It's been a while since there was front page discussion of softball at MGoBlog. I wrote a softball preview nearly two months ago and I haven't written anything since, with the churn of basketball and hockey season consuming my time. But after an eventful weekend for softball, building on a couple of positive weeks, it's time to check back in. We'll give a brief recap of the season, talk about the recent offensive surge (the team's biggest storyline), briefly mention pitching, and then look at the road ahead. 

 

A brief season recap 

Michigan Softball currently sits 24-11, 6-0 in B1G play. The path to this point has not been consistent or straight forward, an incredibly choppy non-conference portion of the schedule followed by a rapidly improving performance in conference play. The team started the season in Tampa with a 5-3 win over Illinois State, lost a 1-0 shutout to USF, but then closed out the opening weekend with three narrow wins over Bethune Cookman, Florida, and Oregon State. Their next weekend was in Boca Raton, getting wins over Seton Hall and Maine before losing 2-0 to Louisville and 1-0 to host FAU. As you can tell, offense was an issue early on. 

Michigan had an easier weekend at the UC Santa Barbara Tournament after that, taking four of five from a combination of opponents including UCSB, Northern Colorado, and Sacramento State. Michigan stayed out west to play Long Beach State, who they lost to in extras (7-6), and then headed for the hardest weekend, the Judi Garman Classic. There, in Fullerton, Michigan's offensive flopped in tremendous fashion by losing four straight games scoring a combined one run. Granted, it was against some pretty good teams in Cal State Fullerton, UCLA, Texas A&M, and Oregon State, but the anemic performance left no one reassured about the group's future. Offensive fortune did turn around in the final game of the weekend, though, as Michigan shockingly slaughtered an elite Florida team 10-2 in a run rule, their second win of the season over the Gators. 

Michigan then migrated back towards the north with a record of 11-9. They played three games in Highland Heights, Kentucky, sweeping  Bowling Green and Illinois State but dropping one to the hosts of Northern Kentucky. Staying in-state, Michigan jutted over to Louisville for one last non-con weekend over St. Patrick's Day, where they beat South Dakota, Dartmouth, and Illinois (that one didn't count for conference standings), but lost in an ugly run rule to the hosts Louisville. Two days later, Michigan returned home to Ann Arbor and finally began their slate of games at The Hutch, with a 2-0 win over Oakland. 

This was about the time that Michigan's offense really got humming. After the narrow win over Oakland, Michigan played host to one of the lesser teams in the conference in Purdue and slapped the Boilers around. Michigan swept the series, outscoring Purdue 24-5 on aggregate, to begin the year 3-0 in B1G play. They kept the momentum going by detonating Toledo during a mid-week game, 12-3 in a run rule victory, and then went into Bloomington for a big weekend. The Hoosiers are not a great team nationally, but are a decent squad with a solid pitching staff (more on that in the next section). Michigan instead clobbered IU's pitching, sweeping the series with two run rule wins and outscoring the Hoosiers 32-8 on aggregate. That final game, played this past Sunday, means Michigan is on a 10 game win streak leading into this weekend's series in Evanston. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: takes on the season]

 

 

Maddie Erickson is leading the charge [Bill Rapai]

Offensive surge: real or fake? 

The biggest storyline in softball right now is the offensive earthquake, which you could trace in the above section back to the win over Florida on March 2. That run rule victory, that saw Michigan hang 10 runs on a really good Florida team was the beginning of improved hitting leading to the present. In fact, you can use that game as a neat dividing line for two "seasons" that are nearly identical in sample size, 19 games vs. 16 games. In the first 19 games of the season (team record was 10-9), Michigan scored 57 runs for 3.0 runs per game. In the next 16 games (team record was 14-2) leading up to the present, Michigan has scored 119 runs for 7.4 runs per game(!). In those first 19 games, Michigan was shutout six times and scored two runs or fewer 10 times in total. In the last 16 games, Michigan hasn't been shutout once and has scored two runs or fewer just twice (they've scored 4+ in 14/16). 

So what's going on here? I think it can be attributed to two factors, Michigan facing easier pitching but also indisputably hitting better. Those two components are certainly both occurring and the challenge is assessing which factor is more potent in causing this offensive explosion. I averaged up the opponents' pitching staff ERA clips for both samples and the average opponent Michigan played in the first 19 games had a team ERA ranked 124th (based on their clips entering the weekend), while the average opponent in the last 16 games had a team ERA ranked around 150th. 

The pitching they're facing is definitely easier, no Texas A&M, USF, or UCLA in this sample, but that doesn't explain the whole story. Michigan was struggling to hit poor pitching teams in the first month of the season, 3 runs against Bethune-Cookman and 4 runs against Northern Colorado as evidence of that. And likewise, this past weekend's performance against Indiana was an eyebrow raiser. The Hoosiers entered this weekend ranked 38th in team ERA, a solid pitching outfit. IU had been on a losing streak as of late, but in their three game sweep at the hands of PSU the prior week they allowed 2, 5, and 8, which is a lot fewer than the 15, 7, and 10 Michigan hung on them. The only teams to detonate Indiana's pitching this season the way Michigan did were Florida and Arizona, both nationally ranked teams. 

 

[UMich Softball]

Indiana's pitching also had success against Michigan last year. Brianna Copeland, who helped muzzle Michigan's offense in 2023 (the Wolverines scored 1, 1, 5 against Indiana last year), was battered like a piñata this past weekend. The biggest test is still ahead this upcoming weekend against Northwestern's elite pitching staff, but it's hard to be disappointed with the way things are humming right now. Contributions are coming from across the board and younger hitters are starting to unlock legitimate power. If you want to believe, you can buy into a narrative of young hitters growing up before our eyes. 

On that note, we should talk about who is driving this. Two legitimate power hitters have emerged who were either not on the roster or were nonfactors last season. Maddie Erickson, who struggled to contribute in any capacity last season as a freshman, has delivered on Bonnie Tholl's preseason media day hype by leading the team in average, slugging, and OPS, with eight doubles and eight HRs. Meanwhile freshman Jenissa Conway is not hitting for a high average but is crushing the softball when she hits it, with three doubles, four triples(!!), and eight homers, just behind Erickson in SLG/OPS, with both over 1.000 in the latter category.

Two other players in that same bucket have recently come on-line to further bolster the offense. Lilly Vallimont, a RS Fr who missed all of last season with a knee injury, has started to settle into college softball and has been on a tear as of late. Her OPS is up to .851 and has seven doubles and four homers, with eight of those 11 XBH being in the last month. Freshman Ava Coastales recently joined the lineup and is 10/29 in her young NCAA career, with three XBH (one homer) and has drawn six walks for a .457 OBP. 

 

[Bill Rapai]

Those four bats beginning to look dangerous have given the Michigan lineup far more teeth than they had previously. Keke Tholl, Michigan's lone intimidating returning hitter, also started pretty cold but is starting to look much more like the hitter who slugged 11 HRs last year (she's up to 7). Ellie Sieler still isn't a major slugger but she's already hit more HRs this season than she did in either of her first two seasons and has equaled last year's XBH total in 14 fewer games, while getting on pace at an 80 points better clip than last season. The slap-hitting Ella McVey and Indiana Langford are both getting on base at reasonable clips like last year, representing the pieces that the bigger hitters are bringing in for RBIs. 

As an entire team, Michigan is hitting .341 in these last 16 games, getting on at .422 and slugging .576 for a team OPS of .998. They've hit 23 HRs in the last 16 games, as well as 24 doubles. These are numbers that, if sustained over a full season, would slot Michigan in the top 15 nationally. Now obviously they are unlikely to sustain this over a full season because this is just a small snippet of a long schedule and it's against *some* easier competition, but the point is that this is a legitimate offensive explosion. 

And as mentioned previously, it has been pretty much across-the-board offensive improvement. Michigan has now hit 34 HRs in 35 games, compared to a measly 25 HRs in 51 games last season. In 2022, the team hit 36 HRs in 56 games. This newfound power explosion is real and it's coming from sources who could plausibly be producing it. It's not like hitters who are upperclassmen and for years have been proven to be poor hitters are suddenly good (that would be rightfully met with skepticism). Rather, the biggest turnarounds mentioned a few paragraphs above are all freshmen, or sophomores who played periodically as freshmen (Erickson only played in 36 games last year). These are the sorts of players you want to see flashing signs of life, because it gives you belief that they just needed some time to figure it out and are now budding into legitimate hitters, the sorts of players Michigan Softball has long been lacking. 

 

[Bill Rapai]

So is this offensive surge real or fake? I don't think it should be viewed as a binary. It's not "real" in that we don't have anywhere close to certainty that Michigan is now good offensively. They have to keep hitting well for a much longer period of time and against more quality pitching to earn those sorts of proclamations. But at the same time, we shouldn't dismiss this as nothing, either. Michigan's runs per game clip across the full season of 5.02 is the highest it's been since 2019 and they're on pace for their most homers since then. If they continue hitting to some degree like the past 16 games, they're going to smash right through offensive benchmarks for the past five seasons. This offense, across the full 35 games so far this season, is definitely better than last season's and probably better than 2021-22. If you've been following Michigan Softball the last five years, they haven't had many weekends like the last month has been at any point, so that they are suddenly pounding the softball against even decent pitching shouldn't be shrugged off. It means something. 

That it is primarily coming from underclassmen is worth following. If Michigan Softball is to return to being a national seed in future NCAA Tournaments, they need to cultivate a young core of hitters who can perform like offenses of good teams do. Right now we're seeing a tiny glimmer that maybe that is emerging. If nothing else, that is worth following. This will be a big week, three games this weekend with Northwestern's excellent pitching staff. We'll learn more about this offense soon. 

 

 

Derkowski's still the ace [Bill Rapai]

Pitching? Pretty solid

Michigan enters today with the 28th ranked team ERA nationally at 2.30. Not bad! I wouldn't describe the pitching to date as incredible, but it's been pretty good this season and it certainly wasn't the problem during the portion of the year when they were bleeding games. They've lost four different 0-1/0-2 games this season where the pitching definitely held up its end of the bargain and now that Michigan is into the easier portion of the schedule, I would expect solid pitching to continue. Lauren Derkowski is still the ace of the staff, boasting a 1.68 ERA and a 1.11 WHIP, 113 K in 104.0 innings. She's trimmed her ERA from last season by a decent margin and will be leaned on heavily moving forward. 

The rest of the innings have been divided up between Erin Hoehn and Jessica LeBeau. Hoehn has shouldered more of the load, which has changed the complexion of the pitching staff from last season, when Derkowski was carrying a ton of weight and LeBeau was forced to deal with anything Derkowski couldn't manage. Instead, this season, Hoehn is sitting at 63.2 innings to LeBeau's 37.2. Hoehn's certainly dealt with rocky outings (an ugly game against Louisville stands out) but she has hung in there as a freshman pitcher. She worked around seven hits to allow only one earned run against one of the NCAA's top offenses in that second win over Florida, so there have been some sweet moments too. 

As for LeBeau, she shouldered more of the #2 load earlier in the season, but has been pushed to the background by Hoehn recently. LeBeau was used heavily on the first couple series of the season but after allowing seven runs in just two innings against UCLA on March 1, she's appeared in just four total games and has thrown only 2.1 innings. LeBeau's ERA sits at 2.79 (WHIP at 1.14), which is better than last year, but there's no question that part of that reduction in ERA is a function of reduction in workload. For example, last weekend against Indiana her only appearance was to come in on Sunday for the final inning, with Michigan already holding a huge advantage. She's clearly the #3 option right now. Hannah George and Emerson Aiken are the depth options, as they were last season, having combined for 19 total innings between the two. Of the two, George has been more frequently used and posted more palatable results, but neither are playing large roles at this time. 

 

 

[Northwestern Athletics]

The Road Ahead

I mentioned previously that this is a big upcoming weekend for Michigan Softball. They're heading to Evanston tomorrow to take on Northwestern in what will be a pivotal series, the team that has captured the last two B1G regular season crowns. Kate Drohan's program is an image of what Bonnie Tholl is trying to rebuild towards in Ann Arbor, having made the WCWS in 2022 as the #9 national seed and losing in the Super Regionals last year as the #12 national seed, winning their region and taking Game 1 from Alabama in Tuscaloosa in the Supers, before dropping the next two. Northwestern has been the class of the league the last few years and this will be a useful measuring stick for this young Michigan squad. 

The 2024 Wildcats have had a bit of a choppy year, dropping some games in the non-conference but they've been better as of late. They were on an 11 game winning streak of their own until Sunday, when they lost the final game of a three game set to Ohio State in Columbus. That means Michigan is, for the moment, ahead of NU in the conference standings, but there's a long way to go. Northwestern got 10 votes in this week's ESPN.com/USA Softball poll, so not a team that is thought of quite like the last two seasons, but they are still as good of a bet as anyone to win the B1G. 

As a team, Northwestern has the conference's best team ERA, just a hair above Michigan's, and that's largely attributable to the greatness of Ashley Miller and her 1.22 ERA. She is probably the best pitcher Michigan will face the rest of the regular season and thus provides a massive test for this offensive hot streak. Can they get some traction against Miller? If so, that would be a big indicator. Michigan also plays host to Iowa the week after (with games against pushover MSU/CMU in between), an offensively challenged team with very good pitching, so these next two weekends will be big for the offense. If they can find ways to score runs with some consistency over these next two weekends, we can begin to really believe the offensive growth is legitimate. Northwestern is a more intimidating opponent than Iowa because they have the better offense, but both weekends will tell us a lot, both on where this young team is headed, and whether they have a shot to actually be competitive in the B1G in 2024. Strap in, because the softball is getting interesting.