We evaluate the Badgers softball team early in the season.
Coming off of the Mary Nutter Collegiate Classic, the Wisconsin Badgers softball team has pulled back to even with an 8-8 record on the season. The team has played a difficult schedule so far, with six of the team’s eight losses coming against top 25 opponents.
Wisconsin played three double-headers in Cathedral City, California this past weekend. They came out positive with a 4-2 record on the trip, including a win against No. 15 Utah University.
The Badgers will hit the road again this weekend to compete in the Utah Tech Invitational where they will face off against Utah Tech in a double-header on Friday, March 1st, as well as a double-header against Utah University on Saturday and a stand-alone against them on Sunday.
It is safe to expect the Badgers and head coach Yvette Healy to continue moving their record in a positive direction with just six games left against currently ranked opponents. The team’s current strength of schedule ranks 12th in the NCAA while their remaining strength of schedule ranks 38th.
Strength: Home runs
The Badger softball team came into the season swinging for the fences. Wisconsin has gone deep 20 times already this season which ranks second in the Big Ten and 17th in the NCAA.
Out of the team’s 16 games this season, there have been only two without a Badger home run.
So far this season, eight Wisconsin players have hit a home run and six of them have hit multiple.
Junior Brooke Kuffel leads the way with five so far this season and redshirt junior Emmy Wells is not far behind with four. Both rank in the top ten in the conference.
The powerful hitting from the Badgers lineup has boosted the team offensively with the third most runs scored in the conference thus far.
Strength: Base running
Of Wisconsin’s 119 hits this season, 48 have been good enough to advance the batter past first base.
The Badgers also rank second in the Big Ten in stolen bases with 28 on 34 attempts.
Freshman Danielle Lucey has given the team a big spark on the base paths with eight steals, tied for the most in the conference.
Freshmen Paige Miller, Alivia Bark, and sophomore Ava Kuszak have also contributed four steals a piece.
The team’s ability to advance along the base path efficiently has given them a boost in offensive production. This has been a major factor in the Badgers’ prolific run-scoring thus far.
Weakness: Pitching
The Wisconsin offense has looked very promising so far this season.
For a team that seems on the cusp of being a real contender, the setback has come on the defensive side of the ball.
It is important to first note the part of the story that the numbers don’t tell which is the difficult level of competition the Badgers have faced so far.
Even with an 8-8 record, they currently have a +12 run margin against their opponents showing that their wins have been dominant and their losses competitive.
This being said, Wisconsin falls to the bottom three in the conference for several pitching statistics including ERA, hits allowed, and earned runs.
They have not struggled to score runners this season, but have lost several games due to pitching. At the Clearwater Invitational in Florida, the Badgers averaged 5.2 runs per game, but traveled home with an 0-5 record for the weekend.
Weakness: Fielding
It may not be the pitchers’ fault entirely however, Wisconsin has tallied second most errors in the Big Ten with 21, three times as many as Michigan and Purdue. This has led to the Badgers recording the third-to-worst fielding percentage in the Big Ten at 0.954.
With the easier schedule going forward, things may start to look a bit better for the pitching staff, but it will be important for the Badgers to patch things up defensively.
It seems like the ability to keep the other team from putting runs on the board is what stands between Wisconsin and being a championship contender. If the team can sharpen things up on the defense side of things they will be in really good shape.