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Interpreting Common Bunting Terminology
by Dave
Thursday, September 21, 2006
A reader writes in:
"Please explain to me what are meant by the terms "slap bunt," "drop bunt," "drag bunt," "push bunt," etc. I'm driving myself batty trying to understand these apparently basic terms when I discuss softball with my daughter. No matter how hard I try, I am always wrong and just don't know anything. Help!
Always Wrong in Peoria"
Peoria,
I'm afraid I can't really help you. No matter how hard I try, I'm always wrong too. Depending on who is doing the talking, I just cannot seem to use the right phrase to describe bunting. It is a constant source of annoyance to me. But let me explain the way I see these terms.
First off, when I was a wee tike, we played baseball. In baseball, during my day, you either hit away or you bunted. If you bunted, you either tried to sacrifice or you "dragged." When you tried a sacrifice, you squared around and then tried to place the ball between the fielders. You gave yourself up at first in order to move runners along so you weren't so much concerned about getting out of the box as you were hitting the ball fair and as far away from fielders as possible.
Today softball players always seem concerned about making it to first after bunting. They often foul the ball off as they change their body position to get out of the box. The art of the true sacrifice has been lost. That's why in so many games from youth through the NCAA WCWS, teams have so much difficulty moving runners along.
When I was a child, as I said, there was another form of bunting called "dragging." This form focused on surprising the fielders and getting out of the box in order to make it to first safely. It mattered not whether you bunted the ball towards first, third or the pitcher. All the fielders were surprised so you caught them off guard. Today this style is sort of broken down to include "drag bunts" in which you must pull the ball and "push bunts" in which you push the ball to the opposite side of the field - third for a lefty. I learned this after a few minutes argument with a parent who was upset I wanted his lefty daughter to work on dragging a bunt by hitting it to third. But what I learned subsequently was he was basically wrong. A "push bunt" does not require the element of surprise the traditional "drag bunt" does. Instead it works because you push the ball between and perhaps past the charging fielders. In other words, everyone can know you are bunting (which they shouldn't when you drag), but you beat them by pushing the ball past the fielders - first or third. There's probably other terms which further break down what I call a "drag bunt" but I ignore them lest my head explode with useless information. It makes no difference to me what you call it. If you bunt while beginning to run to first, I call it a drag bunt. But many will argue with me. I just won't argue back.
To my traditional view of hitting, where you either hit, sacrifice or drag, is added the softball hitting strategy called slapping. Slappers start running while the pitch is in the air, make contact, and continue on to first. I have been educated that there are two basic kinds of slapping, the regular slap and the power slap. The regular slap involves chopping down on the ball or trying to hit it down the third baseline and running to first. Power slapping as I understand it involves striking the ball harder, getting it over the third baseman's head by hitting a linedrive. I've seen Andrea Duran, formerly of UCLA, using what I would describe as a power slap, hit the ball over the fence. To me, you hit a homerun and you aren't really slapping. Instead you're hitting differently than other people! But I know most people will not agree with me on that.
Into this mix, I see the term "slap-bunting" used quite a bit. To me, slap-bunting means when you approach the ball like a slapper and then just dink the ball out past the plate. But I have been "educated" by an eleven-year-old that "slap bunting" is when you hold the bat out as if to bunt and then slap at the ball to drive it past the charging fielders. I would call that a "bunt-slap" not a "slap-bunt" but we're getting carried away here.
Most often when I read the rules of any tournament which prohibits "slap bunting," what I am confronted with is the situation where the hitter acts as if she is going to bunt and then swings away - be that as a slapping motion or not. I give up trying to interpret and instead instruct my players that you cannot pretend to bunt and then swing. I tell them, I don't care what you call it, you can't fake bunt and then hit - it isn't allowed.
To me, there is another combined use of the "slap" and the "bunt." That is a drag bunt where you run at the pitch and then, as I said, just dink the ball into fair territory. It's really a drag bunt but it uses more of a light slapping motion than what one thinks of in traditional drag bunting.
I suppose you can look through what I have discussed so far and conclude either that I'm nuts, confused, or both. But to sum up thus far, I believe there are: 1) sacrifice bunts which are boring and work only to advance the runners; 2) drag bunts where you surprise the fielders and it doesn't matter where you hit the ball; 3) push bunts where the defense may or may not know you are bunting but where you try to push the ball between fielders, whereever they are; and 4) slap bunting where you fake a bunt and then hit away.
Next up for your consideration is the "drop bunt," another source of pain for me. For my money, a drop bunt means the kind of bunt where you try to place the ball close to homeplate by dropping one down, as opposed to pushing, dragging or hitting the ball further out. To me, you drop bunt because you want to force the catcher to make the play. But there is another way of defining the term "drop bunt." Some define it as going to bunt and then dropping the bat onto the ball as it approaches. I'm not entirely sure what this accomplishes but most descriptions suggest you would be three or so steps down the baseline before the ball and bat collide. I suggest to you that this is impossible.
It takes a half second for the ball to reach homeplate. If you dropped a bat from four feet up, in a quarter of a second that bat would drop about 2 feet. So if the pitched ball is 2 feet above the ground, you would have to drop the bat at exactly the point at which the ball was 18 feet away. Of course, if the pitcher's stride were off by 6 inches, she varied the speed by 2 mph, or she refused to pitch the ball exactly two feet from the ground, my calculations would be off and the bat would miss the ball. Perhaps what is really being described is the batter holds the bat to bunt and let's go of it at the moment right before contact and starts running in which case she would be about three inches down the first baseline. But all kidding around, I suppose the drop bunt described when a batter bunts while letting go of the bat. I'm not entirely sure I see the benefit of doing this but like you, I can't be right.
One of the reasons for employing the "drop bunt" strategy is to put the bat out in front of homeplate, presumably in the way of the catcher. If the bat hits the ball a second time, after the bunt, the umpire can make a call that the bunt is not legal but I've never seen this called because homeplate umps usually cannot see the second hit and field umps usually aren't looking for it. Most often umps don't worry about the bat being in the way of the catcher because they assume the batter couldn't do any better to get it out of the way. But I believe most girls are taught to drop the bat in front of the plate specifically to hinder the catcher.
SummaryMost "expert" softball web sites I have seen refer to 7 types of bunts. These types of bunts are:
- Sacrifice
- Drag
- Push
- Slap
- Drop
- Sucicide Squeeze
- Safety Sqeeze
I won't discuss the suicide or safety squeeze this time around because it complicates issues of bunting types. Suffice it to say that the differences between the two types of squeezes have more to do with what the runner on third does than how the hitter bunts the ball. I think I have fairly, if not completely, described the other five types of bunts. But I warn against using the terms in public because undoubtedly you will be wrong. And please don't cite this web site to support your understanding of different bunts types. If you ignore my advice about discussing this in public, you deal with the consequences. I don't need the extra hate mail.Labels: hitting
Permanent Link: Interpreting Common Bunting Terminology
 
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