Adidas presents How I Do It with Travis Buck
Travis Buck
Oakland Athletics
Going to bunt it’s kind of a difficult aspect in a sense where there’ll be parts of the game where you know, you’re going to have to worry about how many outs there are, what’s the score, is the first baseman playing behind the bag, is the first baseman playing behind right-handed pitcher, left-handed pitcher. For me mainly not necessarily my first at bat where you usually try to bunt I kind of see where the flow of the game is going.
If I see the third baseman is planning a little bit back then that will give me kind of the green light to if I get a strike that if I just get it in fair territory down the third base line I’m going to be safe so I know I have good enough speed to beat out a well placed bunts but for me it doesn’t really matter if I’m facing a left-handed or right-handed pitcher. My most comfortable spot is a bunt towards the third base line, the drag bunt.
But I also— when I’m facing a lefty that’s falling off towards the third base side and the second baseman and the first baseman are back. If he throws me an inside pitch I will try to push it pass the pitcher towards the second baseman but the big thing for me that I’m still trying to learn is when is the right time to bunt.
Actually towards the end of this year I had first for me bunting there was two outs again on third and I was facing a left handed and I noticed the third baseman was back and I just figured that if you threw a strike and I got it down towards the third base line not only it was like I can be safe but I was going to get RBI where I was going to score the run rather than try to get it to out hit off the lefty.
So I’m definitely still learning when the right time is to bunt. Obviously you don’t want to bunt with 2 strikes because if you get a double and if you’re in a scoring position but you know there are certain aspects. I’m not much of a sack bunt you know playing with the ace when you know when you sack that much but we’re starting to learn how to bunt for basics and I consider that a big part of my game.
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