Brandon Belt, Bunting Fool
Brandon Belt isn’t having a particularly good year. For once, I don’t just mean that his counting numbers are unimpressive; he’s long been a player whose production has outstripped his reputation, as light-slugging first basemen tend to be, and playing in San Francisco’s extreme scoring environment hasn’t helped. From 2012 to 2018, he produced 3.4 WAR per 600 plate appearances, All-Star-level production, despite never really hitting for power or average.
This year, his defense has dragged him down near replacement level (note to the Giants: Belt really shouldn’t play the outfield), but his hitting isn’t up to his usual standards either (a 107 wRC+ that equals last year for his worst full-season rate). Even as Belt’s production wanes, though, he’s actually getting more fun to watch. Why? Well, you never know when he’s going to drop down a bunt, regardless of situation, and bunting for a hit is among the most fun plays in baseball.
When you picture the ideal player to shift against, Brandon Belt is almost a perfect match. He’s left-handed, pulls a ton of his groundballs, and isn’t fast enough that a second baseman in shallow right field might not have time to throw him out on a grounder. When shifting exploded in frequency from 2014 to 2016, Belt was the kind of player who gave teams a reason to do it. In 2015, 54% of the balls he put in play were against a shift, up from 14% in 2013. By 2016, that number climbed to 78%, and it’s bounced around 80% ever since.
At first, Belt had no clear counter. By the end of 2016, he’d bunted only five times in his major league career, going 2-4 with a sacrifice. Teams shifted on him with impunity, and Belt lashed grounders into the shift. His groundball rate decreased, but that’s not a way to punish shifting; it’s merely a way to ignore it. He tried bunting more in 2017, but it was only middlingly effective — he finished 3-6 on the year, and two of those singles were bang-bang plays; he easily could have been 1-6. “Bunt against the shift” is a great idea in theory, but Brandon Belt wasn’t doing it well enough in practice.
Bunting skill isn’t fixed, though, and Belt proved it. His bunts in 2018 were crisper, better-executed, and better-aimed. Take a look at this surgical strike against the Padres:
Freddy Galvis’s kick-stop drives the point home: there’s no reason to bother fielding that ball. For the season, Belt went 4-6 on bunts, and none of the singles even drew a throw. That .667 on-base percentage will do, even if he did embarrass himself in a Bay Area tilt:
Hey, they can’t all be perfect. That’s no different than a grounder into the shift, even if it probably feels worse.
Remember all the way back in the previous paragraph where I said they can’t all be perfect? Well, I lied. Brandon Belt is perfect on bunts this year, and he’s getting increasingly audacious. He’ll bunt in situations where a runner is valuable, sure. Leading off an inning against a decent reliever in a close game? That’s a great time to get a runner on first, and the shift is just asking for it. He doesn’t even hesitate:
That’s too obvious, though. Brandon Belt isn’t about bunting only in situations where a runner on first is most important. He’s in it for the love of the bunt. 1-1 count with two outs and a one-run lead? Sure, Belt will bunt on you:
Are runners on first valuable with two outs? Not at all! Still, Belt’s feeling it. Put away your run expectancy tables and feel the magic. Sometimes you just have to bunt.
How about against an Orioles righty in Camden Yards, a situation where Belt is probably as likely to hit a home run in a single plate appearance as he’ll ever be? Oh yeah, absolutely:
Keep your home runs; Belt will take his not-even-guaranteed base and be happy with it. The Giants hit three long balls in this game. Brandon Crawford, he of the .141 career ISO and 8.7% home run per fly ball rate, hit two home runs. Lefties batting against Oriole righties are in the best possible situation to succeed. Gabriel Ynoa has a 6.45 FIP and 6.75 ERA this year, for crying out loud! Belt doesn’t care, though. He’s bunting.
If you think those last two bunts are questionable, his latest one takes the cake. With the bases empty, a bunt single and a walk are exactly the same. Honestly, a bunt single and a walk are the same almost all the time, but especially with the bases empty. 3-0 count, pitch that might well be called a ball? Bunts away!
Bunts on 3-0 are rare, because they’re ridiculous. 3-0 counts often end in walks, without the hassle of having to connect on a bunt and reach base safely. When Matt Carpenter did it last year, I looked into it and found that he was only the third player to get a fair bunt down with a 3-0 count and the bases empty in the last 10 years. Well, that statistic is now outdated, because Brandon Belt is the fourth.
Think about what bunting on 3-0 entails. A 3-0 count is the best place a hitter could ever find himself. After 3-0 counts this year, major league hitters as a whole walk 60.6% of the time. They get on base 72.8% of the time. On the rare occasion where they don’t walk, they often hit home runs — 5% of non-walk at-bats that hit 3-0 end in a dinger. Literally every offensive stat is improved; batters have posted a .233 ISO (against .180 ISO overall), a .322 BABIP (.296 overall), and a .309 batting average. Brandon Belt doesn’t care. He just wants to bunt.
At this point, I think we can say that Brandon Belt is drunk with bunt power. In a twist, though, that isn’t really new. When Cody Bellinger bunted on 3-0 in 2017, Jeff Sullivan investigated and found a 3-0 bunt attempt from Belt that went foul in May 2017. Brandon Belt wasn’t even a good bunter in 2017! That bunt rolled foul, and it might be good that it did; the Dodgers weren’t particularly over-shifted. He just felt like bunting.
Hittable righties, favorable counts, spots where a runner on first isn’t all that valuable? That’s all irrelevant. Brandon Belt sees an opening, and he attacks. It’s not going to stop teams from shifting against him — he’s grounded into a shift 41 times this year, which means the shift is saving more in grounders than it gives back in bunt singles. Still, if you’re playing against Belt, maybe keep your third baseman close to home until the count gets to two strikes. Honestly, maybe leave him there with two strikes, too. Belt hasn’t attempted a bunt with two strikes yet in his career, but at the rate he’s turning bizarre situations into bunt singles, it’s only a matter of time.
Ben is a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Bluesky @benclemens.
Please never leave us Ben.
I second this motion.
Stop it! Asking him to stay is the kiss of death! He probably got an offer from the Rays or Padres before your comment hit ten upvotes…
How many bunts has he laid down this year?
I was wondering that as well. I looked it up and he’s 4-for-4 this year.
Particularly for a lefty pull hitter, him bunting on a 2 strike count would be a marked improvement over bunting 3-0, no? Presumably there’s less of a chance of slugging anyways, and much of the time the entire left side of the infield is abandoned on the shift with two strikes. Any bunt to the left side, no matter how horrendous, does the trick there.
I agree with this. I feel that if he feels comfortable bunting he should really try with 2 strikes (especially vs a LH pitcher. maybe not an 0 – 2 or 1 – 2 count, just because the ball is less likely to be one that is easy to handle, but 2 -2 or 3 -2 for sure.
It’s worth noting that Belt’s offense isn’t actually waning and he’s playing just as good as he ever has. Belt is just doomed to be forever unlucky and never have the breakout year that everyone is waiting for. This year, his BB% is 4% higher than his career average, his K% is 3.8% lower, and his ISO is just a hair above average. However, his BABIP is 72 points below his career average.
His exit velo is down from some of his loftier years but he has recovered in that area from last year too.
But his BABuIP IS 1.000!
As a life long Giants fan I’ve had my endless debates with the Brandon Belt haters among Giants fans. I’ve always liked Brandon Belt and he’s a good player. It seems all sorts of things have stopped him from having THAT huge season (broken hand, multiple concussions, playing in Oracle Park, defensive shifts, etc.). He was supposed to be our Paul Goldschmidt. Belt destroyed minor league pitching raising Giants fans’ hopes to the Nth degree. Belt was supposed to be the best Giants’ first baseman since Will Clark. Shoot, we though he was going to be better than prime Will Clark. But it hasn’t tuned out that way for Belt. He’s 31 years old now and we’ve probably seen the best of Brandon Belt. He’s had his moments, though, like hitting the game winning HR in the 18th inning of game 2 of the 2014 NLDS in Washington.
Coming into this season he had a better career wRC+ than Arenado, so there is that.
That’s true but the average Giants fan doesn’t care about wRC+. Arenado hits 37-42 home runs, with 130+ RBI, and 100 runs scored every year. Belt doesn’t put up raw numbers like that. Oracle Part just kills Belt’s home run power (74 road HR vs 45 home runs at home).
Looks like he steps on home on the bunt v. Arizona…
Cool article though.
Brandon Belt is also the Giants’ second most productive hitter this year, behind a platooned Panda. Oh, and both of their two best pitchers–who collectively have as much fWAR as the five next-most productive pitchers on their roster–have expiring contracts, and are likely to be gone by the trade deadline. Brandon Belt is basically the only thing the Giants will have left.
Three rings, though. I bet it was worth it.
Bunt. B-U-N-T. In perfect cursive.
How about Rizzuto?
Rirruto*
Belt has a .370 xwOBA. He’s been in a bit of a slump, but his numbers would be better if a few long outs at Oracle had gone out. Park adjustments help a little, but as a lefty flyball hitter, he gets really hurt by the park.
Bunt all the pitches!
Giants owners are ruining them by not allowing the FO to do a full tank job and trade everybody. It is good the owners spend money and are not cheap but at this point a full tank job is needed to compete with dodgers again.
Giants had a great run in the 2010s but it is over now and has been for 3-4 years.
Trade belt, Bumgarner and anyone else you can.
I’m pretty sure they’re planning on trading Bumgarner and Will Smith.
And if they could find someone willing to give them something of value for Belt (and that he won’t or can’t block a trade to) I’m sure they would. Keep in mind, the Phillies traded a non-prospect for the right to pay Jay Bruce a whopping $2.5M over the next two years. Are you suggesting the Giants eat $40M to get Yeison Coca from the Brewers or Deury Carrasco from the Astros?
I would think people would value Belt much higher than Jay Bruce, I could be wrong though. Since he has came into the league, he has been one of the best hitters by wRC+. He is the type of guy you’d picture putting up All-Star numbers in a hitters park.
They can’t trade “everybody”. Posey and Crawford have full no-trade clauses. Belt has a partial no-trade clause. MadBum is assuredly gone in the next few weeks, though. And the team is tanking just by lack of talent. They have the second worst record in the NL.
Compete with the Dodgers?
I’ll probably end up with a healthy amount of downvotes, but the Giants have been well more successful than the Dodgers this decade. Any fan that’s happier with NLCS and WS losses every year than winning the WS and having some bad years of no playoffs has their priorities misaligned.
Haha. Good point. The Giants had a somewhat short window of success but they completely capitalized on that with their three World Series titles. Some downgrade the Giants’ run for those non postseason years (’11, ’13, ’15) but only the ’13 team was under .500. The ’11 and ’15 teams were 1-2 players reaching postseason IMO. They finished in second place both of those seasons. The ’11 team had awesome pitching, slightly better than in ’10. But the offense completely collapsed in ’11. The ’15 team was well balanced with both offense (5th in runs scored) and pitching (6th in runs allowed). But they under-performed their Pythagorean record by 5 games.
The beauty of baseball is the swings (pun not entirely intended).
If you tell me I can be a fan of a team that is guaranteed to make the playoffs in 75% of years during my lifetime but never win the WS or a team that will make the playoffs only 40-50% of the time but win 3 or 4 WS before I die, I’m going with option 2.
We can discuss “success” all day long but in the end, there is only one legitimate measure: Rings.
It was a comment on competing with them in the present/future, not in the past.
“he’s grounded into a shift 41 times this year, which means the shift is saving more in grounders than it gives back in bunt singles.” That is not true, considering many of those grounders would have been groundouts even without a shift. That is exactly the kind of question that would be nice to answer in an analytical way.
Was about to ask that question myself. How many of those 41 groundouts would likely have been outs against a straight-up defense?
I thought this exact thing. And wait he only has 4 bunt hits this season – that’s basically the same rate per AB that he tried last season. That doesn’t seem like he is doing it as much as the article led me to believe.
Also, I think what is most interesting about Belt’s year so far is that he has a .250 BABIP, which is much lower than any full season in his career. Is this a shift issue or just something more random? His batter ball profile doesn’t look that much different, yes less LD but not to where you would think warrants a .250 BABIP. His BB% is at it’s highest and K% at its lowest, to me he looks like a guy who could have a solid second half.
Some back-of-envelope math: if 41 groundouts at a 0.300 BABIP on groundballs, then there were 59 groundballs. 4 bunt hits is 0.068 out of 59 groundballs. Is the shift lowering his groundball BABIP more or less than this amount? Who knows!
This article didn’t mention how many actual bunts BB has this year. It mentioned that he’s perfect, and gave a few examples, but actually listing the number of bunts, and perhaps how much they’ve lifted his otherwise mediocre offensive numbers feel like information pertinent to the premise of the article.
There are no meaningful numbers because, as it stands now, most major leaguers are terrible bunters. Improved technique, perhaps a little practice as well, and a lot of players would see many more base hits and a lot fewer shifts. Belt’s technique is superb. He keeps the bat at the proper angle to the pitch allowing him to keep the ball well fair. That is where most hitters go wrong. They do not understand the proper angle for the bat to be placed and end up bunting a very large percentage foul. As Belt clearly shows the ball can be ten feet from the line and still be a guaranteed base hit as long as it is bunted hard enough to get past the pitcher. It is hard to not believe that there is a large macho factor involved as well. Who cares if I don’t help the team win, only wusses bunt into the shift has to play a role.
On June 19th I put this entry on the blog in response to Jake Mailhot’s article about Matt Carpenter’s bunt double. These results from Belt’s efforts definitely support some of these ideas. I will not edit it but this it. “Even if we accept the fact that bunting isn’t as easy as appears to be to the layman, it should be something that could be improved upon with some practice. First of all, we are not looking for a delicate bunt here, a hard jam shot down the 3rd base line, that the pitcher cannot handle, should be something that the incredibly talented players in the major leagues should be able to do with some regularity. No deception or anything fancy is needed, just face the pitcher and push it hard, as Carpenter did. There are no numbers to be found but I think a 60% success rate seems reasonable. Against the shift this percentage each bunt that is in play should be successful perhaps 80% of the time and if it is really jammed hard, a lot of doubles seem possible. Who is there to field it if it is rolling into left field? If my numbers are correct, and there is nothing to go on, that looks like a .480/.500/.980 OBP/SLG/OPS line. One of the myriad of floundering teams might be wise to try this and see what actually happens.” If numbers like this are achievable, which seems very likely, then this a very effective way to get men on base and attack the shift.
I agree with the premise that bunting at 3-0 nobody on is not optimal for Belt or Carpenter. But Carpenters’ comment after the recent bunt double suggest that he thinks of it as a repeat play game. He said, in essence, “I have made clear that if you shift against me with less than two strikes, I will always bunt.” He is trying to force teams not to shift against him unless a foul bunt would be a strikeout. Bunting 3-0 is consistent with that declaration, though I would posit that the other teams wouldn’t behave any differently if his declaration were just a little less absolute and he’d just take 3-0 as he’s done 99.9% of his career.
Fun article. Indeed, bunts are WAY fun to watch. How about some kudos for Matt Carpenter’s bunt for a double earlier this year?
You’re in luck! Jake Mailhot wrote those kudos already: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-brief-history-of-the-bunt-double/
Top 10 article of the year!
I was a Fangraphs lurker for more than a year, and this article is one of the reasons I’m glad I subscribed last month.
Insightful, lighthearted, and very perceptive. Entertaining article…
A really fun read. Good work!