The Sacrifice Fly is Ridiculous

In the bottom of the first inning of today's Mets game, Eric Young, Jr. led off with what should have been an easy fly-out to left field but was instead missed by Justin Upton, putting Young on second base. Curtis Granderson hit a fly ball to deep right field, which was caught but which advanced Young to third. The Braves played the infield back, and David Wright hit a ground ball to second base. Because he was playing back, Dan Uggla had no chance to get Young at home, so instead he threw Wright out at first while the run came in. It was pretty obvious that Wright did more or less what he was trying to do. He wouldn't have minded doing more, but he just wanted to make sure that, since the Braves were giving him a run if he could just hit the ball on the ground, he got the job done. He walked back to the dugout not really feeling like he had failed. Nevertheless, the play lowered his batting average. (In fairness, he did then get four hits the rest of the game, so it's not like his batting average is really hurting for it right now.)

In the bottom of the 14th inning of the same game, with the score tied at 3, Kirk Nieuwenhuis led off with a walk. Ruben Tejada then hit a successful sacrifice bunt to advance Kirk to second base, prompting the Braves to take the curious step of walking Eric Young, Jr., who's struck out in every single game he's played this whole season, to pitch to Curtis Granderson, he of multiple 40-home run seasons in his past. That tells you how much Granderson has been struggling. It didn't really work out for Atlanta, though; their pitcher, Gus Schlosser, uncorked a wild pitch almost immediately, moving the runners to second and third with one out, meaning that Curtis only needed a fly ball to win the game. He got it, hitting it just deep enough to left field that, given Nieuwenhuis's speed, the winning run scored before Upton's strong throw had even reached home play. It was again obvious that this was exactly what Granderson had been trying to do, since, y'know, it would win the game, whereas if he struck out, or hit the ball on the ground to one of the drawn-in infielders, the Braves would have a chance to get out of it. Accordingly, this play did not lower his batting average, registering instead as a sacrifice fly. After all, it wouldn't be right to punish Granderson statistically for succeeding, right?

You can see the contrast I'm trying to set up here. Apparently a sacrifice fly hasn't counted as an at-bat since 1893, but the sac fly as a statistical category in its own right has only existed intermittently since then. It had a couple of brief runs prior to World War Two, but was finally instituted for good in 1954, and it's typically only since then that sites like Baseball-Reference give the SF stat. The theory behind it is that, in the sorts of situations in which a player can score on a fly ball, the batter is quite likely trying to hit a medium-deep fly ball, rather than trying to do anything more, even though they'll be out on the play. Except... isn't a batter also "trying," in exactly the same sense, to hit a weak ground ball to get a run in when the defense is conceding that run? Of course, it's arguable to consider that "trying," unlike with your average sacrifice bunt attempt, but I don't think it's much more or less arguable than the logic behind the sacrifice fly.

I'm not sure what I think should be done about this. Discontinue the sacrifice fly? That would feel very strange, if nothing else, since it's been around for the entire lives of most baseball fans. Decide that an RBI ground-out won't count as an at-bat either? That would perhaps be equally weird. Decide that on-base percentage, which has never exempted batters from the out made on a sac fly (though it does exclude sacrifice bunts, sensibly), is more important anyway? Yeah, that's probably the one. But since today's Mets game featured both ends of this disparity so prominently, I just wanted to point it out.