How to Get Outs

Outs are one of baseball’s most precious commodities. The defensive team wants to collect them as quickly as possible, while the offensive team wants to keep from spending them for as long as they can— or at least, when they inevitably do spend them, they want those outs to be productive¹. After all, while many of baseball's rules come replete with caveats, one rule is ironclad: the offense has three outs before their turn at bat is over.

Now, once you start flowing your way through a baseball game, many of the choices you make will terminate in outs, but those outs are more or less going to happen in the same handful of ways. As such, instead of repeating the rules regarding those outs over and over again, we’re going to cover them here, and refer you back to here later on if you need a refresher.

Here are the most common ways for offensive players to get out².

Strike Out: A batter who accumulates three strikes over the course of a plate appearance is said to have “struck out”. There are a few different ways of getting strikes, and those are covered in more depth later, but it all boils down to when there’s one, two, three strikes? You’re out³. Fun fact: there is a way that a batter can get on base after already having struck out! It’s called a “wild pitch,” and you’d better believe we cover it.

Force Out: After putting the ball into play, the batter will start running towards first. They don’t really have a choice in the matter— they are forced to do it. If the defense can get the ball to first base before the batter gets there, the batter is “forced out”. A similar dance can happen at other bases: once a batter does reach first, if the next batter puts the ball into play, the runner is forced to run to second, just like the batter is forced to first. If the defense can get the ball to second in time, the runner is out. On the other hand: if there’s a runner on second but not a runner on first, that runner on second is not forced.

So, when we say the defense has to “get the ball to” a base for a force out, what specifically does that mean? It means that a defender has to have full control of the ball⁴, while they are in contact with the base, before the runner touches that base. The timing is critical here; if a fielder is bobbling a ball and doesn’t have full control when the runner touches the base, that runner will be safe, no matter when the ball arrived.

Tag Out: At any point, once a runner is no longer in contact with a base, they have the potential to be “tagged out”. To tag someone out, a fielder must have the ball, either in their bare hand, or in their glove, and then they must touch, or tag, a runner with that hand/glove. If they do, and the runner in question is not in contact with a base, that runner is out, simple as that. The fielder does have to maintain possession of the ball throughout the play⁵; if they don't, then the runner will be safe. On the other hand, the runner is not allowed to intentionally whack the ball out of the fielder’s hand/glove, which is not to say that some runners have tried to get away with that sort of thing.

Some additional pieces of minutiae: when the ball is in a player’s glove, the tag must be applied with the glove proper; if the “tag” is only applied via dangling laces, that does not count. On the flip side, any part of a runner’s body can be tagged, and it will count as a tag⁶. Finally, the tab must be applied with the glove-with-ball, or with the ball itself; if a fielder has the ball in their bare hand, and attempts a tag with an empty glove, that does not count.

Fly Out: This is a bit more of a catch-all term than the other types of outs here, but: if a batter hits a ball, and the ball is caught by a fielder before it touches anything that is not a fielder, then the batter is out. Now, when we say “caught,” we specifically mean that the ball has be be caught either in a fielder’s glove, or their bare hand. If they use any other part of their uniform for the catch, it goes as a three base penalty— the batter winds up on third, and any base runners move up, accordingly⁷. And, when we say “before it touches anything” we mean basically that: if the ball touches the ground, obviously, it’s not an out; similarly, if it touches any part of the stadium— like, say, an outfield wall, or the screens that protect fans from foul balls, or even one of those fans. The ball can touch another fielder, so if a ball ricochets off one fielder’s glove, then gets caught by another fielder, that’s still an out. The fielder does need to fully secure the catch for it to count, so a a juggled catch still counts, as long as the fielder keeps the ball off the ground in the process.

Fielders are allowed to range into territory that is usually out-of-play in order to attempt a catch— and here we specifically mean either the stands down the lines in foul territory, or over the outfield wall in fair territory. In both cases, the fielder will likely come into contact with fans who will also want a chance at the ball. In such cases, as long as the ball is fully out-of-play, both parties have a full right to the ball, and if a fielder can get the catch before a fan touches the ball, the catch still counts. If a fan touches the ball first, then any resulting catch does not count, and the play either goes as a foul ball, or a home run, depending on where it lands. But! If a fan leans out over the field and makes contact that interferes with a fielder, the umpires should rule the ball dead, and can call the batter out if they feel the interference was sufficiently egregious. Fans that interfere with the game are often also kicked out of said games for their trouble, so if you take nothing else from this paragraph, take this: if you're seated along the front rows of a ballgame, and a fly ball comes your way, watch out⁸.

As hinted at above, the term “fly out” covers a few different types of outs; a batter can also “line out” or “pop out.” The difference between these types of outs comes down to the angle the ball takes off the bat, and how hard it’s hit, but they’re still all basically the same thing: the ball gets hit, and is caught before it hits the ground, making the batter out.