2023 Softball Season

At the end of this weekend's invitational the team is sitting at 17-2-1, 20 games. When I see that I'm just stunned that we're doing so well with essentially 50% new pitching. Did the math looking at last year's 20 game mark and we were 11-9 at this point.

Kudos to Mike for juggling pitchers and coaching them up to get to this point.

A tip of the hat to Mike and Steve for finding players who can hit and run! Every time a freshman like Martinez steps up to the box, I get excited and I tell myself, "Something's gonna happen. Don't know what, but something to add to the chaos of the game is going to happen". The way I thought of Mia Scott last year.

And to be honest, Maloney is a shock to me. I know she was recovering from surgery last year, but in my mind it was "out of sight, out of mind". Didn't even know she was a slapper until her first at bat I saw televised. Her first few games in RF were a bit underwhelming until some coach got on her about her hustle and then suddenly she's a reliable OF.

My wife commented, "Man, it was be awful for those sophmores and juniors to be passed up by these freshmen". Yup, but LOOK AT THEM!
 
My daughter was reading up about Montana Fouts and that she recently pitched a perfect game and that it was the 8th perfect game in Alabama history. She was like, "Oh boy. It's not going to be good this next weekend."

I pointed out some facts:
1. Fouts has a 9-1 record, with ERA of 1.69
2. Czech has a 5-1 record, with ERA of 1.45
3. Citlaly has a 5-1 record, with ERA of 1.75
4. She read the heading of the article too fast. Alabama's history has a record of 8 perfect games total
5. I pointed out that Cat Osterman has a total of 7 perfect games in her 4 years at Texas - that blew her mind.

Added: I also pointed out that on 3/27/2019 Shea O'Leary pitched a perfect game in Waco, winning 2-0.
 
I commented on a softball post on the UT Twitter page that the official statistics hadn’t been updated since before the Kentucky game and guess what .. up to date statistics for the team are now posted if anyone wants to check them out ;)
 
racerx5908 said:
We stayed for the Princeton game instead of going home to watch WBB @ K-State. There was one play that was so outstanding that we looked at each other and said, "Have you ever seen that play occur?" We had not. So later that night we pulled up the game on demand on ESPN+ and watched it again.

Top of the 5th inning. Mac Morgan has walked a Princeton player and that player has a pinch runner subbed for her. The next batter attempts a bunt. Scott comes shooting down the alley in front of Morgan, snatches the ball and throws it to first where Day catches it. During this time, the pinch runner as gone from first to second and then decides to steal third.

Also at this point, Cimusz sees that there is no one covering third and she hustles from home plate to third base. Day has caught the ball at first, getting the bunter out, and then sees that the pinch runner is headed for 3rd. She sees Cimusz arriving at third and with just a tiny delay due to hesitation, Day throws the ball to Cimusz at third, still with her catcher's mask on. Cimusz catches the ball and tags the runner who has dove head first to try to tag the bag.

Wow! What a heads up play by Day and Cimusz.
Click to expand...
 
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Lol you would think Texas would have learned their lesson from the last two tournaments they have had. These games will never start on time.
 
I don't think Bama has had to face such a good hitting team as Texas this year. You could see it in Fouts' face. My rule of thumb is that Texas hitting ramps up second time through they see the same pitcher and it showed with their shelling of Fouts.

Gutsy closeout by Czech.
 
Citlaly has far surpassed my initial expectations for her. She is very talented and I admittedly underestimated her quite a bit, and Czech was fantastic in relief for Morgan.

Mike white has really impressed me with his rotation and lineup the past couple weekends. Putting Atwood who is by far the better catcher in in the 5th inning in Bama game and moving Cimusz to 1B who is much better than Day to close out the game was a tremendous decision. Katie was fantastic at 1B with a few hard backhands picked like they were nothing on the day.

great two wins. This team is proving a lot of people wrong so far.
 
So very frustrated with Mike White and the players. Yes, they rallied from 0-3 to tie it up 3-0 and then went into a defensive shell after that. It was like they were hoping for some miracle double off the wall or HR to put the winning points on the board.

Mac pitched her guts out, but no support from her hitters.

When Patrick Murphy for the second time purposely walks Vivi Martinez to get to Katie Cimusz because he knows she's an easy out, you would think that Mike would put in a pinch hitter. But no, he thinks that even though Katie has gone 0-4, she'll somehow finally get a hit.

And the pop bunts near the end? Want to scream!

Vivi Martinez is both the future of SS and also it's biggest liability. Her throws tend to be on the high side. In Friday's two games, she was credited with 2 errors and I thought she caused a third one, but they put the blame on Day. In each case, she threw so high or off center that first base was pulled off the bag.

Tonight, she pulled Cimusz off the bag, but pulled her towards home plate so Katie caught the ball and tagged the runner and not the base. The second time Vivi threw off, she pulled Katie off the bag and the runner was safe.

Because she caused 3 errors on Friday, she got switched with Goode....who promptly showed them that SS was not her best position and they had to swap her and Scott back again.
 
Racer I really don't see how you can be frustrated with this team? Coach White has them so far ahead of how we played last year there is no comparison. Last night we faced a pissed off Montana Fouts who was throwing BB's laced with a lot of movement. When we tied the game last night at 3-3 we had 2 hits and Alabama had 10 hits!! That's due to the tenacity of this team. Our batters were so far behind the ball when swinging at Fouts pitches. Our bat speed could not catch up with Fouts' speed along with her drop and rise ball. I consider Leighanne Goode as having the best bat speed on the team and she rarely swings at pitches outside of the strike zone but last night Fouts had her totally hand cuffed swinging at pitches 6 inches off the plate.

I also wondered why Coach didn't pinch hit for Cimusz but his available choices were Whitaker, Gilbert, Popelka, or Brandon. He stuck with Katie hoping she was due. But again her bat was way behind Fouts speed.

Coach White seems to like to mix up his line up when he put Goode at SS and Martinez at 2B which clearly was a mistake which he corrected later in the game. These changes I agree are very frustrating. And the fact that Martinez made some very uncharacteristic throws to first which she'll correct.

I absolutely love this team and last night they got to see what elite pitching is like. They will only get better from this loss.

Alabama is a one trick pony with Fouts being the only elite pitcher on their staff. Their bats are not there and they are going to have a hard time competing in the SEC while pitching anyone not named Montana Fouts.
 
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