Brenton Doyle, of the Colorado Rockies, tracks down a line drive off the bat of Atlanta's Michael Harris II.
Line Drive to the Outfield
The batter hits a line drive that cuts through the infield. Line drives generally represent the type of hit that hitters like to hit the most— the more line drives you hit1, the better your stats are going to look. However, there’s still a pretty big variance in what can happen here. After all, if you manage to hit the ball right at a fielder, there’s still a good chance it 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, after all. What a batter is really looking for, however, is a line drive that finds its way into a gap in the defenses, as that’s going to go for an extra base hit. If they’re really lucky, the ball will 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).