These were shot with a 400/2.8 and TC20, stopped down to f6.7 (half stop). Also, pretty heavy crop. I was outside the fence along the 3rd base line. Shots taken during warm-up.
They could have been a little sharper. It might be worthwhile to fine tune the lens/TC combo with something like LensAlign.
Regardless, I think this might be my solution for grabbing the outfielders.
Shooting outfielders is hard. Last year I used a D3 & 300mm 2.8 AF-S & TC17e II tele (1.7x) and my results were pretty good, but just not for night games. This year I've upgraded to the 400 2.8 and plan on using a 1.4 tele for outfielder shots. I think the 2.0 downgrades quality by a lot in my opinion.
I think the biggest issue with the first photos is how noisy they are. Shooting at ISO 3200 to get 1/3000th shutter speed in daylight doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
Also you are underexposing, which might be OK for the backgrounds but see how the second poster is exposing for the faces? His 1st and 3rd are too bright in the backgrounds but the faces look great, which is my preference.
Keep at it! It's not even Spring yet so you have lots of time.
Dennis, I don't ever shoot just outfielders, so I use the same lens/camera for getting shots of them that I use for grabbing infielders and batters. What that means is I CROP the heck out of the shots, like this:
