Patrick Flood investigates Lucas Duda’s decision to bunt with runners on first and second and no out in the bottom of the eighth inning last night and concludes that Duda made the right call. It’s a good read.

Teams should not often be in the business of giving away outs, especially with their cleanup hitters. But there were some mitigating factors, as Patrick notes: Duda does not seem to hit lefties all that well and Josh Spence has been devastating against lefty hitters. Plus Duda has been hitting lots of hard grounders lately, and a double play in that spot would have been a back-breaker.

I’m not sure the Mets should have been playing for one run in that spot, but a team’s chances of scoring with runners on second and third and one out are slightly better than with runners on first and second with none out.

For his part, Duda said he felt confident he could get the bunt down even if he doesn’t often bunt in games. He said he works on bunting a lot and thinks he is a good bunter. To his credit, his bunt was much, much better than most we have seen from Mets pitchers this season.

Of course, if Duda popped it up or fouled it off to go in an 0-1 hole then struck out, we’d be killing him for the decision today and destroying Terry Collins for not overriding him. Or at least I’d be. I’m willing to admit that hindsight is 20/20 here.