Quote:
Originally Posted by milkit1
When were bunts officially kept track of in terms of bunts as hits? The reason I ask is I saw a top 10 hunters of all time list and it had no deadball era hitters. That seemed odd to me. Is it possible that bunting percentage wasn't kept track of until later?
Thanks
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Bunt hits aren't officially tracked. We have play by play data that we can capture bunt hits and attempts to bunt for a hit. The farther back we go, the more holes there is in the data. We have pretty complete data back to the 1950s, so we can analyze the data and give an opinion on the best bunters of the modern era. However, there isn't enough data to compare dead ball hitters to those of the modern era.
All the leaders in sacrifices are from the dead ball era. Eddie Collins has a large lead. That seems strange for a career .333 hitter. Although, Tris Speaker is 10th and Ty Cobb is 12th. Clearly, there were some great bunters before 1950.