Blue Jays outfielder Colby Rasmus is a lefty who tends to pull the ball, so the Rangers played a defensive shift when he came to the plate Saturday night, putting more infielders on the right side of the infield. That means there were fewer infielders on the left side of the infield. That means that when Rasmus bunted, there was pretty much nobody there to field it, and he got an easy single.
Colby Lewis has perhaps the dumbest unwritten rules take yet
Colby Rasmus bunted against the shift and got a base hit. THE HORROR.
Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports
“I told [Rasmus] I didn’t appreciate it,” Lewis said, according to MLB.com. “You’re up by two runs with two outs and you lay down a bunt. I don’t think that’s the way the game should be played.”
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“I felt like you have a situation where there is two outs, you’re up two runs, you have gotten a hit earlier in the game off me, we are playing the shift, and he laid down a bunt basically simply for average,” Lewis said.
First off: COLBY FIGHT!!!!!!! COLBY FIGHT COLBY FIGHT COLBY FIGHT!
Second off: WHAT?!?!?!?
We have been compiling the stupid things that are purportedly among baseball’s unwritten rules. We’ve heard the “don’t bunt during a no-hitter” thing, which, sure. But Lewis is claiming “don’t bunt during a shift” is a thing.
The point of baseball is to score runs, a thing that has been proven to be highly correlated to how often you get on base. Therefore, the Rangers played a shift to prevent Rasmus from reaching base. They stood where he was most likely to hit the ball.
The Unwritten Rules
If this was such a meaningless scenario, as Lewis seems to think, why even bother playing the shift? Isn’t playing the shift to rob a player of such a meaningless hit A VIOLATION OF BASEBALL’S UNWRITTEN RULES?!?!?!?! Infielders are meant to stand in their determined spots, and I believe standing in different spots to prey on the tendencies of certain hitters is unsportsmanlike.
Of course, it was not a meaningless scenario. The Blue Jays were up two runs in the fifth inning. Teams come back from two runs down basically every single day. It is good to be up more than two runs in the fifth inning. Getting a hit allows you to get more runs. Getting a hit is good.
Plus, by reaching base, Rasmus allowed the inning to stay alive and to potentially produce runs for his team, forced Lewis to throw more pitches, and hey, maybe got it in the opposition’s head that they shouldn’t play the shift on him, which would allow him to get more hits throughout the year. There were so many reasons Rasmus should do this, and not really any good reasons he shouldn’t have.
It's not Rasmus' job to continue hitting the ball where he tends to hit the ball. It is his job to hit the ball in such a manner that he reaches base. By bunting — and getting a hit, and not getting out — he very literally did his job as a professional baseball player.
But wait — it gets stupider!
“[Rasmus] didn’t steal within the first two pitches to put himself in scoring position,” Lewis said. “That tells me he is solely looking out for himself, and looking out for batting average. And I didn’t appreciate it.”
In the past two seasons, Colby Rasmus has attempted to steal twice and been thrown out once. He’s been on base about 200 times over the past year, so he attempts steals about 1 percent of the time. He has been thrown out 15 of the 40 times he has stolen in his career, so that’s 38 percent of the time.
If he had attempted to steal — which, as previously noted, he never does — there would have been a relatively high chance the inning would have ended immediately. That is not good, because, again, as previously noted, you need to be on base to score runs.
Colby Rasmus bunted because it was a good idea. He did not steal because stealing would have been a bad idea.
We're sorry that Colby Lewis had to work harder than usual because of Rasmus' base hit. Perhaps next time he should do things that prevent players from getting base hits instead of complaining about the matter in which they did so!
Of note: Grant Brisbee on the correlation between “how many games your team has lost in a row” and “how pissy teams get about supposed unwritten rules” might have something do with this, since the Rangers have lost nine of their last 10.
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