How much better is college softball now than 10-20 years ago?

Welcome to Discuss Fastpitch

Your FREE Account is waiting to the Best Softball Community on the Web.

Oct 26, 2019
1,375
113
This conversation reminds me of the Ted Williams and Tony Gwynn interview where Williams was asked how he would hit in today’s game. His answer was somewhere around .290. Gwynn asked if it was because he thought the pitching was that much better today and his reply was something like “I would probably only hit .290 because I’m 75 years old.
 
Jul 8, 2020
54
18
You might see evidence of a livelier ball looking at stats. But I agree you can't compare the quality of players using raw stats.

One thing I'm not getting bites on -- I posted video of a 2003 game. I'm curious to hear what people see in that (or any other game) from a previous era. Does the quality of play not see as good as today's game when watching that? What I see are weaker swing mechanics, weaker throwing (overhand) mechanics and less athleticism. Not by a ton, but enough that it's noticeable. I'm not qualified to comment on the pitching quality as I don't know the mechanics very well or how to scout pitchers.
Yes, quality of play seems different, but that is expected in my opinion. youth sports is drastically different than when i was growing up. the advances in technology, the amount and specialized/sophistication of training are on another level. Specializing in one sport vs. multiple sports, etc. Big $ in youth sports which is also pushing the advancements. This is not true just of softball, i would say in all sports their are advancements.
 
Jun 8, 2016
16,118
113
He was a career .262 hitter. That is almost exactly major league average. In his era shortstops weren’t expected to hit like they do today, but as good as he was defensively - if he hit major league average now he would be in good shape in today’s game too.
He had a career OPS of 0.666. That might cut it nowadays as good as he was defensively..not sure.
 
Jun 8, 2016
16,118
113
However, OPS doesn’t take into account the fact he could do a backflip.
Fair point..at one point I viewed myself as the next Ozzie..as I got older I realized I could barely make it out to SS without tripping NVM do a backflip and reality set in..
 

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
42,830
Messages
679,478
Members
21,445
Latest member
Bmac81802
Top