Do you like bunts or do you think they're stupid?  Bunting is a way to advance a player at the cost of an out.  I have a friend who thinks the odds are better letting the batter hit instead of giving away an out every time where things could still go wrong.

What do you think?

It is often used when a batter with a lower batting average comes to the plate, and you have a decent base runner on.  It's a classic way of manufacturing runs.  It is never done with 2 outs, because obviously getting the runner out at first ends the inning.  It is mostly done with no outs, sometimes 1 depending on the situation.

Lets say your #8 batter smacks a leadoff single.  If you're in the national league, the pitcher comes to bat.  His odds of getting a hit are very low. You don't want to pinch hit, because it's early and he's pitching well.  So you have him bunt, advance the runner to 2nd, now there's 1 out and you have your 1-2-3 hitters warming up on deck.

If your leadoff guys gets a single, your guy advances to third, and if he has the speed and the ball is deep enough he'll try for home.  If he stays on third, you have runners on first and third with one out, and a fly ball to the outfield will score the runner on a sacrifice fly.

So yeah, bunting is important in situations.  And it's not as easy as it seems to lay one down.  You only get a few shots, because if you bunt and foul with two strikes your out.  And if you get it on the wrong part of the bat, it'll pop in the air risking being caught for an out.

jparks34 : Generally, how good are pitchers at bunting? Because if they're not fairly decent at it, might as well just swing anyway. I don't watch NL games so I rarely see pitchers batting.

Chewedmint : When it comes to batting practice, most pitchers practice bunting more than actual hitting.  

To my opinion is that some baseball players do bunt the ball because if someone isn't really good on hitting the ball, they tend to bunt it so that way, they happen to get a hit with the ball, but the only disadvantage I have with it is that the pitcher will grab the ball and throw it to the 1st basemen so it's a gamble more like if you're bunting the ball

In my honest opinion, I think MLB should implement the DH in the National League. I'm not a huge fan of bunting and I'm also not a fan of pitchers batting.

Yeah, if you have somebody who is a bad hitter such as the pitcher, the odds are very high that he will hit into a double play which is why it is better to bunt.