It has been a few weeks since we last checked in on the two premier spring sports, softball and baseball. The calendar is now well into the month of May, and with it brings the postseason of each of these two sports. Softball is done with the regular season and plays their first B1G Tournament game tonight, while baseball has two more weekends of regular season play before the B1G Tournament begins over Memorial Day (for those squads that qualify). Thus, with the most important weeks of the season upcoming, I thought it would be a good time to check back in and assess the stakes. 

 

It's Softball Postseason Time 

The regular season for Michigan Softball finished up this past weekend, and Michigan finished the season 34-15, going 14-8 in the B1G. That was good for fourth in the conference, behind champion Northwestern, as well as Nebraska and Illinois. That finish is a considerable disappointment compared to this team's goals and the program's expectation, but now is not the time to analyze what all went wrong. The season can be salvaged with a strong postseason, so let's focus on what lies ahead and how there could be a pathway to success. 

The B1G Tournament is this weekend and it's being held at Secchia Stadium up in East Lansing, so it's a very accessible tournament for locals looking to travel for some high quality softball! Michigan is the fourth seed, which got them a bye into tonight. The bracket is below: 

The Wolverines will play 5-seed Maryland at 7:00 PM tonight on BTN. Maryland is a tough test, but Michigan did take two out of three from the Terps in College Park back in mid-April. I'd expect a very competitive game tonight in the quarterfinals. 

A win would (likely) have the Wolverines playing the conference champion Northwestern Wildcats in the semifinals. A daunting task, but not one that's out of reach by any means. The 'Cats took two of three from Michigan in Evanston during the first weekend in April, but all three games were very tight and Michigan held late leads in all three. No reason that a re-match between those two squads wouldn't be hyper-competitive. A championship game would likely be against either Illinois or Nebraska. Michigan did not see Illinois in the regular season, but they did see Nebraska and their fearsome offense, and it didn't go very well. Big Red took both games at Alumni Field in late March, but if nothing else, that should leave Michigan hungry. Illinois features several good bats and a solid pitching staff and would test Michigan if that matchup were to happen. 

In other words, I think this year's B1G Tournament is pretty wide open. Would it shock me to see Michigan tonight? Nope. Would it shock me to see Michigan win the whole thing? Nope. There's a wide range of outcomes here, but that's what you'd expect in a conference that didn't really see one team cruise away. Northwestern won the regular season title, but with four losses, more than usual. Five teams finished within 4.5 games of each other, and Michigan is in that group. Any of those five teams winning would not surprise me. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: More bat and ball]

[JD Scott]

What needs to happen for Michigan to win the B1G Tourney this year? For one, they're going to need strong pitching. Alex Storako has had an extremely disappointing conference performance, but the flashes of brilliance are still there. She still has great swing and miss stuff, but the hard contact needs to be limited. Home runs have been an issue throughout the B1G slate and that's the big question mark going into the conference tourney. Unless Storako bounces back to true vintage form, Michigan is likely going to need someone else to give them solid innings. Meghan Beaubien is probably not the answer the way the year has gone, but I think Lauren Derkowski could be a weapon to use for a few innings here and there. As is the case with every Michigan team the last five years, they'll go as far as the pitching can take them, so step one to winning this event is a good effort from the hurlers. 

Offensively, Michigan will need to build on the momentum they've gotten going the last couple of weeks. After being mired in a slump for much of the conference schedule, they have scored 6 runs or more in their last four games. Over the last twelve games, the team is scoring over 5.5 runs per game. The bats have started to heat up recently, and the lineup looks a bit more intimidating than earlier. Power is still an issue to some extent, but the team now boasts six hitters that have an OBP >.385 and seven hitters with an OPS >.800. They're getting on base more, and the speed of Kristina Burkhardt, Annabelle Widra, Audrey LeClair, and Lexie Blair is causing some problems for opposing defenses. The speed helps when it comes to manufacturing runs, which is always so pivotal in big-time NCAA softball games between two good pitchers. 

As always, when it comes to winning an event like the B1G Softball Tournament, it's a combination of factors. You'll need stellar pitching to keep you in games and match the prowess of the arms you'll see on opposing teams, but also need the hitters to scratch out runs in big moments. Whether that's through a homer, or one player getting on base, stealing a bag or two, and then being driven in through situational hitting, it doesn't really matter. The story of this team has been half-a-season of excellent pitching and then the hitters coming around later, but they haven't really clicked together. By the time the hitters began waking up, Storako had entered her slump and Beaubien has been off all season. If one of those two can snap back and re-enter the groove, while the hitters stay productive, the title is there for the taking. 

 

[JD Scott]

Softball NCAA Bracket Watch 

Though the B1G schedule has been disappointing to say the least, the Maize & Blue are still in a strong position to make the NCAA Tournament. In some years, a 14-8 B1G record is enough to put a bid into jeopardy, but the combination of the conference having a strong year and the quality wins Michigan banked in the non-conference should be enough to get the Wolverines in. As it stands today, the Wolverines sit 24th in RPI and in a 64 team tournament, there shouldn't be a ton to worry about. They have wins over RPI #16 UCF, #20 LSU, #9 Duke, #23 Kentucky, #10 Northwestern, and #26 Ohio State (x2). There are bad losses on the resume, but even the Miami (OH) defeat is to a very good MAC team, 69th in RPI. It's not the season anyone wanted, but Michigan should keep its NCAA Tournament streak alive, no matter what happens this weekend at the BTT. 

Right now, Michigan is looking at a berth on the 2-line. 247's Oklahoma blog has been doing a bracketology column for the past few weeks, and their update last week had Michigan as the 2 seed in the Tempe regional, hosted by national #10 Arizona State. College Sports Madness' bracketology update last week had Michigan as the 2 seed in the Blacksburg regional, which is hosted by national #1 Virginia Tech. Between those two projections, the former is obviously more preferable to the latter, for it is considerably more winnable. When you're on the 2-line, all you ask for is a shot to take out the 1 seed in your regional, and given how seldom upsets to the top five or so teams happen in the first round of the softball tournament, you always want to draw a 1 seed who's in the national #8-16 range. Winning the B1G Tournament would go a long way towards locking Michigan into a more favorable regional assignment, as opposed to being stuck in a death trap with Oklahoma or VT. 

Would Michigan have a shot to win a regional if they did get paired with a national #8-16 seed? Sure. Just like I said in the above section, this team can do real damage if all the parts start clicking at once. The raw talent on the roster is good enough to beat a really good team, as they did in the non-conference. They have scratched out some quality wins, but they'll need the pitching to reach another gear that it hasn't had since earlier in the season, as well as the hitting to continue and perhaps just a bit of good luck. It's been a frustrating year of ups and downs, but this team can still achieve quite a lot in the next two weeks. 

 

[Marc-Gregor Campredon]

A Quick Baseball Update 

This update will be shorter because not a whole lot has changed since I last wrote about baseball, and also because the postseason is still a few weeks away. Michigan Baseball now sits at 25-21 with a 10-8 record in conference play, and are firmly in the "must win the B1G Tournament to make the NCAAs" category. The last time I wrote about the team, I said they needed to go on a heater to have a shot at an at-large bid, and that didn't happen. Instead they went 5-6 in the past eleven and are now really just looking ahead to the conference tournament. 

I wouldn't necessarily say this is a massively disappointing result, it just reflects where the program is at right now. It's somewhat of a rebuilding season, and they aren't going to be contenders for much of anything until the pitching improves. In the six losses since I last wrote about the team, they've allowed 10 runs, 9 runs, 12 runs, 18 runs, 6 runs, and 10 runs. Not great! The team has one (1) pitcher with an ERA under 4.00 and the cumulative team ERA now sits at a ghastly 6.38. Opponents are hitting .294 off Michigan pitching, and that's before you consider a walk rate of nearly 5 per 9 innings. The starters are not great and the bullpen is even worse. If the Wolverines indeed miss the tournament (as is likely), this will be why. 

There remain some bright spots in the batting order. The combination of Clark Elliott, Joe Stewart, Tito Flores, Jimmy Obertop, Ted Burton, and Matt Frey brings respectable offensive firepower, but they haven't been able to outscore the pitching problems consistently enough to string together the resume necessary to make the NCAAs. Although, one piece of happy news is that football/baseball dual sport athlete Joey Velazquez has had a nice season, going 12/42 at the plate with a pair of longballs and seven walks. 

The regular season finishes up with a three game set against Maryland, a lone game against MSU, and then three games against Rutgers. That's not the easiest slate, as the Terps and Scarlett Knights sit atop the league conference (finally a justification to go to 14 teams in the conference!). The top eight teams make the B1G Tournament, held Memorial Day weekend in Omaha, and currently the Wolverines sit fifth and have a three game lead over the team in ninth. Merely treading water in this last stretch of conference games should get Michigan into the B1G tournament, though it would be nice to go 5-2 and pick up a bit of momentum heading to Omaha.