Senseless CPU managerial move
 

MLB, no DH.

Top of 7th, 1-1 tie, #7 hitter walks.
#8 hitter bunts runner to second.
Pitcher comes up to hit and strikes out.

Why would you bunt the #8 hitter if you have the pitcher hitting afterwards? That's basically two free outs.

Definitely still some AI managerial issues. I had a playoff game: team leading by 2 in the 9th with an opposing runner on 3rd, 1 out, and the AI played the infield in/tried to throw the runner out at home. He was safe, and batter came around to score to tie the game/send to extra innings.

What are the pitchers hitting ratings?

I just watched Greg Schiano ice a kicker for a 58-yd field goal in the wind and then they threw a TD to win the game. Nonsensical decisions are not AI only.

That’s football. And that’s a perfectly legitimate strategy. Please name a baseball situation where moving the runner over via bunt before the pitchers spot is ever been done before.

As bloated as the current game is with code and AI, I’m not surprised that happed to you OP.

Poor, even for a pitcher if I recall correctly. Certainly not Ohtani.

Actually, the perfect one here is the fake punt 4th and 44.

https://www.sbnation.com/college-foo...army-fake-punt

Even if they play it perfectly, it's unlikely to go far enough. A good punt only makes it to the first down marker.

I mean, moving a runner over via bunt is incredibly silly and we see RL teams do it all the time. Wasting your best reliever as a 'Closer'(tm) is incredibly silly and we see RL teams do it all the time. Hitting your best hitter 3rd is incredibly silly when we've known *for 15 years now* that none of your four best hitters should be in the 3-hole, but we see RL teams do it all the time. Frankly, *letting a pitcher bat in a game* is probably a mistake (and having more than 1 pitcher PA in a game is almost certainly a punt) unless you have a HoF pitcher on the mound.

Let's not pretend that RL managers always make correct decisions.

Surely you're not comparing non-optimal traditional baseball strategies, such as best hitter in the 3 hole, to bad end-of-game logic, such as intentionally bringing up your pitcher to hit in a critical situation after bunting with a superior hitter before him.

Bad end-of-game logic is pretty common in text sims. It is also occasionally bad in real life, but there are some text sim results which are egregious, and this one strikes me as one of them.

There are some issues with pinch-hitting management. I have definitely seen the AI burn its last available pinch-hitter for maybe the #8 hitter, and then have no choice but to let the pitcher bat. Exactly what you saw here.

Another is when they pinch-hit for the pitcher, and then the pinch-hitter bunts... when the pitcher has a higher bunt rating. They obviously could have let the pitcher bunt and saved their pinch-hitter for a better situation.

They're little things and they don't have a significant effect on the overall sim. But when you see them, it does break the immersion.

The pitcher could get hit by the pitch, break his hand and be out months. I'd rather have someone who's much more replaceable.

Burning you're 8th hitter for a PH with the Pitcher on deck is a stretch but without more situational details I could also make an argument as why the Manager made this decision.

It would be interesting to know how many times in the pre-DH era that pinch-hitters for pitchers bunted. If I had to guess, it would be less than once per season.

This is what I was getting at. Thousands of decisions in the regular season, managers make boneheaded ones all the time, not all of them cost you a win.

Sacrifice bunts make a lot more sense in lower-offense eras, pre-DH. That's why they are part of the game.

But what the OP stated is not a bonehead move, it’s an insane move.The game should never allow it.

In my head this would be a case where the batter thinks the defense is playing too deep and tries to catch them off-guard with a bunt, looking for a bunt hit, not a sacrifice, but it doesn't work out. A manager obviously wouldn't do this, but players can definitely be dumb enough to do something like this in real life.