Squaring to bunt without pulling back: is it a strike?

Few calls get the stands going like a batter who squares to bunt and never pulls the bat back. The play usually goes something like this…

There’s a runner on first, and your son squares early. The pitch is at his eyes, and he never pulls the bat back. Before the umpire says a word, someone in the stands yells “Strike!”

The umpire says ball, and he’s right. The people yelling may be mixing up their sports (more on that in a minute).

A strike is a pitch the batter strikes at. Squaring around and holding the bat out over the plate is a stance, and a stance doesn’t strike at anything. If the pitch is out of the zone and the bat never moves toward it, it’s a ball. It’s the same as if he’d stood there with the bat on his shoulder.

What makes it a strike is movement. If the bat goes toward the ball, even a few inches (even a little jab), he offered at it. That makes it a strike no matter where the pitch was. The umpire is watching the barrel.

Did the barrel go to the ball, or did the ball go past the barrel?

But he was trying to bunt it, right? It doesn’t matter. This is where the rest of the confusion comes from. The umpire can’t call what’s in the batter’s head, so he calls the bat. If your son meant to bunt it and the bat never moved, he didn’t offer. It’s a ball. If he tried to bunt it and missed, the bat went to the ball. It’s a strike, even if he missed by a foot.

It cuts the other way too. A bat that moves is a strike no matter what he meant, so “he wasn’t trying” isn’t an argument either.

The gray area is in the small adjustments. Maybe he lifts the bat a few inches to meet a high pitch and it sails over. That’s movement toward the ball, and most umpires will call it a strike. If he angles the bat or drops it away from the pitch, it isn’t moving toward the ball. Anything in between is one umpire’s judgment, and what you get is the appeal, not the argument.

In that sense, it’s pretty much a check swing. It uses the same standard, it’s a judgment call made by the same umpire, and it comes with the same appeal. If the plate umpire calls it a ball, the catcher or the manager can ask him to check with his partner. I explain how that works on the check swing card.

The myth comes from softball. In fastpitch, the rulebook says holding the bat in the strike zone on a bunt attempt IS an offer. If she doesn’t pull it back on a bad pitch, it’s a strike. Half of your parents may have a daughter who plays softball, or they coached it or watched it on TV. They aren’t wrong — they’re just at the wrong game.

Every baseball rulebook agrees on this one.

Pro rules, high school, college, Little League and the travel organizations that build on the pro rules — this is one of the few places where they all line up! When somebody tells you “this league is different,” ask him where it says that.

We should still teach our hitters to pull it back. A bat left out over the plate gets clipped by pitches he was never going to bunt. It’s a foul, which is a strike he gave away. With two strikes, it’s an out. Show bunt, read the pitch and get the bat out of there if it isn’t one to bunt.

And fair warning: Some umpires call this a strike anyway, because they learned it at a softball field. You can ask him what he saw, but you can’t win the argument in the middle of an at-bat.