The Alleged Two-Out Rally

Nats Blog has a fascinating post with a series of charts comparing situations in which the Nationals and other teams score runs. The charts show that, contrary to what the team's announcers say endlessly, the Nats don't have a lot of two-out rallies. That's not surprising, given that even the best hitter will only get on base about 40% of the time, meaning that this hypothetical hitter up with two outs will make the third out about 60% of the time. Unfortunately, the Nats don't have a lot of hitters with an OBP of .400; actually, then have just one--Nick Johnson--meaning that the best most of their hitters can do with two outs is get on base 30-35% of the time. That's not going to produce a lot of two-out rallies.

The charts show that the Nats don't score as frequently as other teams in virtually all situations. Again, that's not surprising given that the Nats have one of the worst offenses in baseball.

All of this shows one simple and incontrovertible truth: outs are scarce, and a team should treat them as scarce, meaning that things like a sacrifice bunt in which a player intentionally makes an out should be used sparingly. Because the odds of the Nationals scoring a run decrease with each out in the inning, the Nationals especially should treats outs as a scarce commodity; they don't hit well generally and are especially bad with runners in scoring position. Bunting may make sense when the hitter is Cristian Guzman or a pitcher, or when one run will win the game and there are no outs, but not when the hitter is virtually anyone other than Guzman or a pitcher and there is one or two outs. Frank Robinson uses the bunt far too often, and he'd be better off keeping that particular arrow in his quiver most of the time.