I realized a brand new reality whereas watching the Yankees-Blue Jays recreation on Sunday, and I’d prefer to share it with you: YES Community play-by-play man Michael Kay talked about that Austin Wells is tied for the league lead in sacrifice flies with Geraldo Perdomo.
I don’t wish to disabuse anybody of the notion that FanGraphs writers are all-seeing brains-in-jars, however I had no concept this was the case. Even contemplating the huge bigness of my extremely realized noggin, I can’t say that sacrifice flies have ever been a stat I cared a lot about monitoring. I’m certain there’s some connection (constructive or adverse, I can’t say) between the standard of a hitter and the variety of sac flies he produces, however largely sacrifice flies appear to be extra a perform of alternative than talent. Not least as a result of I don’t suppose anybody units out to hit a sacrifice fly as such; if you happen to’re placing the ball within the air with a runner on third and fewer than two outs, you’d most likely somewhat hit a house run or a double. A sac fly is a fallback place.
However this enjoyable reality concerning the main league sac fly leaderboard struck me, as a result of in my thoughts, Perdomo isn’t the sac fly man, he’s the sac bunt man.
In the course of the 2023 postseason, Perdomo bunted up a storm. In simply 63 postseason plate appearances that yr, Perdomo laid down 5 sacrifices and a bunt single, accounting for almost 1 / 4 of all postseason bunts that yr. Perdomo’s Brad Williams kickball act was a startling outlier, even on the time, however it didn’t come fully with out warning. Perdomo tied for the league lead in sacrifice hits in 2022 with 12, then laid down one other 14 to guide the majors outright in 2023.
Quite a bit has occurred since then. Often a younger participant will comply with what I’d describe because the Jose Altuve profession path. They arrive as much as the majors at a really younger age, get into the lineup, and regardless of indifferent-to-bad offensive manufacturing, they keep there. If you happen to play good protection at a premium place, steal a number of bases, and make your coworkers giggle, you don’t must hit a lot to remain on the roster.
It labored for Altuve, and for José Ramírez. You may not bear in mind this, however as a 21-year-old rookie shortstop, Ramírez hit simply .262/.300/.346, and led the league with 13 sacrifice bunts in simply 68 video games.
What these two guys did, and now Perdomo, is that they realized hit. All of them had some form of elite underlying hitting talent (bat management, plate self-discipline, and many others.), however didn’t determine translate it into elite manufacturing till they’d been within the majors a pair years.
And so Perdomo has change into a type of guys I write about loads. I checked in on him in Might, when he was wrecking home, and the 25-year-old has not relented because the yr has worn on. With about three weeks to go within the season, Perdomo is rocking a .284/.382/.447 slash line, good for a 131 wRC+. His 17 residence runs in 2025 are greater than he hit in his first three main league seasons put collectively, and whenever you toss in 24 stolen bases and average-or-better shortstop protection, he’s already at 5.7 WAR on the season.
It seems that now that Perdomo is certainly one of Arizona’s higher hitters, supervisor Torey Lovullo isn’t fairly so eager on him gifting away outs. Perdomo has nonetheless laid down 5 sac bunts this yr, which is greater than the zero laid down by Bobby Witt Jr., who has a decrease wRC+ than Perdomo. (Think about saying that two years in the past.) But it surely’s method fewer than 14.
Baseball is a worldwide recreation in each method that issues. Over the previous 150 years, it’s been embraced by numerous hundreds of thousands of each race and creed, in each nook of the globe. To say it has an all-encompassing tradition is simply not true. However in our neck of the woods, in cutthroat capitalist America, baseball can get fairly bleak.
Like, “Fail seven occasions out of 10 and also you’re a Corridor of Famer” simply teaches us that life is struggling. And the truth that there are two distinct, unrelated statistical classes with “sacrifice” within the identify is sort of Calvinist.
And but Perdomo, one of the cheerful personalities within the league, has now led the majors in each. Assuming Wells doesn’t take sole possession of the lead in sac flies between now and the tip of the season, which will probably be enjoyable to maintain observe of. It’s like the house run chase for whole nerds.
Does that make Perdomo essentially the most sacrificial participant within the recreation, if not all time?
It is dependent upon the way you have a look at it. What I do know is that it’s uncommon for a participant to excel (certain, let’s go along with that phrase) in each classes. Gamers who lay down lots of sacrifice bunts are typically bat management guys with out lots of energy. Scrappy center infielders. Guys who would’ve hit second within the Fifties.
There’s not likely a hard-and-fast rule for league leaders in sacrifice flies, however you do have to get the ball within the air with a good quantity of energy. However not an excessive amount of energy, as a result of that’s how you find yourself main the league in residence runs, and never sac flies. Final yr’s league leaders had been Vinnie Pasquantino and pre-homer binge Eugenio Suárez. Will Smith has been up there a pair occasions. Adam Duvall, Jesús Aguilar, Charlie Blackmon… you understand warning observe energy whenever you see it.
Anyway, there’s not an excessive amount of overlap. Sacrifice flies have been part of the rulebook since 1954; 4 gamers have led both league in each sacrifice hits and sacrifice flies in a full season: Johnny Temple, Roberto Alomar, Francisco Lindor, and Elvis Andrus. Temple is the one one to guide your entire main leagues in each classes, executing 17 profitable sac bunts in 1958, and driving in 13 runs with sac flies the very subsequent yr. That’s what Perdomo is chasing.
Sacrifice flies are the tougher class during which to submit huge numbers. Within the very first yr of the sac fly period, 1954, Gil Hodges ripped off 19 of them, a determine no one has matched since. Solely 5 different hitters up to now 70 years have produced greater than 15 sac flies in a season.
However higher love hath no man than this, to put down a bunt for his good friend. The one-season AL/NL report is 67, set by Ray Chapman in 1917. Chapman, who’s most well-known now for being main league baseball’s solely on-field fatality, was a prolific bunter. In simply eight and a half main league seasons, Chapman laid down some 334 sacrifice hits, together with 5 seasons of 40 or extra.
Come the dwell ball period, sac bunts waned in reputation, although huge particular person seasons popped up by the early Twenty first century. Bert Campaneris laid down 40 sacrifice hits in 1977, the very best whole since 1954. Within the 2000s, there have been seven seasons of 20 or extra sacrifice hits, together with three in 2004 alone. Roy Oswalt and Javier Vázquez every hit the 20-sac bunt mark as pitchers, which is mighty spectacular.
However then the nerds got here alongside and satisfied everybody that it’s often unwise to commerce an out for a base. Perdomo has the very best whole of sacrifice hits in a season since 2015 with these 14 in 2023, although Kyle Isbel and Luis Arraez are only one and two bunts off that mark, respectively, with loads of season to go.
Arraez leads the league in whole sacrifices (hits and flies mixed) with 18, adopted by Isbel and Perdomo with 16 apiece, then Pete Crow-Armstrong and Jose Herrera (who’s tallied 14 in simply 204 plate appearances). However ballplayers simply don’t sacrifice like they used to:
The Most Sacrificial Seasons of the Twenty first Century
Lindor in 2016, Perdomo in 2023, and Arraez this yr are tied for essentially the most mixed sacrifices up to now decade, they usually path the selfless Gutierrez by double digits. The cool youngsters are going your entire yr with out a sac bunt or a sac fly. Listed here are the Twenty first-century seasons with essentially the most plate appearances with out a sacrifice of both taste:
The Least Sacrificial Seasons of the Twenty first Century
Mockingly, Goldschmidt tied for the NL lead in sacrifice flies in 2012, and Andrus was a prolific sacrificer. He led the AL in sac bunts thrice in his first 5 seasons, then led the AL in sac flies (albeit with out a sac bunt) in 2019. Solely 5 gamers who debuted in 2000 or later have 50 or extra profession sacrifice hits and 50 or extra profession sacrifice flies; Andrus is certainly one of them.
And but, in 2022? Bupkis. Sacrifice is a fickle enterprise; it takes a particular participant, like Perdomo, to grasp it fully.
