Why is a Bunt Foul on strike two called a strike out?

Question

is it just the rule? why is it a strike out? normal fouls are not?

Answer 1

its just the rule. If it wasn't you could just bunt all day...

Answer 2

If it wasn't a rule, most pitchers would use this to an advantage by raising the opposing pitchers pitch count. Since swinging a ball foul is harder than bunting a ball foul, swings with 2 strikes are not strike outs.

Answer 3

Because a good bunter could bunt foul all day long if he wanted to. That and getting a bunt into fair territory isn't exactly easy to do for those who don't bunt well.

Answer 4

if it wasnt the rule, it would be almost easy to foul off all pitches and raise the pitch count

Answer 5

cause then if youre facing an awesome pitcher you could just bunt it foul to get the pitcher to throw more pitches

Answer 6

because before when that wasnt a rule batter would keep bunting foul to tire out the pitchers. they had to prevent this by creating that rule

Answer 7

Wow, I just realized why they do too. Chitown champ probably has it right.

Answer 8

Back in 1901 (National League) and 1903 (American League), the first two foul balls were strikes.  In 1909, however, the rule was added to make a foul bunt strike three.

It took a few years, but my guess is that between 1901 and 1909, players became very good at bunting balls near the line.  If it was a fair ball, an infield hit was a very good possibility.  If it was foul, there was no penalty, and they'd get to try again.

So, the addition of the bunted-third-strike rule was a mechanism to counter this advantage for the batter.  Did they really want batters to just stand there and bunt balls all day until they got infield hits?  With this in mind, they added this "risk" for the batter; if he was going to try to get the reward of an infield hit, he would have to deal with the possibility of striking out.

As for not charging a third strike to a batter who swings and hits a foul ball, I guess it's because the batter is already at a disadvantage when there are two strikes against him.  Why penalize the batter for taking a swing and making contact?  Imagine how the game would change if every foul ball after strike two became strike three!  Hitters would be at a severe disadvantage!  Hitting a baseball is already one of the hardest things to do in sports...imagine if they were forced to hit a fair ball in no more than three swings!

Consider this - in the earliest days of the game, NO foul ball was counted as a strike.  Just food for thought!

Answer 9

It's the rule...if you try to bunt with two strikes and foul it off, it's a strikeout and the batter's out.

Otherwise the player could stand there forever just fouling balls off.

Answer 10

that's a good question.  As long as I've followed baseball it's always been the rule, so don't know why, but interested to see if someone actually can explain it other than what I did here

Answer 11

It's because when you bunt, you can foul the ball easily by just touching the ball and can use this to tire the pitcher out. So they made a bunt foul with two strikes an out to prevent this from happening. At least that's what I thought...  Good question.

Answer 12

If you are bunting to sacrifice yourself to move a runner up a foul is as good as a swinging strike. If you are bunting for a hit, if the rule didn't call it strike three, you could keep fouling off pitches.