You’re the manager. You have one of the best hitters in the league on your team. You’re giving him a partial day off by putting him at designated hitter. He comes up twice with a man on first, once with one out. What do you have him do? Sacrifice!
When I looked at the Houston box score recently, I saw Altuve was 0-1 with the team three time through the order. No walks. I looked down to see what he did in the other two PA, and saw the two sacrifice hits. What is going on?
I have batting by fielding position going back to 1974, most of the DH era. In that time, this is only the 11th time that a designated hitter sacrificed twice in the game. The last was by Brayan Pena on 8/22/2009. Amazingly, Don Baylor makes the list 5/30/1983, playing for the Yankees no less. If anyone watched the game, was Altuve bunting for hits and the official scorer decided to be generous? I can’t imagine a manager calling for a one-out sac with Altuve at the plate.
Oakland leads Houston 1-0 in the eighth inning.
from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/29GOR2u
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