Batting: Having a Plan

Beyond popular belief, batting in slopitch is much more than going up to the plate and swinging your heart out. While this creates the odd home run, you're usually going to either strike out, fly out, or the dreaded power bunt.

When you bat, have a plan. Know how many outs there are, how fast the runners on base are, who has the good throwing arms in the field, where the holes are, how fast the fielders are, and where your base runners are. After analyzing these you need to ask yourself: "What is my job right now?". Every time you get to the plate, you have a different job depending on the situation.
For instance, your plan will be dramatically different in a 2 out runner on 3 situation versus 1 out and runners on 2 and 3. We're going to analyze a lot of these scenarios and consider our available course of action.

Unless you are the 1st batter in the 1st inning, always ask the umpire how many are away. There is never an excuse for not knowing and knowing is vital in having a successful at bat. Once you have the outs, you can start to create your plan. Every plan starts with the same philosophy: "How can I aid my team in scoring to most amount of runs?".

Less Than 2 Away

Less than two away gives you that extra tool in your belt: the sacrifice. Keeping that in mind, we need to analyze our base runners.

1. With no runners, or a single runner on base a base hit will do. Get on so the next batter can do their thing.
2. With runners on 1 and 3 or 1 and 2, we need to move both of those runners. A proper sacrifice fly will only guarantee the runner on 2 to advance, 1 will be handcuffed protecting from the force out; keep with the base hit game plan.
3. With runners on 2 and 3 or bases loaded, the sacrifice is extremely useful.

2 Away

1. Base hit. That's all that is left, a base hit.

So now that we know what we're after (base hit, or a sacrifice), we analyze the field and find out: where are we going to get this. Look for the players who are cheating at their position: are they playing you too deep, too shallow, shifting to one side? If you're wondering where the extra base hit went, it's still here, in the base hit. The better you execute a base hit, the better chance you have at the extra base hit.

Going for the Base Hit

First off, out the infield is (99 times of 100), the safe bet for the base hit, so look at the outfielders. We first want to look for the players cheating in; a hard line drive is extra bases on the player, they simply cannot move fast enough to catch up to a line drive. Aim over their head.

Next, look for the wide open gap. A gap isn't as advantageous as the outfielding cheating in as players are already closer to the ball's destination and are moving more laterally then having to run back, but it will still get you on base.

Then, look for the player too deep and drop it in front of them. This will give you the base hit, but if fielded properly will only move you and every other runner on base one base. The danger here is hitting it a little too far creating that no mans land that causes the other base runners to get caught in either a force out on the next bag or from not tagging. This leads to more botched base hits than most other reasons.

Last, when the outfield looks rather unbeatable, see if the infielders are giving you too much room in between two players, or in front of them. Sometimes your only option is a light hit down the third base line when the 3rd base is at the grass. Don't be afraid to take that one; like the garbage goal in hockey, it all look sthe same on the scorecard.

Going for a Sacrifice

The trick to a successful sacrifice is getting the outfielders to turn around. If all four fielders are deep, revert to a base hit attempt. When hitting for the sacrifice, you also want to give runners on 2 and 3 an opportunity to score; off field is your best chance for this, unless that fielder is too deep. The reason we try to get those fielders to turn around, is so that they don't have the opportunity to set up under then ball and get a clean throw, and there is more chance of the fielder dropping the ball, or just not getting to it.

The Plan

All of this information must be processed in a matter of seconds. You don't have a long time to decide your plan; it will seem difficult at first, but it will increase your AVG and RBI columns dramtically and if your entire team is on board, the W column should too.

For Slopitch Coaching 101
Bradley Holbrook