In baseball

Baseball

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

, a double play (denoted on statistics sheets

Baseball statistics

Statistics play an important role in summarizing baseball performance and evaluating players in the sport.Since the flow of a baseball game has natural breaks to it, and normally players act individually rather than performing in clusters, the sport lends itself to easy record-keeping and statistics...

 by DP) for a team or a fielder is the act of making two outs during the same continuous playing action. In baseball slang, making a double play is referred to as "turning two".

Double plays are also known as "the pitcher

Pitcher

In baseball, the pitcher is the player who throwsthe baseball from the pitcher's mound toward the catcher to begin each play, with the goal of retiring a batter, who attempts to either make contact with the pitched ball or draw a walk. In the numbering system used to record defensive plays, the...

's best friend" because they disrupt offense more than any other play, except for the rare triple play

Triple Play

A triple play is a baseball play in which three outs are made as a result of continuous action without any intervening errors between outs.Triple play may also refer to:...

. Pitchers often select pitches that make a double play more likely (typically a pitch easily hit as a ground ball to a middle infielder) and teams on defense alter infield positions to make a ground ball more likely to be turned into a double play.