Part Three:

Batting works a little differently in kickball than baseball. The underlying premise is the same: Get batters on base. The execution is different: In baseball, you optimize get on base by drawing walks and running up long pitching counts. In kickball, you optimize getting on base by creating rallies.

As I explained in detail in Part One of this guide, fielding can’t be taken for granted as effective. In Part Two, we looked at baserunning as a tool to exploit poor fielding in aiding offense. In Part Three, we’ll investigate ways to optimize your batting strategy to capitalize on both your team’s smart baserunning and the opposing team’s suspect fielding.

Like we did earlier, we’ll take as a given that your team has an uneven distribution of talent, and we’ll assume the same of Three Good, Six Medium, and Three Awful. Everyone will have a spot in the batting order. Traditionally, in baseball, your lineup looks like the following:

1. Speedy contact hitter
2. Speedy contact hitter
3. Big slugger
4. Big slugger
5. Big slugger
6. Eh
7. Eh
8. Eh
9. Eh

This is designed primarily to get one of the first two batters on base for batters 3-5 to knock in. It’s de-facto, but it’s inefficient—even in baseball (ask anyone who’s read Moneyball). But as we’ve seen before, the optimal baseball and kickball solutions are divergent. In baseball, you’d simply want your batters who are most likely to score runs (probably sluggers 3-5) to have the most potential plate appearances. In kickball, your batters are most likely to get on base and score runs when the defense is distracted—you want to always have somebody on base. And thus, your batting lineup should aim to (roughly) evenly distribute your team’s talent. As follows:

Part Two:

Many baseball stat geeks scoff at baserunning, often citing that the number of outs created only very rarely warrants the marginal increase in bases stolen. Not that that matters really; there’s no base stealing in kickball. Nonetheless, it’s an important and underrated element of kickball, as intelligent baserunning is an incredibly effective means of disrupting the other team’s fielding.

As we were under the assumption in Part One that catching the ball could not be taken for granted, so must we here assume that not everybody knows the basics of smartly running the bases. Here they are:

1. When there’s two outs, run on everything.
2. When there’s a fly ball (and there’s less than two outs), only take 2-4 steps off the base and wait—whether you move forward will depend on how close the play is to you (if it’s closer, be less risky), whether you’re planning on tagging up (in which case, stay planted on the base), and whether or not you think the fielder will actually catch the ball (duh). Once the ball hits the ground, advance.
3. When there’s a ground ball and there’s a force, run.
4. When there’s no force, you can run if the next base is open, or not run if you think it will cause an out. Use judgment. Smart teams will put one of the smarter players who’s not up soon in the lineup as a third base coach who can aid in decision making.

Got it? Good. Now that we’ve established the basics of competent baserunning, we can step it up a notch: The actual goal of the baserunner in kickball is to create as much havoc as possible for the opposing team’s defense. Cause throwing errors, generate hesitation. Especially when it leads to other runners advancing, and super-especially, when it leads to the batter getting on base instead of getting out.

Here’s a common example: You’re on second base, and the batter kicks a ground ball to third. You don’t want to run to third; this creates an out. But you do want to advance a few steps. At the very least, the fielder hesitates and gives the batter an extra second to get to first. At best, she hesitates, throws to first anyway, and you’re a few steps down the line to advance to third (take it now, it’s open!). By taking a lead and creating hesitation, you went from a guy on second and an out to runners on first and third with no outs.

Here’s a second common example: You’re on third base, there’s a runner on first, and there’s a ball kicked to the outfield. You know (whether the ball is caught or not) that you’re going to score on this play. Your goal is to generate a throw to home plate (without, of course, risking getting out yourself). This is typically a long, slow throw that’s headed for the other team’s worst fielder. Take off when the ball’s caught, and make it at least half-way while the outfielder still has it. As soon as he throws it, go home. Meanwhile, the intelligent runner on first base is looking at taking second base. She’ll take it as soon she can tell that the ball isn’t headed to the shortstop or the pitcher. If it’s a particularly bad throw (and keeping in mind that the catcher is a horrific fielder), she could even threaten to take third base.

As alluded to above, if you’re not the lead runner, it’s still important to keep an eye on the goings-on elsewhere on the field. Take bases that are open, and even create confusion when they’re not.

Again, and above all else: Create havoc, not outs. Create errors, cause runs.

Kickball is an incredibly popular pastime in St. Louis. Though I couldn’t say how the sport gained adult popularity in the first place, on the most primitive level it’s a fairly reasonable excuse to go out and drink during the day, and a moderately good cover for pretending to exercise.

After two seasons of kickball and multiple high school summers of slow-pitch softball under my belt, I present to you: The Bonafide Unathletic Guide to Winning at Kickball.

PART ONE:

If you care to take only one thing from reading this guide, let it be this: Winning at kickball is not about kicking (hitting). It’s not about pitching. And it’s hardly about intelligence or experience. You’re misled by Kickball’s faster, more athletic cousin, Baseball. In fact, winning at kickball is first and foremost about fielding and defense.

Simply put: The team that wins a kickball game is not the team that kicks the most homeruns, but rather, the team that makes the most outs on the balls put in play. We’re talking real basic stuff: Catch fly balls, throw batters out on grounders, and don’t cause unnecessary errors. Subsequently, you’ll want to position your team so as to optimize the likelihood of the fundamentals of baseball happening.

We’ll assume for the tenure of this guide that your team has twelve players whose skills fall along a bell curve: Three Great, Six Medium, and Three Awful.

1. Garth
2. Gerald
3. Greta
4. Matt
5. Meena
6. Mike
7. Molly
8. Murdoch
9. Myron
10. Abner
11. Alice
12. Azzyzx

Also assume that the typical team fields 10 players (4 outfield), and your diamond looks like this:

Here’s how we’ll field our squad:

P: Meena (5th best athlete)
CA: Abner (10th best)
1B: Mike (6th best)
2B: Myron (9th best)
SS: Greta (3rd best)
3B: Garth (1st best)
LF: Molly (7th best)
LCF: Gerald (2nd best)
RCF: Matt (4rd best)
RF: Murdoch (8th best)
Bench: Alice and Azzyzx (11th and 12th best)

Here’s the biggest secret to fielding in kickball: The most important position on the field is third base. This is where you want your absolute best throwing arm (in our case, Garth). Why? Most teams opt to position their best fielder in Center Field, where a slight difference in running speed, throwing strength, and catching ability won’t make all that much of a difference. On the other hand, as most girls (and wimpy guys) opt to kick a slow dribbler to third base and try to outrun the throw rather than actually putting a ball into play, the extra half-step will come in to play far more frequently.

The 3B on my field diagram above is playing shallow intentionally. And the strange hockey-stick shaped line is a rule unique to kickball—the third baseman can’t position himself closer to home plate than that. So, for any given at bat, Garth will need to charge a weak grounder and make a rocket throw across the field in one swift motion. Yikes. At the very least, putting Garth at third makes the prospect of the slow dribbler a little more intimidating.

Some other tips:

• Right-legged batters tend to kick to the left side. We’ll prioritize our better fielders there.
• There’s always one guy on the team who’s “the pitcher.” He/she just is. On this team, we’ll just assume that’s Meena.
• I like putting my team’s tallest competent fielder at SS. This makes it hard for the batters to kick line drives into the outfield, and like having Garth at third, makes kicking the ball to the entire left side of the field more intimidating (see: Tip One).
• Just like baseball, 1B is where you want to hide your weakest fielder—that is, your weakest fielder who has the capacity to catch everything thrown at them (including the bullets from Garth at third). In kickball, however, you can’t take the ability to consistently catch balls for granted. I’m of the impression that catching is pretty much a binary skill: either you’ll usually catch the ball, or you usually won’t. On our team, I’ve presumed Mike (6th best) is the otherwise worst fielder who can consistently lock the ball down.
• The easiest position to fill and field is Catcher. Even in the event of a play at the plate, typically, the pitcher or first baseman can cover. We’ll put Abner there. And we’ll put Myron at 2B—he’ll be able get help from P, 1B, SS, RCF, or RF on most any play, and it’s fairly difficult for batters to kick there—most who try end up kicking an easy out to the pitcher or first baseman.
• Beyond that, we’ll put our two stronger remaining fielders (Gerald and Matt) into the CF positions—not only because there’s more ground to cover and more balls get kicked here, but also because it’s typically the LF and RF’s job to chase down wildly errant foul balls. Better off not wearing down your top talent.

We’ll conclude with two simple, overarching fielding strategies: 1) If the ball is kicked to you, holding on to it is probably always a bad fielding decision. When in doubt, don’t think and throw the ball to the pitcher. And 2) Pegging a baserunner is always harder than it looks. Just throw it to the guy fielding the base in front of the runner.

Part 2 next week.