lost 2-1, you could still tell everyone that you played good old smartball.  Before I went to create this entry, I was geared up to read last night's smartball box scores.  Alas, I did not find any.

So I believe I have addressed the poignant portion of today's entry.  Now let's move the informative portion.  Below is a link for a run expectancy matrix.  No, some geek in his mother's basement didn't create this matrix.  This tool comes from data from actual MLB games.  As an example: A runner on first with no outs yields .9 runs each occurrence (so the axiom about walking leadoff men is actually true).  A runner on second with one out (the net result of a sac bunt) yields .7 runs per occurrence.  So you're worse off in terms of runs expected and outs created.  Someone tell A-Rod that he just simply doesn't create enough outs.  It's killing the Yankees right now.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/statistics/sortable/index.php?cid=204022