butchie,
Based on the interview excerpt below, James seems to indicate that, to some extent, he agrees with you on the sacrifice bunt. James has shown himself to be significantly more flexible and less dogmatic than some of his followers:

[T]he general argument against the bunt seems unpersuasive to me. The essential argument against the bunt is that the number of expected runs scored after a bunt attempt goes down in almost all situations when a bunt is used, and the expectation of scoring one run goes up only in a few situations.

But this argument is unpersuasive, to me, because it assumes that there are two possible outcomes of a bunt: a “successful” bunt, which trades a base for and out, and an “unsuccessful” bunt, which involves an out with no gain. In reality, there are about a dozen fairly common outcomes of a bunt attempt. The most common of those is a foul ball, but others include a base hit, a fielder’s choice/all safe, a pop out, a pop out into a double play, an error on the third baseman, and a hit plus an error on the third baseman, or the second baseman if you’re talking about a drag bunt.

Some of those outcomes are reasonably common, and others are quite significant even if they are statistically uncommon. For example, if there is a 2% chance that the third baseman will field the bunt and throw it up the first base line, that has a huge impact on the calculations, even though it is only a 2% chance. It seems to me that the argument against the bunt is unpersuasive unless you account for the entire range of reasonably common outcomes.

… [W]e are in danger of replacing one dogma with another. And the analysis is not strong enough to justify that.

Bill James is very informative and intelligent and his principles have helped the Boston Red Sox win 2 World Series in 4 years(albeit with non-Sabremetric adjustments made by Epstein and company).I have always found the “monkeyball’(coined by Brian Sabean to be fundamentally flawed because it is one part of an entire picture.Where is the psychological element that helped build the 96 Yankees (that Stick emphasized)?A bunt can be a productive out AND unsettling psychologically to an American League team,witness American league team’s defense in reference to bunt or infield single type of situations(in interleaugue or the World Series) and see how much that can effect a team.On the whole,James is a very fascinating read and I believe has enriched the minds of GMs everywhere,the caveat being is that his philosophy is only one side of the coin,but what a side it has become!