Over the years the dynamics of a Softball Pitching Staff has evolved.
In her senior season at Arizona in 2002, Jennie Finch pitched more than 273 innings. Three times in her career she passed two hundred innings pitched, coming just six innings short of that mark in her sophomore season.
Texas legend Cat Osterman never threw fewer than 240 innings in a collegiate season, topping out at over THREE hundred in her freshman campaign and ending her college career with more than 1,100 innings of work logged in the circle.
Contrast those two examples with some more recent statistics – Florida’s Lauren Haeger, in her senior season of 2015, only threw 222 innings of work, including the postseason. Then-freshman Aleshia Ocasio worked more than 135 innings and Delanie Gourley threw seventy-nine.Though Haeger was considered the “workhorse of the staff” and guided the squad through the postseason, she only threw nearly ½ of her team’s innings.
In 2014, Alabama’s Jackie Traina, used to assuming the lion’s share of the workload for her team, similarly only threw 219 innings, including the postseason, in contrast to her teammates’ 218. Despite nearly splitting the work up the middle, Traina was still considered the staff workhorse and innings-eater.
These are just a few examples of a growing trend in the sport: the building of a pitching staff instead of relying on a single hurler, a single arm.
The effects of such a change are easily apparent on active pitchers – less work = more rest. More rest equals fresher pitchers who can bring their best stuff on a more regular basis in their appearances. While film study and advancements in scouting nowadays can prepare any team about as well as possible for any and every pitcher they might face, fewer actual innings obviously gives opponents less real-time work to examine and break down.
The Finch’s and Osterman’s of the sport were utterly and efficiently dominant despite huge workloads. Can you imagine if they had been even better by sharing the workload even a bit? The evolution of the pitching staff has most definitely changed over time and is still evolving, and that’s not a good thing; it’s a great thing for the game.
Justin McLeod is the founder of Justin’s World of Softball and will contribute commentary for Fastpitch News. Access all of his JWOS content here: www.justinsworldofsoftball.org
