The Scorecard: Four Feet Under

Northwestern’s season has come to an end with the epitome of salt in the wound: the absence of an NCAA tournament berth.

But this outcome was never particularly shocking. The Wildcats spent the entire season failing to answer the defining question every bubble team eventually faces: why should the committee trust this team with a bid?

Some will say Northwestern failed to make the tournament because they lost a couple of “critical games.” I disagree. There is not a single game you can pinpoint as “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” It was the way this team had been throughout it all.

What the ’Cats struggled with this year was consistency across all facets of the game — and the selection committee doesn’t hand out bids based on what a team could be; they evaluate what is in front of them. The truth was that Northwestern clearly didn’t have what it took.

A brutal loss to Penn State in the Big Ten Tournament was not the nail in the coffin; it simply continued to expose the cracks that were always there.

Wipeouts

We’ll first look at the most glaring blemish on Northwestern’s resume: errors. The ’Cats tallied 70 to finish the season, their highest total since 2012 (72) and the worst mark of the last decade. The time they got closest to this was a stretch from 2016 to 2018, where they hovered around 67 errors.

The weakest area defensively was the left side of the infield, particularly third base and the 5-6 hole, where errant throws and missed plays appeared most frequently. Those mistakes were especially costly because they often came on difficult bang-bang plays where simply recording the out would have halted momentum. Instead, Northwestern repeatedly gave opponents extra chances.

More importantly, the issue was not necessarily the sheer volume of errors alone, but how persistently they surfaced throughout the season. Of the 50 games played this season, only 30% were error-free. Every other contest features at least one mistake, with some garnering up to five.

The Wildcats rarely played clean softball for extended stretches, and for a bubble team operating with little margin for error in the first place, those extra opportunities steadily accumulated over time.

Even besides errors, it felt like effort for the play was spotty, so this is where I turn to my favorite statistic that measures the number of balls in play converted into outs.

Earlier in the column, Tennessee and Washington served as benchmarks for the defensive efficiency ratio (DER) because of their elite defensive prowess and, in Washington’s case, its more attainable profile. Although Tennessee has since dropped to No. 8, I kept its final DER for some consistency and pivoted to Michigan for the second comparison.

The Wolverines were one of the last four in for the NCAA tournament, earning their way to the Norman regional to face Oklahoma. They sure have their work cut out — but that’s besides the point.

As shown by the graph, the ’Cats (69.12) rank just barely above their Big Ten opponent (68.44), yet are drastically below their SEC neighbor (77.38).

So it was clear Northwestern lacked the caliber of an elite team, but it certainly hung around another bubble team that snuck in. But this was only barely, and that distinction does matter. The margin between the ‘Cats and Michigan was razor thin, and it was likely only this thin because of one reason.

Case in point:

Marina Mason has been talked about many times in my column and within the broader Big Ten world, and deservedly so. The freshman certainly came in and immediately made a name for herself, both within the Northwestern roster and the greater pitching landscape. As you can see above, the DER when Mason was in the circle sat at 73.44, the team’s highest and largest driver of overall average.

From there, the drop-off was significant. Signe Dohse sat at 69.75, Riley Grudzielanek at 66.04, and Emma Blea and Renae Cunningham fell to 65.15 and 63.39, respectively. Each step drops Northwestern away from the version that makes the tournament.

Too often did weekends feel dependent on what happened in the circle and which version of a pitcher you would get on a given day. One outing could be normal and the next catastrophic. And yes, this counts for all the pitchers. Mason had her bad days, too, and the deeper problem was collective — when one pitcher was off, the weight seemed to spread across the whole staff like a fog that nobody could quite shake.

There was virtually never a reliable arm to get out of a jam quickly, and this is the structural problem that no single win or loss can explain. Rotations of arms function as an ecosystem, and Northwestern’s thinned out too quickly once you moved past its best option. One pitcher, no matter how talented, cannot carry a staff through the grind of a full regular season and deep into the pressure of the postseason. The weight becomes too much, and eventually, it shows.

There were always good highlights in the defense, Mason’s no-hitter, the double-plays,  the shutouts, the diving catches, the throw-outs, the one-two-three innings. But these never stuck around long enough to outweigh the lapses. Throughout the year, this fragility was never hidden. It lived in the numbers and in the late-inning leads that slipped all too much, and it manifested even in the games that were clear wins.

Stranded

It’s hard to talk about the hitting production in accordance with how the season ended, because it was so up and down, but this is an attempt to qualify what might have been the trouble.

Softball is rarely won through opportunity alone, and continuation is crucial when the pressure is on. The numbers Northwestern put up at the plate this season were equally encouraging and maddening, depending on the angle you take, because given the situation on the defensive side, the offense couldn’t always compensate.

As a collective, Northwestern hit .318 with runners on base, and, with 319 runs accumulated throughout the season, this lineup was clearly capable of producing runs. But, again, the name of the game was consistency. Too often, production came in isolated bursts. A single inning could look huge, but momentum could vanish quickly after that, either on the defensive side, the offensive side or both.

This order was sustainable, yes, but the top bit of the order carried that feeling forward. Emma Raye was the heartbeat of this lineup, only getting better as the season progressed. While others fluctuated around her, she became one of the few constants, along with Kaylie Avvisato. What’s frustrating is that if these two were having an off day, or even the top half of the order in general, it felt like the whole lineup would also have an off day.

In big games and moments, the middle of the order could not always capitalize, and the bottom frequently created easy outs. Naturally, most lineups are constructed with stronger hitters near the top, but this doesn’t mean you have your bottom hitters under .300. In a powerful lineup, every batter is hovering around the low .300 mark if not higher because you aren’t starting at the top of your lineup every inning, and you need production from all facets.

Especially for Northwestern, this was a huge weakness. Leadoff batters hit .358 throughout the season, and the team relied heavily on this metric. A pattern emerged during the season that if leadoff batters failed to get on, runs failed to score in that inning. When this initial spark never ignited, the roster struggled after that; with two outs, the ’Cats hit just .258. And while this average will never be perfect, as it quite literally can’t be, being this low is not a great marker of sustained innings and rallies when needed most. Especially when considering that leadoff batters can’t, and didn’t, always get on

The gap between what this offense was capable of and what it actually produced in critical moments is where Northwestern’s season lived and ended.

Until February

Many argue this was never going to be a big year, but I think that is unfair. Unfair to the seniors who played the last games of their career, unfair to the freshmen who are trying to cement themselves, unfair to the coaches who pour their heart into the team and unfair for every player in the rotation.

The team had a lot of struggles, and I’m sure no one would disagree with that, but there was always something good.

The team adjusted to a new ballpark, broke multiple records and started to figure itself out. Avvisato moved to a center-field position and made it her own; Raye had the best season of her career; Mason proved to be a solid foundation NU can build on for years to come; Neito led the team with a stellar leadoff spot; Bridget Donahey stepped back into her role at short; and Kelsey Nader made dozens of diving plays out in right.

The danger of a disappointing season is that it can erase everything that came before it. It shouldn’t. Growth doesn’t always look like wins, and this roster gave reasons for optimism even when the results didn’t show it.

This wasn’t the best, but it wasn’t nothing either. We can hope for better days ahead, or linger in what could have been — but perhaps the truest remedy is simply to let it be.

What happened, happened. We may wish it were otherwise, but the present is what it is. Until February comes around, the diamond will stay empty for the ’Cats.

But the game always comes back, and so will they.