It's been a little while since I last wrote about softball- the rush of postseason basketball and hockey got in the way. The last update was March 10th and at the time, Michigan was 13-6 and coming off the most difficult portion of the schedule. Though they had fallen a bit short of the ideal scenario, the team was still in discussion for being able to host a regional, if they were close to perfect the rest of the way, something that the team has done routinely in past years.

Unfortunately, that has not happened. In the past five or so weeks, Michigan has gone 14-7 against a slate of middling opponents, submarining any chance of hosting a regional and also tanking hopes for a fourth-straight regular season B1G championship. What went wrong? And what is a realistic hope the rest of the way? Let's investigate: 

 

A Quick Recap

We said at the time of the last update that softball was returning home for the easy portion of the schedule. The team handled the first week or so of cupcake opponents, sweeping Kent State at home and pitching shutouts of both Oakland and Toledo, before run-ruling Western Michigan. There was one more easy MAC opponent on the schedule in Miami (OH) before B1G play got going and that game represented the beginning of this current spiral. I will admit that the RedHawks are one of the best teams in the MAC and thus are not completely downtrodden, but it is still a game that Michigan should not, under any circumstances, be losing... let alone by four runs. Alex Storako was slapped around for four runs in 1+ inning, and Lauren Derkowski didn't do much better, while the Michigan bats only mustered three runs in a dispiriting 7-3 loss. 

The Wolverines then welcomed Nebraska to Alumni Field, who has been one of the NCAA's better hitting teams this season, and the Huskers affirmed their place as a legitimate B1G contender by sweeping the Wolverines. The series only lasted two gams due to weather, but Nebraska put up 10 runs in those two games, while continuing to pitch well and emerged with a pair of victories. A three game skid after already dropping 6 games in the non-conference pushed Michigan to the brink in terms of national implications, and that's before you remember they were then staring down a battle with #9 Northwestern in Evanston. 

[JD Scott]

Michigan had a 3-1 lead going into the 6th inning against NU in the first game before Alex Storako allowed back-to-back solo homers to tie it, and the 'Cats eventually won the game in extras. The next day's game was suspended by weather and resumed on the Sunday of that weekend. Again Michigan carried a two-run lead into the sixth thanks to timely hitting from Kristina Burkhardt and Sierra Kersten, and again homers off of Storako blew it, as a Rachel Lewis three-run blast gave Northwestern the winning runs. The Wolverines did salvage the final game with an 8-3 win, but by this point Michigan had begun B1G play 0-4, and in most years, 4 losses is too many to win the conference. 

Things were already bad at this juncture, but they have not gotten that much better. Against B1G opponents who Michigan typically makes easy work of like Penn State and Maryland, the Wolverines only managed to take two out of three games. They dropped the final game to the Nittany Lions 3-2 and the first game to Maryland by an ugly 5-1 score. In most years, winning the conference requires being perfect against every team not in the upper echelon, and then maybe dropping a game or two to teams in the upper echelon. Michigan dropped four against the top tier and has been far from perfect against the middle tier. As of now, they sit 7-6 in the B1G, six games back of Nebraska for first with only nine games to play. Not happening this year. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: Where things went wrong]

 

[JD Scott]

Why did it go wrong? 

That is all extremely disappointing to say the least. And pretty confusing. This Michigan team was not spectacular in the non-conference, but they had maybe one stinker (against USF, but to an elite pitcher) at most, and played roughly .500 against top 25 opponents, with wins over top 25 teams like UCF, LSU, and Duke. In past years, when the Maize & Blue perform like that in the non-conference, the B1G is mostly a breeze outside the top contenders. So why has it been a bellyflop instead? 

The easy answer is that the pitching has faltered. A post-Sierra Romero Michigan team without elite pitching is like Mariano Rivera without the cutter: completely toothless. Beginning on March 23, Michigan's pitching has allowed four runs or more four times and guess what Michigan's record is in those games? 0-4. If you extend it back to the start of the season, guess what Michigan's record is in 2022 in the ten games where the pitchers allowed four runs or more? 0-10. Due to multi-year problems with the program's ability to hit the softball, this team simply cannot win if the pitching can't hold the opponent to fewer than four runs. 

From the pitching side of things, Michigan's hurlers have struggled against opponents who, on paper, are easier than the opponents they did alright against earlier in the season. And by pitchers, I really mean Alex Storako. Meghan Beaubien and Lauren Derkowski have wobbled the whole season, but it was Storako who was keeping the fort up by being damn near unhittable. In the last piece, I said she had "made it through the toughest portion of the schedule with a a 0.75 ERA, a 0.77 WHIP, and a 11.7 K/7 inning ratio". After the Oakland game on March 16, Storako boasted a season ERA of 0.71 and a season WHIP of 0.70. Since that game, her ERA is 2.64 and her WHIP is 1.02. 

[JD Scott]

The biggest problem facing Storako is she's reverted to Old Storako, a still-effective strikeout artist who is prone to wild inconsistency, problems with command, and too much hard contact. After surrendering 21 walks in 78.1 IP to start the season, she's allowed 22 in her last 61 IP, including three games in which she allowed four walks. More distressingly, after allowing only one HR in the first 78.1 IP, she's allowed 13 HRs in her last 61 IP. When you add in Beaubien having the worst season of her career (also giving up the most HRs/7 innings of her career) and Derkowski not being ready to be an ace either, this is a Michigan team that, for the last month, has not had the sort of true ace that you need to win the conference. 

Meanwhile the hitters are not good enough. Their team batting average (.289) is okay but the same perennial problems continue to haunt Michigan's offense: they are a collection of banjo hitters who do not have the home run power that is necessary to threaten contemporary NCAA pitchers. Take a look at Northwestern and Nebraska, currently the class of the conference. Michigan's batting average isn't too much worse than Northwestern's (.293), but the Wildcats have slugged 50 long balls. Michigan has 25. Nebraska is the B1G's best offense, hitting .329 as a team with a collective .986 OPS and 67 homers. The Wolverines are a very long way away from that. 

Michigan actually has eight decent hitters in Burkhardt, Melina Livingston, Audrey LeClair, Hannah Carson, Lexie Blair, Annabelle Widra, Lauren Esman, and Sierra Kersten. The problem is that Kersten leads that group with *five* homers. Burkhardt, LeClair, and Widra have combined for one homer. Taylor Bump, Michigan's best power hitter a year ago, has only two. Meanwhile, Lou Allan, who exited the program in the offseason under mysterious circumstances to play her fifth season at Liberty, has six homers, which would lead the Wolverines. Michigan currently ranks 143rd in home runs per game, which, for a power five school, is dreadful. They rank 105th in team slugging percentage, 8th in the conference. For a team that regularly rakes in top 15-20 recruiting classes, it's unacceptable. 

[JD Scott]

It would also be less frustrating if it were a 2022 problem, but it isn't. After possessing one of the nation's most devastating offenses in 2015-16, Michigan has been unable to hit with the top contenders for five years now. They haven't posted a team OPS above .900 since 2017 and have wallowed under .850 for four of the past five seasons, including this year. This isn't a case of Michigan being screwed by being a northern school; sure that hurts, but it's not the central problem here because Michigan still recruits very well based on the rankings from Flo Softball, and other B1G teams (Northwestern, Nebraska, Minnesota) who bring in less talented players have been cobbling together substantially better offenses. Being a great offense in modern softball requires possessing elite power, because the ace pitchers don't give up many hits and thus maximizing the hits you get by turning them into runs through power is the way to go. 

Michigan has been able to nibble on the edges of the super regionals for the last couple seasons because they've often had elite pitching, something it seemed like they had this year up until mid-March. But the reason they haven't been a serious contender to go beyond the supers since Sierra Romero was around is because of the offense. And now without elite pitching for much of late March and April, we are seeing the ugly side of not being able to hit.

I don't know why the team can't hit with power and it's especially puzzling since Carol Hutchins has fielded offenses with good power throughout her lengthy career. But if this Michigan team doesn't make it out of the opening weekend, it will be six years since their last super regional appearance, at which point it's worth wondering if Michigan is a blue blood softball program anymore. If we're having that discussion, there's really only one culprit here, and it's the offense. 

 

[JD Scott]

Hope for the future? 

I know that was pretty grim, so let's take a step back and just stay inside the moment of 2022 for now. Is the season totally lost? I don't think so. As bad as the last stretch has been, the team still seems likely to make the NCAA Tournament because of the quality wins they banked in the non-conference, and the fact that the B1G is having a strong year, with both Northwestern and Nebraska in the top 25. As it stands currently, only 4 of Michigan's 13 losses this season are to teams outside the top 25, while they possess five top 25 wins of their own. That should be enough to get the Wolverines into the tourney so long as they don't totally collapse down the stretch. 

Moreover, while the B1G regular season crown is out of reach and the streak will be snapped, they can still win the conference tournament. That will be taking place in East Lansing and the combination of a favorable location and a number of pieces on the roster who won the event the last time it was held makes Michigan a bit better primed for that event. The Wolverines have been inconsistent in B1G play, but they held multi-run leads three different times against Northwestern and Nebraska, who right now are neck-and-neck for 1/2 in the conference. If they could play it tight with those teams then, there's no reason they can't battle hard in the conference tournament, especially with it being a single elimination event. 

The path to Michigan winning the BTT, and making noise in the NCAAs is pretty simple: one of their pitchers (likely Storako) needs to round into a true ace. If Storako could find the groove she was in early in the season, Michigan can make it a coinflip against almost anyone in the country not named Oklahoma. It won't be better than a coinflip because the offense is iffy to score any runs against elite pitching, but a dominant Storako can keep you in games even against top offenses. They're going to need better pitching to get the season back on track, but there is still time for that to happen. 

The remainder of the regular season includes a six game homestand starting tomorrow against Minnesota and continuing against Ohio State. It wraps up the weekend of Mother's Day in Madison against the Badgers, and while none of those teams are top contenders, none are pushovers either. All three are around .500 in the conference, with Wisconsin standing out at 8-4. Michigan will need to play much better softball over that stretch than they have recently, but if the team can go 7-2 or 8-1 and Storako is rounding back into form, then the team has shot to do something interesting in mid-May. We shall see.