Bunts are back! Inside the return of small ball's biggest weapon

Rays manager Kevin Cash is certainly not alone in observing the velocity, spin and movement of modern pitching and coming to an accurate conclusion.

“We’re probably understanding and learning, as an industry,” Cash told MLB.com’s Adam Berry, “that hitting is [expletive] hard.”

So hard that Cash’s club and quite a few others have decided they have no choice but to lay down.

Bunts.

The still-young 2026 season is already notable for the debut of the ABS Challenge System, a historic rookie surge and some struggling powerhouses already replacing their skippers. But buried beneath these bigger storylines has been the strange, unexpected resurgence of a play once thought to have, essentially, tapped out.

Yes, reports of the death of the bunt may have been greatly exaggerated. Because we’re on pace for notable numbers of both bunt singles and sacrifice bunts.

“The bunting,” White Sox manager Will Venable told MLB.com’s Scott Merkin, “can be a real weapon.”

Real enough that, through Monday, the rate of bunt hits was the highest since 2015 and the rate of sacrifice attempts is the highest since 2021, the last year pitchers not named Shohei Ohtani routinely strode to the plate.

Note: Sac Att = Includes successful sac bunts plus unsuccessful bunts made and bunt strikeouts. Failing to bunt early in the count and then swinging away later are not included.

The art of bunting had been in decline for decades, wilted by an industry that placed greater emphasis on extra-base hits and an analytical ethos that abhors easy outs.

“No bunts,” the movie version of A’s executive Billy Beane, played by Brad Pitt, says in the 2011 film “Moneyball.”

“Not even when the third baseman is back?” a player responds.

“No bunting whatsoever,” Beane/Pitt snaps back.

Years of statistical scrutiny made it clear that sacrifice bunts hindered production more often than they helped it, often reducing run expectancy. (You can see this for yourself via Baseball Savant’s new Game Strategy Explorer, which lets you think alongside managers and shows the average outcome of various plays, including sac bunts.)

• Learn more about Savant's new Game Strategy Explorer

And when the universal designated hitter was used in the COVID-shortened 2020 season and became permanent in 2022, marking the end of pitchers batting, the use of the sacrifice bunt was reduced all the more. In 2022, the Braves very nearly became the first team to go an entire 162-game season without a single sacrifice bunt (they finally put one down in Game No. 161).

But with wicked pitching gradually eating away at the leaguewide on-base percentage and the bigger bases and pickoff limits that arrived with the 2023 rule changes incentivizing speed, batters are fighting back with the bunt, one tap at a time.

“It always has something to do with your personnel,” Rays hitting coach Chad Mottola told Berry. “But I think the credit goes a little bit to the pitchers nowadays, accepting ways to create action. We have to get creative … you have to take advantage of the times when you have action.”

The Rays entered the week as the MLB leaders in sacrifice bunts:

SAC BUNT LEADERS, 2026 (through Monday)

1. Rays, 13
2. Brewers, 12
3. White Sox, 10
4. Athletics, 9
5. (tie) Diamondbacks, 8
   Rockies, 8
   Cardinals, 8

Five of the teams from the above list also made up the top five in bunt hits:

BUNT HIT LEADERS, 2026 (through Monday)

1. Brewers, 12
2. White Sox, 11
3. Diamondbacks, 10
4. Rays, 8
5. Rockies 7

Aside from the D-backs, who rank 13th in projected 2026 payroll (per FanGraphs), all of the clubs on the above sac bunt and bunt hit lists are among the bottom half of spenders in MLB this season.

That’s no coincidence. Bunt hits and speed are alternative means for a smaller-budget team to piece together runs in an industry in which big power can cost big money.

“[Bunting is] a very valuable thing,” White Sox rookie center fielder Tristan Peters told Merkin. “Especially for a team like us, trying to get every inch we possibly can.”

Peters entered the week with five bunt hits, one shy of Brewers infielder David Hamilton for the MLB lead. Based on his projected playing time, Hamilton’s rate of one bunt hit per 5.8 plate appearances put him on pace for 29 bunt hits this season, which would be the most since the Twins’ Carlos Gómez had 30 in 2008.

Cardinals center fielder Victor Scott II, meanwhile, is giving himself up at an extreme rate. He’s put down a sac bunt in 6.8% of his plate appearances, for seven successful sacrifices in all. The only player this century to attempt a sacrifice in at least 6% of his plate appearances for a full season (min. 100 plate appearances in the season) was Angels catcher Bobby Wilson (6.5%) in 2012.

Whether these individual storylines survive is yet to be seen, but it’s clear that several teams are embracing the bunt.

Its equalizing effects were especially evident in a series played between the Rays and Yankees at Tropicana Field on April 10-12.

The Rays rank 27th in projected payroll and ranked 22nd in slugging percentage through Monday. The Yankees are third in payroll and second in slugging. But when the two AL East rivals went toe to toe, the Rays befuddled the Bronx Bombers with their bunts.

In the first game, a Taylor Walls sacrifice advanced a runner en route to an important insurance run.

In the second game, the Rays staged a two-run 10th-inning rally with the help of two perfectly executed bunt singles from Walls and the fast-as-lightning Chandler Simpson.

And in the third game, in the bottom of the eighth, Jake Fraley advanced to second on one sac bunt and scored what turned out to be the winning run from third on another.

The Rays swept the series. Each game was decided by one or two runs.

So the bunts, though small in stature, loomed large.

“It's the repetition and then knowing game situations,” Simpson told Berry. “I mean, just knowing where defenders are playing you. If you feel like you can take it, and it's something that they're giving to you, then you want to take it.”

Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said his team has long prioritized the bunt and uses it in part because “certain teams aren’t built to defend it.”

“If it’s used properly and bunters develop confidence, it can add points on a right-handed hitter’s average,” he said, “by not only getting bunt singles but also by having the third baseman in where hooked balls aren’t played routinely.”

To be clear, the aforementioned power pitching that is prevalent in MLB does not make bunting easy. You could argue that the actual execution of a bunt is harder than ever, which means the teams currently making the bunt work have prepared properly.

Although Brewers skipper Pat Murphy pointed out that one aspect aiding the velo surges could also be presenting more bunting opportunities.

“We have a lot of big men pitching,” Murphy told MLB.com’s Adam McCalvy. “To have to break down, secure the baseball, get your eyes on the target and make a good throw with that type of adrenaline, I think it’s [difficult].”

The Brewers won a game against the Blue Jays last month by manufacturing the go-ahead run in the seventh with three straight bunts -- a sac to advance a runner to second, a bunt single that moved him to third and another sac right in front of home plate to bring him home.

“You get to the big leagues, and you don’t see too much of it,” Brewers starter Brandon Sproat said of the bunting that night. “But it still works.”

As the weather warms and the runs become more plentiful, perhaps our current bunting pace will abate. But for now, it’s clear the bunt was not quite ready to lay down and die.

MLB.com's Adam Berry, Scott Merkin and Adam McCalvy all contributed to the reporting for this story.