1. We know Jensen and Hansen are. Pease seems physically OK. She’s just struggling with her command, which could be the result of off-season surgery.
2. Rutgers can hit a little bit, and Gabby Callaway looks like an All B1G player offensively and defensively. And we gifted them some runs, but to their credit every time their backs were to the wall in games 2 and 3 they hit a big HR to extend the game. Some of that of course is on our pitchers, too.
3. Montana Fouts is struggling some for Alabama this year. She was lights out like Jordy Bahl is for Oklahoma as a freshman, and still really good but hurt a lot as a sophomore. Sometimes at this age, priorities shift, life throws changes, and maybe some of the phenoms tire of putting in the work to be the best, whereas you also see late bloomers steadily improve from freshman to senior year. So it’s really an individual thing, and hard to predict unless you are working directly with a player during the off-season. Regarding Fiser, she struggled with her command out of the gate in 2020. We were kind of believing she would kick it in gear for the stretch run and the season was abruptly cancelled. Then, she committed to coming back for another run at a WCWS, and the B1G decided pretty late in the game to go with a conference only schedule, which basically sealed the fate of any B1G team that had hopes of hosting a regional. Hardly what a nationally-relevant pitcher would have wanted to hear.
4. I can’t comment on that. But I agree there have been some situations where we needed a long ball where I would have rolled the dice and pinch hit for someone who hadn’t had success against the pitcher she had been facing all game. We as fans always think that we are better evaluators of talent than the coaches, if we could just see the kids play a little. Of course the coaches see these kids in practice every day, and have lots of practice video to confirm where and how big the “holes” in each hitters’ swing are.
