That being said, if a manager is bunting more or less than optimally from his perspective, it is possible that the defense is exploiting that. Hard to say. However, the optimal bunt percentages varies tremendously from team to team and player to player, based on the game situations they encounter, the pitchers they face, and most importantly, the speed and bunting ability of players, as well as their offensive prowess.

Bottom line is that we can’t tell anything from a team’s/manager’s bunt numbers, and most importantly, the notion that a “sac bunt is wrong because it gives away an out,” is an early sabermetric truism that has been debunked for 10 years now. Can we please bury it?

Just to explain why, one more time:

One, if the defense is playing anywhere near optimally, the win expectancy for any batter who is a potential bunter (some minimum level of bunt proficiency and speed and/or maximum level of offensive prowess given the game state) is exactly the same whether he bunts or swings away so a bunt attempt is neither right nor wrong.

Two, if the defense is NOT playing optimally, which the batter and manager should be able to see (although they can change at the last second), if the defense is playing too far back then the bunt attempt is correct (yields a higher WE than hitting away) and if the defense is playing too far in, then hitting away is correct.

So, as you can see in no case is the statement, “bunting is incorrect,” a correct one unless one and only one situation exists, which is when the defense is playing further in than game theory would dictate, and there is no particular reason for a defense to do that unless they know that the offense is going to bunt more often than game theory would dictate from their perspective (if they didn’t know where the defense was going to play), regardless of the fact that the defense was in fact playing “too far” up.