Small ball a thing of the past

While watching Friday's Phillies-Dodgers game at the Carnegie Abbey in Portsmouth, baseball greats Mike Schmidt and George Brett pointed out that teams don't use small-ball tactics - sacrifice bunting, moving runners, etc. - as much as during their careers in the '70s, '80s and '90s. Part of it, Brett said, is that players will see bigger paydays with home runs and RBIs than they will with sacrifices.
"After three years, they get arbitration and all they care about is home runs and RBIs, and their salary goes from $500,000 to a million and a half," Brett said. "I don' t think, in arbitration hearings, they say how many times you get the runner over, how many sacrifice bunts you had."
Schmidt said another factor is that managers and coaches aren't the same authoritative presences they used to be and players have no incentive to play small ball.
"The penalty for not doing it, there really is none," he said. "I don't think a manager or coaches will go to that guy and say, 'Next time you're in that position, you get that guy over.' I see them letting it go, like no big deal."
Schmidt added, however, that a lot of teams just plain don't play that way anymore, citing his former team, the Phillies.
"Phillies' teams are probably less noted for doing the little things to win ball games. They live and die by the long ball," he said. "Almost all their hitters hit home runs and they don't understand, or care to understand, the value of A-B-C baseball.
"Doing the little things to score just one run creates momentum. If something big happens, that's great. If they're thinking small, something big's more likely to happen."
Players also don't see it as much of a missed opportunity when they could have used small ball to score a run and don't, Schmidt said.
"'We'll hit a three-run home run to make up for that,'" Schmidt said. "They'll never go back to that and say, 'That was one of the reasons we lost.'"