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The Aggressive Offense
by Bill Redmer

Aggressive short game offensive strategies and play should become an important part of your fastpitch philosophy. An aggressive offense is one that uses contact hitting, running slap-bunting, smart baserunning, head first sliding, sliding around the tag, stealing 3rd and the suicide squeeze. Speed, speed, and more speed. You need to force the defense into making plays within 3 seconds. You need to take the strikeout away from power pitchers. Contact hitting does all that.

Aggressive offensive strategies force your opponent to try to make defensive plays quickly, making throwing and fielding errors more likely because of the stress of force, rushed execution. When a team is taken out of its routine and or comfort level, most defenses can be cracked with constant time against play pressure, that is being forced into making the play in 3 or less seconds. Younger and less inexperienced teams are really venerable to these style tactics. Teams behind in the score are also venerable as well.

Strikeout pitchers lose their confidence and throw more pitches over seven innings if teach you hitters to look for their pitch and or learn how to foul balls that they don’t like.

Aggressive offense begins at the plate, with hitters taking three good swings at three good pitches. This increases the percentage of hard hit balls which in turn leads to more base hits and a many more opportunities for errors. It all begins with the concept that any pitched ball can be hit. You just have to believe it and have a plan for where you’ll take each and every pitch thrown in the at bat.

With runners on base, use of the hit or bunt and run can break a big inning. Pulling the shortstop and or 2nd baseman out of position can lead o lots of good things. In anticipating when to use this tactic, have your hitters look for at least two of the following these factors to be in their favor when at the plate.

1) A favorable count, i.e. two balls and no strikes or three balls and one strike;

4) Defensive shifts i.e. first and third up, short or 2nd baseman shading toward the bag

Another example of aggressive offensive play is the suicide squeeze. This is a great way to score runs and keep a rally going. If executed properly you often end up with a run scored and the person who was batting safe at first and maybe at second. Ideally, you like to squeeze when the count is in the batter’s favor.

Other examples of aggressive opportunistic play is when your team has runners on first base and third base. There are tremendous opportunities to steal, double steal, squeeze, hit & run and delay steal when these offensive opportunities presents themselves. They also get the opposing team throwing the ball around nd you know what happens when that happens often enough.

Ultimately, it is up to the coach to incorporate an aggressive approach to his or her offensive strategy, but changing the speed of the game will increase your team’s chances of scoring runs. And, remember, winning softball teams always score one more run than the opposition. What the final differential is doesn’t matter.

An additional positive is that a defense is better prepared and more comfortable when playing an aggressive opponent because they scrimmage against themselves in practice. However, other teams don’t always scrimmage with this type of offense in practice so most are not in a comfort level with an aggressive offensive strategy.

Bottom line is that you have to practice all these skills and get your players as many practice reps as possible. They have to learn how to see the ball.

The short game is designed to cut down on strike outs against a fast and dominating pitcher. The girls need to be prepared by their coaches for this kind of physical intimidating presence. If there was ever a chance for the whole team to go and watch a dominating pitcher it might prove beneficial as it takes away fear of the unknown. . Otherwise set your pitching machine out near the edge of the circle as that is where she will be releasing the ball as she leaps for the circle chalk line. Get your high schools biggest football player and have him feed the machine .

Bunting: With little or no bat movement and a bat already almost facing the incoming pitch the player is already positioned to simply touch or make contact without a swing with the incoming ball. Putting the ball into play is thus made much easier if you don't have to swing but simply make contact. The key here is keeping your batters hands inside the flight path of the pitched ball

Also nearly facing the pitcher head on , the batter gets a better look at the ball. Remember her control is suspect. Your kids are going to have to only bunt or swing at strikes or pitches that they can get to and that will be called strikes. Don't let the kids panic.

Note: for short game bunting practice find some boat life jackets for the girls so they will feel more comfortable facing inside pitches as they practice the bunting.

1. A forgotten part of the short game is base stealing. The biggest part about that is the kind of slide used. We teach a head-first slide where the player slides around the base avoiding the sweep tag and reaches back and touches he base. The base runner actually chooses a path away from and around the bag. Teach your kids to steal without a signal .. start them to get off the base when the pitchers windmill arm is at its apex ..

2. Right side bunting down the first base line for a hit usually comes as a big surprise. Bunting for a hit from the right side is virtually ignored for the most part ( nobody does it as opposed to lefty slapper) yet in most games you will see the first baseman hanging back to make plays at the bag leaving the baseline unattended. Given the fielding abilities of a pitcher and her questionable speed, and fielding abilities, this may be their biggest weakness.

If you play the short game and your kids are patient at the plate and don't swing at high pitches no matter what and that should keep you in the game long enough to break her. Your psychological challenge will be to get your players to attract and take the offense and be aggressive from the first pitch.

I would take visitors if I won the toss because if you can score first I don't think they can catch you. In any case having the last at bat against a power pitcher never relay works out the way you want it. Visitors will put the pressure on them right off the bat if you can score and or catch them unprepared.