![]() He served mostly as a Utility player beyond that, surrendering the bunt-hit from his arsenal as his speed vanished from his skill-set. He kept it in his pocket and he knew exactly when to retire it.Ī year-by-year inspection reveals that the bulk of Mazzili's Attempts came in a span of four years. Although Mazzilli possessed speed enough to capture upwards of 40 bases at times in his career, his high success rate here is attributable in large part to his effective use of the bunt. ![]() Try to imagine for a moment, a batter bunting for a hit 88% of the time he attempted to do so. The runner-up to this contest, Don Blasinghouse, scored a Hit% just two percentage points behind that of Mazilli, but his actual rate of Reaching Base while bunting with the bases empty was a marginally superior 88.3%. As you may have noticed, Mazilli does not take a seat in his throne without a certain amount of controversy. Here is the best of that group: Top 10 Bunters with Bases Empty, Career by Hit% I then sorted those 100 players by success rate, presuming this would show us the greatest base-hit bunter of all-time. I first queried the 100 players who had most often bunted themselves aboard in their careers. ![]() That way, there can be absolutely no confusion as to what the batter's intentions were. I've therefore limited my search to all bunts with the bases empty (or b.e.). Because, while I'm certain some of the more proficient bunters in baseball history did at times bunt for a hit with runners on, I'm afraid attempting to extract those occurrences from plain old sacrifice attempts would get entirely too hairy. In order to do this, I first needed to design a decent method of measuring the event. Whatever the method used, I'd like to pay tribute to those who excelled at it, and ridicule those who embarrassed themselves when attempting to harness its wonder. With the recent rise of the defensive shift, we've even been blessed with a new form of bunt- the shift-killer. It really is a gorgeous spectacle, and it is not always simply an exhibition of outstanding speed and bat control. The 'Sacrifice Bunt' has become this sort of tired and played-out point of contention between the old and new schools of baseball, and it really is a shame because all the hullabaloo distracts from what is undoubtedly one of the more beautiful events of the game- the bunt for a hit.
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