Why You Don't Bunt With a Man on Second and No Outs

A man on second and no outs has a greater chance of scoring than a man on third with 1 out.

Thanks to our friends at Inside the Book, we can see the math behind the decision, and in Jerry Manuel's case, he failed when he had GMJ bunt Luis Castillo over in the 9th.

The situation was man on second, no outs, and GMJ had worked himself into a hitter's count.  In that situation the run expectancy, per the chart, is 1.228.  That's right, the Mets should have expected to not only score that run, but they had a near 23% chance of tacking on another one.  The correct call was to remove the bunt sign (which never should have been given in the first place).

When Jerry bunted Castillo over, he lowered the run expectancy to 0.980.

I'll also add that with the players that were due up, there are actually more reasons not to bunt.  This was not your 7-8-9 hitters, but 3-4-5, the heart of the order.

David Wright did fail, that is a given, but the manager failed as well.

Jerry wants his team to win with 26 outs.

Here are the runs expected based on men-on-base and the number of outs in the inning:

Situation	No Outs	One Out	Two Out
Empty	0.551	0.295	0.111
1st	0.972	0.576	0.252
2nd	1.228	0.746	0.337
3rd	1.424	0.980	0.394
1st/2nd	1.649	1.027	0.478
1st/3rd	1.845	1.261	0.535
2nd/3rd	2.101	1.431	0.620
Loaded	2.522	1.717	0.761