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Small Ball, Sneer
by Dave
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
The coach of our next opponent approached me because I was the only one wearing the "official" team shirt. He said, "Hey coach, how'd you do in the last round?" I told him that we hadn't had much of an opponent in the quarterfinals of the tournament. We had won via the run rule, something like 12-0. I asked the coach to reciprocate by telling me how they had done in their quarterfinal game. He said, "We won 8-2. They weren't very good either. They tried that small ball stuff on us and scored two runs in the first. After that, we shut them down."
The coach had said "that small ball stuff" with such a sneer that it startled me. After he left, I immediately went to the real coaches of our team (I coach a younger age group) and told them what the guy had said. They laughed and the manager said, "I guess we'll have to bunt them into submission." We did just that, scoring 2 runs in the first which would have given us the win regardless of anything else. We scored a couple more in the next inning with our ... sneer ... "small ball tactics" ... sneer. After that, we let our hitters hit away which was easy since their pitcher didn't want to walk anyone lest we engage in small ball again.
The opposition scored one in the fifth and that was about it. They couldn't touch our pitcher and they certainly were not proficient at "small ball." It wasn't much of a contest. We got all we needed in our first at-bat.
Did you happen to catch any of the first two games between Arizona and Tennessee in the championship series of the women's college world series? The first game was not particularly interesting as two solo homers won the day for Tennessee and Monica Abbott was lights out. Arizona was not able to get many runners on base and, on the few occassions they did, they could not move them. Game two was a bit different.
In game 2, Arizona got a few more hits but they were still unable to move the runners along. Tennessee threatened several times but didn't score as the game went into extra innings 0-0. I'm still a little stressed by it all. Who was I cheering for? I was cheering for as third game. It doesn't so much matter to me who wins the championship. -; I have a deep aprpeciation for Mike Candrea but I think it would be better for the game to have someone else as champion - especially an SEC team. But in my heart of hearts, what I wanted was another game.
So the game went on very stressfully with nobody pushing one across. There were threats and good pitching and fielding put a stop to them. I think it could have gone on like this for hours, perhaps days. Finally Arizona began bunting. They pushed across the winning run on a slap to short with runners at the corners after a great slide on which I'm still not convinced the runner from third got a hand on the plate. "Small ball" won the day. I expect we'll see the same sort of game played tonight when the champion is crowned. I expect maybe both teams will try "small ball," sneer.
I asked a kid to join my team last fall and she agreed. I had invited her because she could bunt and because she was versatile enough to hit away when I didn't ask her to bunt. We already had two kids who could slap and drag. I felt that, given other qualities of kids who had joined us, one more kid who could bunt would be a good idea. Unfortunately, the parents see this girl as a "real hitter" and for most of this season, she has pretty much refused to bunt. I say refused but it hasn't been particularly obvious or overt. What happens is whenever she is called on to bunt, she fouls off two pitches and then I let her hit away. She hasn't laid one down for us all season. She pulls back and takes a strike sometimes and the remainder of opportunities result in foul balls.
Something about the manner and frequency this happened caused me to become suspicious that perhaps it was occurring intentionally. I'm just guessing, I can't prove anything, but I think perhaps her father told her to just foul off the bunts until two strikes and then I'd be sure to let her hit away. I've had a lot of discussions with the guy and I know he doesn't have respect for "small ball." He has commented to me about how good his kid's swing is. He occassionally sends her for private lessons to work on it, spending several hundred dollars per season.
The last time he told me about how nice her swing was, I reacted somewhat defensively by telling him that, given the "sweetness" of her swing, maybe he ought to invest in a bat. He replied, it isn't the bat which determines the good hitter, it's the swing. I agreed but I had to add that no matter how good of a swing a hitter possesses, she must also possess a bat and that thing your kid has in her hands doesn't qualify. I suggested that he was going to need another bat for her because when we play the serious tournaments, the umps are likely to ban the thing for giving the opposition too big of an advantage and because it was manufactured before they put ASA and other seals of approvals on bats. I was even willing to go into my own pocket to come up with the 30 bucks with which he could purchase a dramatically better bat. But I digress.
I'm pretty convinced that this kid was not bunting the way I had seen her in the past because the father had become convinced that she should be a big hitter and because he had seen a little too much baseball. People who spend their time around baseball rather than fastpitch softball sometimes make comments which are not relevant to the game. This guy said some thing like that and I became convinced he was trying to draw parallels between the two games. That's a fatal mistake. So I needed a way to get this kid, and some others on the team, to bunt. If I accomplished nothing else, that would be my success for the year.
My resolution was to announce that from this point forwards, we would be signaling bunts even on two strike counts. I also announced that every kid on this team was going to have to put one down or I would refuse to let them advance to the next grade - no report cards, no graduation - unless and until they successfully bunted one into fair territory. I told them that if I needed to, in one preliminary round game, each and every kid who came to bat would be instructed to bunt until they got on or were put out. I added that anyone who refused to bunt would be benched. Then I simplified the sign for bunt so that every person in the entire complex would know exactly when a bunt was called for.
The strange thing was that after these announcements, most of the kids, especially the "good hitter," were able to put down bunts at will. Surprise, surprise! For unknown reasons, almost nobody bunted foul after that. I never had to bunt with 2 strikes. I never had to take any extreme measure. We went back to the old signs in hopes of catching our opponent by surprise. Our kids just did it. They bunted into fair territory because they knew they had no other choice.
Along with my announcements, I offered a bit of a lecture to both the kids and their parents. I told them that bunting was far more an integral part of fastpitch softball than it was of baseball. In baseball it is possible for a kid to never learn to bunt and yet be successful. That's not the case in fastpitch where there are far more one run games and baserunners come at a greater premium. If you don't learn to bunt, you will not be able to move to the next level.
I suggested to my team long ago that they try to attend high school and college games whenever possible. Some have made an effort to do so. Of the biggest HS games in our area, most have been determined by small ball tactics. And many of the televised college games over the past couple of weeks have similarly been determined. Since my announcement, a number of parents have been heard commenting that I was right about bunting and they're glad I was so abrupt with them about the subject.
I have always had an appreciation for a well made bunt. I enjoyed bunting as a kid but my coaches would never let me do it. I once bunted in a game and beat it out. When I got to first, the coach greeted me with the threatenting statement, "if you ever do that again, I'm going to strangle you right here while you are on base and the game is still going." That's because he wanted me to hit the ball hard into or over the outfield. OK. I learned to live with that as a young baseball player. I only ever bunted that once in a game. I never got proficient at bunting because I was more interested in preserving my life. Then I grew up, had kids and the first thing I ever noticed in a fastpitch game was the value of a successful bunt, be it sacrifice or drag.
In fastpitch, you always want to try to put the ball in play because the bases are so close. Yet it is a bit harder to bunt successfully with the different spins and such. It's certainly not impossible but it is something which must be worked on. And you have to take your opportunities in games to try it out for real as often as possible, especially at a young age and in meaningless contests. Your offensive repertoire is most definitely incomplete if you cannot lay one down. That is true whether you plan on breaking the NCAA homerun record or not. There's going to come a time when you have to bunt so you might just as well get good at it.
During the broadcasts of the WCWS, both Jessica Mendoza and Michele Smith gave advice to would-be bunters. Some of it I have heard many times before and some of it was, I think, new to me, at least until I considered it more deeply. They both noted the difficulty of bunting a riseball or anything that comes in at eye level or above. They both emphasized getting the bat head higher than the handle in order to avoid popping it up. I had heard these things many times before and discussed them here. But one thing Smith said which I found interesting was that the first thing she does when she tries to bunt is switch her feet. She pulls her back foot forwards and then puts her weight on it. I thought about this for a while and after contemplation, I realized it wasn't anything new per se.
Last year, or possibly the year before, in a discussion regarding the sacrifice bunt, I suggested that batters should square around before bunting. Squaring around means pulling your back foot about even with your front and then standing with your shoulders nearly open to the pitcher. I still believe this position offers some advanatages to the "pivot bunt" in which the batter maintains her basic foot position in the box. But I've seen many bunters succeed using the pivot technique. The pivot technique allows you to pull back and swing away in the event that is a better option than bunting. Sometimes the infielders crash in hard on you while the middle infielders sprint to cover bases. A well placed slap is a better alternative to a bunt in those circumstances. So I'm not going to state that I believe one superior to the exclusion of the other. I think there's room for both.
After considering Smith's advice and trying it out for myself, I came to the conclusion that what she was advocating was pretty much a square around. If you try squaring around for yourself, I think you'll see that what was your back foot is, rather than actually being even with the front, now your front foot and your weight is on this one as Smith suggested. You started out trying to be perfectly square to the pitcher but in reality, you have put what was your backfoot forwards and placed most of your weight on it just as she says. If you don't do this, you really cannot cover the outside part of the plate which is where any good pitcher is probably going to try to throw it if she expects you to bunt. I never really put much thought into what I was doing when I squared but as soon as I tried Smith's technique, I realized that is exactly what I do.
Jessica Mendoza was more focused on the drag bunt than on a generic sacrifice. Her advice was to step back with your front foot and get into a good running position before doing anything else. I'd never heard anyone explain it like that before but this too makes sense to me. The only thing I would like to add is that you want to actually make contact as far up in the box as possible since that improves your chance of bunting the ball into fair territory. The draggers I have seen in the past do not so much step back as they do step forwards with the back foot and get in exactly the position Mendoza showed. But her approach actually makes more sense to me since it provides the opportunity to be moving far faster when you make contact. Since the idea is to get to first before a throw rather than merely move baserunners, this is critical. I think a little experimentation in practice makes it evident that Mendoza's approach is better than the way I learned dragging.
Mendoza also noted that both of her hands climb up the bat when she bunts. She not only pushes her top hand up onto the barrel but also brings her bottom hand up about ten inches in order to get better bat control. This may be difficult for young players to execute without getting hit in the hands. But it is definitely a great way to make sure you have bat control. I have seen a number of young draggers miss the ball outright more than they ever make contact. And on the few occassions they make contact, they don't have enough control to put the thing down in fair territory. The less bat you have, the easier it is to control when bunting. But given a particular size of bat, the closer your hands are to each other, the more control you will have.
In conclusion, "small ball" is as important to softball as the relief pitcher (or a series of relief pitchers) is to baseball. We do not have a bullpen full of backup catchers and pitchers in softball. We don't need them. Baseball does not make the use of "small ball" the way that softballers do. The games are not all that similar in execution and tactics. Applying a baseball ethos to the offensive side of softball is probably a formula for disaster. No hitter under the age of 18 is so good that she doesn't need to bother learning to bunt. And to the coach who sneered at "small ball," I hope you learned your lesson but I expect you didn't.Labels: Bunt
 
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