The Safety Squeeze Bunt Has Its Time And Place!

It depends on a couple of things whether you should opt for the suicide squeeze or the safety squeeze. First of all, you need someone who can bunt. If you are a good bunter, most managers will always have room for you on their team because a good bunt at the right time can quite often determine who wins or loses a baseball game. 

Unlike the suicide squeeze, with the safety squeeze bunt, the base runner on third base does not commit to running until after he sees the ball hit the ground and then makes a quick decision.

The disadvantage of the safety squeeze bunt is that there are not that many good bunters around to make a good enough bunt to get the runner home safely. Remember, on the safety squeeze, the runner from third base is not breaking for home so a pretty good bunt is necessary. 

Bunting is a little bit of a lost art and not too many baseball players at any level of play are efficient bunters. It's highly recommended that a player learns to become efficient at bunting. Even if you are a weak baseball hitter, there will always be situations where your manager will need you because of your bunting skill. You can possibly come in late in a game and have a major impact on your team winning the game. This especially comes into play if a successful squeeze bunt can tie or win a ball game. 

Being efficient at bunting  falls into the category of "little things" that in reality are not little at all. You sit on the bench for two hours, come into the game and help your team win, thus becoming a major contributor. Pretty good huh?

A lot of times the safety squeeze is used with runners on both first and third base. The reasoning is that hopefully, at the very least, you will advance the base runner on first base to second base and have two runners in scoring position, even if your runner on third base does not score on your bunt.

In my opinion, one of the better baseball coaching tips is to never put on any type of squeeze play with no outs. Too many potentially big innings have been  ruined because of one batter simply missing a bunt or popping it up and you never want one pitch to let the other team off the hook. When the other team is in a little bit of trouble, let them earn their way out of trouble and don't help them by giving them possibly two outs on one pitch. Even if three of the weakest hitters on the planet are coming up, I would not risk the safety or the suicide squeeze with no outs.

An ideal situation to consider putting on a squeeze play is if there is one out  and a couple of very weak hitters coming up. That is a very good time to at the very least, consider putting on the suicide squeeze bunt or the safety squeeze.