Sooooooo yeah. The last time I wrote about Michigan Softball was late April, when they had three weekends left in the B1G season. They were still in the field for NCAA Tournament projections at the time and I felt that a solid close to the regular season would likely be enough to get the Wolverines into the tourney. Which, for a rebuilding season, would have been a fine outcome. 

That is emphatically not what happened. Michigan Softball lost an infuriating extra inning game to Northwestern, destroyed the 'Cats on Saturday, and then lost a comedy of errors umpiring show on Sunday. That was an okay result, but everything that followed was a catastrophe, back to back sweeps at the hands of a pair of good B1G teams in Minnesota and Indiana. A 1-8 record over the final nine B1G games plummeted Michigan to 10th in the conference standings, forcing them to need a miracle in the BTT to make it in. They didn't get one, rather a first round exit at the hands of Penn State. 

So here we are, 25-24 and no NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1994. How did it go wrong? What comes next? And what about the longterm viability of Michigan Softball as a meaningful program? We've got some hard questions to answer today. 

 

How it all went down

Ugly! Oh wait, you want me to tell you more? The abbreviated version in the opening not painful enough? Well, here goes I guess. That first game against Northwestern was where we left off, the chance for Michigan to notch marquee wins in conference against a team that ended up being a regional host seed when the tourney bracket got unveiled. NU is legit and as a whole, it looked like a decent fight. Michigan and Northwestern were tied 2-2 on Friday into extra innings, Michigan getting terrific relief pitching from Jessica Lebeau. They fell down 3-2 in the bottom of the 10th, but a big hit by Audrey LeClair tied the game. The winning run was waved home but was thrown out by a country mile in one of the worst sends from third base I have seen in some time. Alas, Northwestern took a 4-3 lead in the top of the 11th and won the game by that margin. 

It was a bitter loss, but made up for by a stunning 15-0(!!!) shellacking Michigan laid on Northwestern on Saturday. Out of nowhere, a challenged offense had their way with a top notch team and secured a comfortable run rule victory. That led us into Sunday, a game that was tied 0-0 into the 7th amid multiple umpiring errors that jobbed Michigan (in my view). However, you still need to show a pulse outside of getting screwed and the Wolverines didn't do nearly enough with the six hits and two walks they got. Eight baserunners translated into zero runs, while two key base knocks for the Wildcats in the top of the 7th powered them to a 3-0 victory. 

[Bill Rapai]

Despite dropping two of three, Michigan was still on track to make the NCAAs at this juncture. It all began unraveling the following weekend, a sweep at home at the hands of Indiana. IU ain't a bad team, but they're not Northwestern. You needed to take at least 2/3 at home and you got swept. And not just swept, decisively swept. The Friday game got postponed to a Saturday doubleheader, which Indiana swept by a combined score of 19-2(!!). Everything that could go wrong went wrong, a 4-1 defeat that saw Michigan never be competitive on the scoreboard and a 15-1 drubbing in which LeBeau got pummeled and with Lauren Derkowski tired from Game 1, Michigan was forced to turn to its unusable pitching depth, which made things go from bad to worse. On offense, Michigan mustered only nine hits combined in the two games and zero runs against Heather Johnson and Briana Copeland of IU. Of those nine hits, only two were of the extra base variety (both doubles). Pitiful. 

The Sunday game against Indiana was at least more competitive, but it still was far from an acceptable result. The Hoosiers got to Derkowski again and Michigan trailed 5-1 in the bottom of the 3rd before trying to claw back. They cut the lead to 6-5 on an Ella McVey single in the 7th, placing the tying and winning runs on, but an Ellie Sieler flyout ended it. Getting swept up by a team like Indiana put Michigan's tournament hopes into deep jeopardy, setting the stage for a dramatic trip to Minneapolis. In between were two easy run rule wins over WMU and Oakland, but the team went to Minnesota realistically needing a sweep. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: a play that will make you SQUEAL!]

They were indeed involved in a sweep, just not the good kind! Michigan got shutout twice and lost a shootout in between. The Maize & Blue were shutout on Friday and Sunday by superstar Gopher pitcher Autumn Pease, notching seven total hits in 14 combined innings, all singles. Lauren Derkowski did fine, but realistically, she's a B to B+ pitcher; Pease is an A+ and the result was 3-0 and 2-0 wins for Minnesota. The Saturday game was for each team to test their pitching depth and it was something to behold. Lebeau got crushed, chased out in the second inning with nine runs charged to her name, leaving Michigan behind 9-1. An eight run fourth inning for the Wolverines propelled them to a dramatic 10-9 lead, only to see Derkowski's relief effort come up short, a three run bottom half of that inning and another run in the fifth. Final score: 13-10 Gophers. 

[Bill Rapai]

Getting swept in Minneapolis meant that "trouble" was too nice of a phrase to describe where Michigan's tourney hopes were. "Life support" may have been more accurate. As Michigan headed to Champaign for the BTT, it was basically autobid or bust territory. They had fallen out of the at-large RPI range and 10th in the B1G is not going to get you in as an at-large in softball, period. In the 7-10 matchup against Penn State, Michigan was engaged in a classic Michigan Softball game of the last five years, a tight, low-scoring pitcher's duel with not much power hitting going on by the Wolverines. Michigan held 1-0 and 2-1 leads but Derkowski relinquished both and the game went to the bottom of the seventh, PSU in need of one run to walk it off. They got the leadoff runner on, went to bunt her over, and then...

1️⃣-0️⃣

FINAL | PSU 3, MICH 2#WeAre pic.twitter.com/ptgNZeJcuU

— Penn State Softball (@PennStateSB) May 10, 2023

Quite possibly the worst play I have ever seen. My reaction watching live went from "oh great they can get the lead runner" off the bat to "oh no, now it'll be 1st and 3rd, no out" when the throw was going wide to "oh my god, this is how it's going to end" when I realized the ball was rolling in the gap. Embarrassing, heartbreaking, comical, use any adjective you want, Michigan's season- and the nearly three decade-long NCAA Tournament streak- ended on that play. Goodnight, 2023. 

 

[Bill Rapai]

Writing a narrative on 2023 

My main thought when I was thinking about this season, especially trying to describe it to non-Softball junkies, is it feels a lot like the 2008 Michigan Football season. The famed coach retires and a lot of the top tier players leave. The roster is not optimal and the feeling is it's going to be a rebuilding year, possibly a tough one, but the result still ends up being worse than you could've imagined. Michigan Softball didn't have a singular loss as terrible as losing to 3-9 Toledo at the Big House, but perhaps that very play I just broke down was the same vibe. And just like 2008 snapping Michigan's bowl streak, 2023 snapped softball's NCAA streak. 

I could go on about the historically poor level of play this season, the fewest number of wins for the program (non-COVID) since 1981 (pre-Hutch), the worst finish in the B1G in program history, the worst winning percentage for a single season in program history, but you get the gist by now. In the macro landscape of college softball, this was a mediocre to slightly below average season for a major conference program. In the context of Michigan Softball's history and everything it believes to be about, this was an abomination. I will save the talk of what this means for a later section of the piece. 

For now I want to talk about how it all unraveled, how a season for this proud program got like this. The answer is pretty simple, and unsurprising for those who have followed the team or read my pieces in the past: just like 2018-2022, this team couldn't hit worth a lick, and the elite starting pitching that propped up 2018-2022 graduated while the young'uns were not ready to pick up the mantle. I like Lauren Derkowski a lot, I think she could be really good as an upperclassman, perhaps as soon as next season. She's not Alex Storako or 2018-19 era Meghan Beaubien. Not yet, at least. She was good enough to win Michigan a chunk of games, but wasn't a true ace yet and wasn't the sort of exceptional arm Michigan had been so used to relying on in the late Hutch years. 

[Bill Rapai]

Jessica Lebeau turned out to be exactly what a pitcher with a 2.54 ERA in the MAC up-transferring to the B1G is expected to be... not that great! I gritted my teeth and wrote "the best case here is Jen Brundage works her magic and instills a level of coaching that Kent State was not able to provide (to Lebeau)" in the season preview but this was more or less the outcome I expected. In other words, the worst case scenario I detailed in the preview with Lebeau ("the translation goes awry and LeBeau flops in a power conference") came true. 3.54 ERA, 1.36 WHIP, and an 8-11 record is not going to get it done for a #2 starter if you're a program that hopes to do anything in the NCAAs. 

Those two pitchers got no help either from the other options. The reserves, Hannah George, a transfer from UNC, and Emerson Aiken, a once-touted pitching recruit, were out there throwing batting practice. George allowed 14 hits and 13 runs (9 earned) in 7.1 innings this season for an 8.59 ERA. George came in as a highly questionable option (3.90 ERA with UNC), but even I didn't see this level of bad coming. Aiken got more time than she did the previous season but I can't say that was a good thing. Aiken was just as disastrous as George, a 6.00 ERA and 2.39 WHIP, 30 hits allowed in just 16.1 innings and only 11 Ks to go with it. So in total you had a good but not yet elite #1, a well-below average #2, and two catastrophes as the depth. This being compared to a team that only a couple years ago had two true aces in Storako and Beaubien. 

The crumbling of this Michigan season even compared to the late Hutch years can be chalked up almost entirely to the decline of pitching because this team still can't hit at all. In 2019, the last time the team hosted a regional, they were an imperfect offensive team, one with flaws but still having a pulse. Not a good enough hitting team to win big in the NCAAs, but good enough to do a lot of damage in the B1G. That team's OPS? .889. How about last year, when the hitting had declined quite a bit? .791. And how about this year? A pathetic .719.

[Bill Rapai]

Some of the offensive metrics are a horror show, even for recent Michigan Softball standards. The team hit 25 home runs in 51 games, a per-game clip that ranks 158th in the country. Even last year they could muster 36 in 56 games. To make matters worse, of the 25 homers, 11 were hit by Keke Tholl. Not a single Wolverine besides Keke hit more than 3, a teamwork approach to power hitting best referred to as the "we all make the nerdy kid do the whole group project for us" approach. Toss in Lexie Blair's doubles power and of the team's 80 XBHs (unbelievably pitiful total), 37 were hit by either Blair or Tholl. Michigan's team slugging percentage of .378 ranked 164th in the NCAA. 

Even in the B1G, these metrics are in the bottom of the barrel. The team's OBP and SLG rank 4th-worst, while batting average was 5th-worst. They scored the third-fewest runs, hit the third-fewest homers, and accumulated the third-fewest total bases. They were middle of the pack in the conference in strikeouts while drawing the second-fewest walks. A lot of balls were put in play and very few left the infield or did anything to generate runs. And when this team saw elite pitching, they had no answers. This was clear even in the non-conference, when they scored seven runs in five games at the Judi Garman Classic, or five runs in five games at the Stanford Invitational, and it only continued in B1G play. Nineteen runs in the final eight B1G games (including the BTT) was merely the final punctuation mark on a story that had been written.  

For the record, the defense was inconsistent too. Baseball analytics have shown us errors and fielding percentage are far from perfect metrics to assess defense in a bat-and-ball sport, but it's the best we've got here and it lines up with the eye test: Michigan was 10th in the B1G in fielding percentage. This is a team that got mediocre pitching (6th in the B1G in ERA) with only one arm you could really trust, mediocre defense behind those pitchers, and an offense that had zero signs of life against elite pitching. 

 

[Bill Rapai]

Asking the hard questions and where we go from here

So here we are. Michigan Softball has fallen to its lowest point in four decades and now we have to try and chart the path forward. The Softball fanbase has been beaten down by this season and is searching for answers. If my preceding section comes off as a channeling of anger, I imagine some fellow fans will find it cathartic. It's a shame how far this program seems to have fallen and we all want to see it return desperately. But what we had to watch this season was rough at times, none more so than those last four weeks. 

The most obvious question we can ask is whether Michigan Softball is remotely relevant anymore? Are we just Nebraska football now? Seven years since the last Super Regional (or WCWS) appearance and counting, only one time hosting a regional since the end of the Obama Administration. Two straight years of not winning the B1G (not even a major power conference in the sport) as well. In short, Michigan Softball hasn't been much of anything on a national level since Sierra Romero left and that was a long time ago now. What has happened since then has been a slow decline, one that has accelerated rapidly in the past two seasons.

The 2017-2021 period was frustrating, but the team was making NCAA Tournaments, inside the top 20 nationally, and while not making it out of the opening weekend, they were coming real close. The 2022 and 2023 seasons have seen one sharp fall, followed by another even sharper fall. Last year they couldn't win the B1G and didn't make much noise in the NCAAs, but at least threatened in the BTT. This year they weren't relevant in the B1G, didn't make any noise in the BTT, and didn't come close to the NCAAs. 

[Bill Rapai]

The quick answer is Michigan Softball is not relevant in the present. They're not the program they were in the mid-2010s, not in the same universe. But if there's hope here, it's that their old position isn't crazy out of reach. A B1G team can be a national competitor if they get the right roster and good coaching. Minnesota made the WCWS back in 2019 and Northwestern made it last year and as the #12 overall seed this season, could very easily make it again this season. If freakin' Minnesota and Northwestern can book a trip to OKC, Michigan Softball can find a way to get back there. 

Indeed, a lot of my frustration with Michigan Softball has surrounded the fact that they get supposedly better recruiting classes than the likes of a Minnesota according to sites such as FloSoftball, yet get far less mileage out of those recruits. I wrote this in last year's season-end piece: 

It's even more frustrating when you factor in recruiting: Michigan reeled in the top recruiting class in the B1G and top 20 nationally in both 2018 and 2019, yet couldn't build a high-end offense out of those parts.

I don't have access to a 24/7-like composite team talent rating sort of metric but if I did, based on the FloSoftball team recruiting rankings, Michgian would no doubt be #1 in the B1G but they've been middling to straight up bad offensively for a half-decade now. If you bring in four top 50 recruits each year and yet can't cobble together a semi-decent offense out of that group, something is profoundly broken here. Michigan Softball is not a Who Dat mid-major, they're a huge national brand with top notch facilities. Never in a million years should that program be putting together an offense that has just one hitter swatting more than three homers in a season. 

[Bill Rapai]

So the next question is "what is the path forward?" Is Bonnie Tholl the right coach for Michigan Softball? I don't know. I said I was willing to give Bonnie 2-3 years, but boy was this not a great first impression. There are some pieces to roll into next year, both major pitchers, Keke Tholl, Ellie Sieler, and Indiana Langford, and they'll get Lilly Vallimont, the one freshman who seemed poised to be an impact bat, back healthy. Those are some decent building blocks, but with Lexie Blair out of eligibility and even someone vaguely decent like Audrey LeClair in the portal, there are a ton of holes on this roster. 

The quickest way for me to gain faith in Bonnie Tholl as a coach is for her to go out into the portal and recruit hitters for power specifically. I don't even need them to have good batting averages or great hit tools, I just want a couple hitters who can make it go far when they hit the ball. That at least would show they're diagnosing the central problem with this team. My biggest "they just don't get it" moment observing this program was last summer, when Michigan's lone big get at hitter out of the portal was Ellie Mataya, a player from BC who had three career HRs in 163 games. Getting yet another speed-and-contact hitter on a team that hasn't been able to hit for power in years, a deficiency that is primarily causing the program's decline, was maddening. Mataya, for the record, hit one homer this season for Michigan in 51 games. 

In other words, I want to see the opposite of that. Michigan has to fix the offense and as I wrote about last summer, it starts with hitting more homers (I wrote that before Michigan's power hitting got substantially worse this season). Just show me that they get what the problem is and are willing to prioritize it. Michigan needs far fewer slender, athletic players and far more filled-out sluggers who can crush the ball into the gaps and over the fence. Take a look at the likes of Minnesota, Nebraska, or Indiana when they come to town. Those teams know which kinds of players to recruit to build a real offense. 

[Bill Rapai]

The path forward involves fixing the offense, because I have belief in Jen Brundage and the pitching staff. I'm willing to believe this year's decline was mostly the result of Derkowski not being ready for primetime and limited options besides that. They do need more pitching help to relieve pressure on Derkowski, which should be another area to shore up in the portal. It's easier than ever in the era of the portal to turn things around on a quick window, and I'd like to see strides be made. 

The 2023 recruiting class seems very promising, #6 nationally by Extra Innings Softball, but I don't want to be fooled again here. The players detailed in this class in the Michigan Softball press release seem to be good at hitting, and a few profile as power bats, but actually converting them into quality hitters at the NCAA level has been a years-long struggle. Michigan hired Amanda Chidester as a hitting coach before this past season and while it didn't seem to have much effect, we still owe them the right to try and figure this out.

As I sit here, the best case scenario is to pick up 2-3 power-based hitters in the portal and one good arm. Have the pitcher mix with an improved Derkowski (and possibly Lebeau) to improve the pitching a decent amount and then hope that your transfer hitters + 2023 recruits (and Vallimont) mix to turbocharge the offense back to respectability. The goal for 2024 should be to jump back into the NCAAs and be near the top of the B1G, with contributions from younger players showing that the program is steering back on an upward trajectory. If we end next season with a strong nucleus and see improvement across the roster, I think I can be bought back in. But if it's merely a small amount of improvement to get back into the NCAAs, especially one driven by great pitching and still brutal hitting, my tune will remain the same. 

The pressure is on now. It won't be easy getting Michigan Softball back on track, but it's a job worth undertaking. I don't blame Bonnie Tholl for what happened this season entirely... this roster was chosen and recruited by her predecessor. But from this point forward it's on Bonnie to figure it out, and fast. Especially when a Michigan alum who was a logical coaching choice (Marissa Young) is building Duke into a top 10 program and as far as we know, she wasn't even considered for the job. When a top young coach is left out of the picture so you can be anointed as the general, results need to be delivered. Starting next season, we need to start seeing results, ones that trend in a positive direction. Because Michigan can't let this program fall another step behind.