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:
- Speedy contact hitter
- Speedy contact hitter
- Big slugger
- Big slugger
- Big slugger
- Eh
- Eh
- Eh
- 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:
- Garth
- Myron
- Meena
- Gerald
- Abner
- Mike
- Greta
- Alice
- Molly
- Mike
- Azzyzx
- Murdoch
- Kick the ball forward, hard, and on the ground. The higher you kick the ball, the more time the defense has to run under it and catch it.
- You can best ensure kicking the ball lower by waiting until you are directly over the ball before kicking it.
- In addition to making balls harder to catch (by kicking lower), also make them harder to throw. If you know the defense is going to want to get the lead runner out at third, aim right. Most other times (like, when nobody’s on base and they’re going to want you out at first), aim left. A slow dribbler to third is usually your best bet for a base hit for someone who can’t pummel the ball into the outfield grass.
- Bunting (half-kicking) is illegal, so be careful.
- When in doubt, aim for the other team’s worst fielder, and away from their best one.