Tyrone Taylor, of the New York Mets, tracks down a line drive hit by Tim Tawa, of the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Line Drive to the Outfield

The batter hits a line drive that cuts through the infield. Line drives are generally the type of hit that hitters like to hit the most— the more line drives you hit, the better your stats are going to look. However, there’s still a pretty big variance in what can happen here. After all, if they manage to hit the ball right at an outfielder, there’s still a good chance the ball will be caught. A softly-hit line drive, meanwhile, will most often fall in front of an outfielder, which is fine enough— the batter will get a single, and there’s a chance that runners already on base can score. What a batter is really looking for, however, is a line drive that rolls between the defenders, preferably all the way to the outfield wall, as that’s going to go for an extra base hit. Of course, the ball can also wind up on the other side of the fence— either on the fly (home run), or by bouncing in the field of play, and back out (automatic double).