Adam Dunn Does Not Like Sacrificing Flies

While recently admiring the statistical oddities of Adam Dunn‘s career (beyond his “TTO” status and the four consecutive seasons of exactly 40 homers), I stumbled upon a factoid that baffled and befuddled me.  In 2004, “The Big Donkey,” while hitting 46 dingers and driving in 102, failed to knock anyone in via a sac fly.

Obviously, he had the power and type of swing to loft a fly ball almost at will.  Prior to 2004, in his first three years in the Majors, Dunn compiled a 0.58 groundball:flyball ratio.  In those three years, he drove in 173 runners, but only seven by a sacrifice fly.  And its not like he didn’t have opportunities to do so.  He came to the plate 76 times with a runner on third and less than two out, walked 17 times, and hit four homers in his remaining 51 at-bats.

For his career, he’s had 267 at-bats with a man on third and less than two out situations.  He’s gone yard 16 times, and hit a sac fly only 29 times.  So, is his 2004 sac fly “bagel” historic?  What about his career?

Here is the list of players with at least 1,500 games played, with the fewest career sac flies since 1954 (when the sac fly rule was finally installed for good):

Mainly a bunch of singles hitters and/or guys that could handle the bat. Oscar Gamble is the only other .800+ OPS guy on the list and the only other one with 200+ homers. Juan Pierre, Bud Harrelson, Otis Nixon and Maury Wills all have/had more sacrifice flies than homers in their careers (not that there is anything wrong with that).

Of those who started their careers in 1954 or later, Dunn’s 922 RBI ranks 204th.  His 29 sac flies make up 3.15% of his RBI total, the lowest percentage of those 204 run producers.  Here’s the “worst sac fly percentage but lots of RBI list”:

And in case you are wondering, Amos Otis leads the group of 204, with 10.2% of his RBI coming via the sacrifice fly (103 out of 1007).

Dunn is currently 58th on the list of homers for players whose careers started in 1954 or later (365).  With those measly 29 sac flies, he’s averaging one per 12.6 homers, the worst rate amongst the top 200 homer hitters since 1954.

And again, for those of you curious about the flip side, Robin Yount has the best rate, at 2.04 homers per sac fly (251 homers, 123 SF).

Dunn’s 2004 campaign had the 13th-most plate appearances without a sacrifice fly:

Some pretty big names on that list . . . Ted Williams, Reggie Jackson, Dick Allen.

Dunn blew away the field when it came to most homers in a season without a sacrifice fly:

So just what happened to Dunn in 2004.  I used the Baseball Reference Play Index to find the Dunn’s sac fly opportunities.  He had 44 plate appearances with less than two out and a runner on third (he averages about 36 such situations per full year for his career).  Now of course, anything can happen in a sample of 44 plate appearances.  But Dunn managed to do just about everything except hit a sacrifice fly:

The final tally:

Not even a flyball double play with the runner on third being tagged out at home.  In fact, I couldn’t find one such double play in Dunn’s entire career to date.

So, if you see Dunn at bat with less than two outs and a runner on third, odds are Dunn won’t be hitting a simple fly ball.  (Yes, even in his horrible 2011 season he had two sac flies.)   But if he does hit a sac fly, cherish the moment.