On Acta

Washington Nationals manager Manny Acta is in his first year managing in the major leagues and is winning about as many games as could be expected for what is practically an expansion team. The Nats have 58 wins and with a month left in the season have a real shot at a 70 win season. The reviews on him have generally been good.

Tim Brown's article at Yahoo Sports has two interesting tidbits. First, Acta meets a hero of his, Jim Leyland, back in June.

For those three days in June, Acta, 38 years old and some 70 games into his managerial career, could summon no way to approach Leyland.

"I was too shy," he said.

So, Acta trailed the clubhouse attendant out of the clubhouse, through the doors and to Leyland. He stuck out his hand.

Leyland hugged him instead.

"He had no business talking to me," Acta said. "But, he took the time to talk to me in private. He told me to keep it up. He told me he went through the same thing early on in Pittsburgh. He told me, 'You can do it.' "

And then this Acta quote raised an eyebrow because I've never heard such a statement uttered anywhere by anyone -- including statheads.

Acta pressed his optimism and core philosophies – fewer outs on the base paths and fewer sacrifice bunts for an offense that would have difficulty scoring runs anyway, surer hands in the field behind a no-name staff – against the predictions of a historically bad season.

I have never heard or read of anyone positing that a team that's going to have trouble scoring runs should eschew bunting, or in the parlance of today, eschew small-ball. It just may make sense. At nearly all levels of baseball lighter hitting teams are expected to sacrifice a few of the precious twenty-seven outs they're granted each game to move a runner up one base via a bunt or lightly tapping the ball to the right side with a runner on second. The reasoning is that the light hitting team that gets a base runner on first needs to get them into scoring position immediately so that another of their light-hitting teammates can knock them in from second.

But why the assumption that such a strategy is optimal? Doesn't it make sense that a team that creates fewer runs per out needs to protect and save those outs as best they can throughout the course of a game? A high-octane offense like Philadelphia possesses could be handicapped at the start of every game with, say, just twenty-four outs and still be able to compete with Washington's anemic offense and their twenty-seven outs. So why would Washington sacrifice any of their outs?

This one sentence comment in an innocuous article in late August deserves some lengthy numbers crunching. If I were a college professor I'd ask for a sabbatical at about this point.