Has offense in College Softball increased over the past few years? Whether one is watching Mountain West, Pac10, or the College World Series (was that exciting this year or WHAT?), it seems that every game has a ball or two crushed over the fence. While softball purists may like the 1-0 extra inning game, I like a little bit of scoring when watching. To me, the perception that there is more offense in the college game than usual is a good thing. But, is perception the reality?
Being the stats weenie that I am, I took a look at average home runs per game in NCAA Division I over the past decade, as available on the NCAA Softball Stats page, to find out. Sure enough, as shown in the graph, home runs per game in all Division I games have gone up each year but two in the span from 2002 to 2009.
I will not bore the reader with the math, but the Rank von Neumann Statistical test verifies that there is indeed a trend upward in Home Runs (and not a random drawing). In fact, the record for average Home Runs per game in Division I was 0.314 HR per game in 2000, and every year since has been higher. Clearly, home runs have increased per game over time throughout Division I College Softball, but why? The short answer is, “Heck if I know!” I’m not aware of any significant rule changes in the college game that would have resulted in the increase. While I don’t know why there are more home runs, I do have a guess:
The number of Division I Softball teams has increased from 222 in 1999 to 273 in 2009. Could College Softball have gone through a pitching dilution because there were 50 more teams added to the sport over a 10 year span, and that is why home runs are up? Intuitively, this makes sense. 50 more teams mean a hundred or so more pitchers who would not have normally pitched in Division I.
Looking at the HR/game and the Teams/Season graphs, they both generally increase over time. Sure enough, when statistically analyzing number of teams to home runs per game, there is an 77.0% correlation between the two (indicating that there’s about an 77.0% match between the trend in home runs per game and the number of teams playing). Does other data back up our guess? PAC -10 Softball has arguably been the top conference in College Softball over the past decade, with nine of the last eleven World Series champions coming from it. The conference draws the best pitchers in College and has so for at least the past 11 years. Therefore, one could assume that there has not been a drop-off in pitching depth in the PAC-10 as there appears to have occurred in the rest of Division 1 Softball. If this assumption is true, and our hypothesis that Division I Home Runs have increased because or pitching dilution, then we would not expect to see a corresponding trend upward in PAC-10 home run data.
Average Home Runs for the PAC-10 are shown in the image to the right (I could only find info from 2002 to 2009).
Though 2009 showed a big jump in home runs from the previous year, the Rank von Neumann Statistical test proves that there is no trend up or down in home runs, and in fact there is no pattern from year to year. This data adds credence to our guess that pitching overall has been diluted over time by the addition of 50 new Division I teams in the past 11 years. Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that as the NCAA adds Division 1 Softball teams to its roster, pitching dilutes somewhat resulting in more home runs per game. Hey, I am not knocking it! Like I said before, I like more balance between offense and pitching, and the game is as exciting as ever. 50 more teams now means about 900 more women getting college scholarships, which I know a great thing!
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