Been watching any college softball on TV??

Mendoza Comment...

Great observation about the quality of the batting orders top to bottom by DukeDog4.....

7-9 ain't easy outs anymore! In fact, I heard Mendoza talking about teams hiding "great hitters" down in the line-up because they get better "quality" pitches to hit at 7-8-9 than they do at 1-2-3. Makes a LOT of sense, but I had never really thought about it like that.

DukeDog4....any thoughts?

 

!!!!!! I KNOW the feeling... they moved the HS fence back up our way this year and raised it.. cost my two a few times this year!

 

on the BB field

I heard of some girls playing on the BB field. Concord played Piedmont with no fence at all.

 

Looks bad for my pick....

MIZZOU goes down in Game 1.....not cool.
Maybe they can rally to win it all, but the odds are certainly against it now!
Oh, well...guess that's why I don't live in Vegas and pick games for a living.
DDD

 

The #9 hitter

The most obvious trend I see in the bottom of the order is that the #9 hitter often has a better OB% than the 7/8. Speed teams like Houston, Illinois (who we played in Palm Springs) and Arizona State (who we didnt) put what seemed to be their second best slapper in the nine spot.

The biggest adjustment that college pitchers have to make is the college strike zone is consistently smaller and college hitters rarely swing out of the zone. I watched a HS playoff game Tuesday. Both pitchers relied primarily on what I call a 'high school rise ball'. It's a pitch that is never in the zone and HS hitters can't seem to resist. These same pitches would get killed in D1 ball as the hitters would simply let the pitch go. Far too many many HS pitchers throw that pitch never developing a hard down pitch.

 

7 - 9

Girls in the lower part of the order did pretty well today. Check out UM's #9 hitter, Ewing. Certainly no easy outs on these teams.

 

I can't believe that 3 plays from yesterdays games made the sportcenters top 10 plays!!!!!

 

observations.....Ga. Bulldogs

the SS # 22 is over the top. a bit overbearing with all that energy. comes in to chat with the pitcher and slap hands after almost every pitch. annoying.

the pitcher #63 a righthander was called for illegal pitch once while I was watching, for stepping outside the pitching lane towards her left. It appeared to me she did it on every pitch. I didn't see any difference in that one time compared to all her pitches.

 

I've enjoyed watching the WCWS. It's a lot more fun than past years because the game has turned into more than watching two people play pitch and catch for 7 innings with the occasional hit thrown in as a surprise. Fun to actually see the girls taking a cut instead of that slap and dash crap that used to dominate the hitting aspect of the game.