re obp hurt by sac flies was re hbp bb big cat scottm helena stat uga edu scott mclure writes in article apr mnemosyne cs du edu gspira nyx cs du edu greg spira writes paladin leland stanford edu jason gische writes in article apr cs cornell edu tedward cs cornell edu edward ted fischer writes i think sac flies are the only way obp can be below ba does this seem dumb to anyone else the fact not the comment why should a batter s obp be hurt by a sac fly especially if sac bunts don t have the same effect since they do the same thing but sac flies usually score a run while bunts just advance a base but both of these situations involve the batter giving up an ab for the benefit of the team sacrifice so why should it hurt their stats the sac bunt is a purposeful act ordered by the manager the batter does not go up trying to get a sac fly and the evidence available indicates that there is no such ability players can t will themselves to hit sac flies they fly out to the same place just as often when there s nobody on third greg sorry i gotta disagree here last time i played ball i went up on several occasions intending to hit a fly ball deep enough to score the runner from third or advance a runner to third it s relatively easy actually you swing under the path of the ball you normally would to hit a good line drive with fastballs it s very easy much more difficult with good breaking balls a good hitter with excellent bat control can voluntarily hit fly balls to the outfield at least oh of the time you haven t been facing major league pitching maybe more you have to be good at the plate and most of those guys are just as likely to opt for getting the base hit and helping their average as getting the sacrifice the best example i know of is jerry willard in the series against minnesota all he had to do was put one in the of and the game was over he swung waaaaaay past parallel and accomplished barely getting the run in safely stats did a little study in the scoreboard book entitled can you hit sacrifice flies on purpose a summary of the findings over the year period sac fly type fly balls were produced percent of the time in situations where a sac fly was useful and percent of the time when a sac fly wasn t useful they looked at the leaders in sac flies and found that the leaders in sac flies in other words the guys you would expect to be good at it it hit sac fly type fly balls only more often when they needed to a difference way too small to be the result of a skill essentially the players who hit a lot of sac flies seem to do so because they hit hit sac fly type flies often with and without a runner on third stats concludes so it appears conclusive that hitters cannot hit sacrifice flies on purpose even if they practice in the batting cage greg
