Another perspective a dad offered me last night that I truly hadn't thought of: these girls that are already committed don't need to be pitching every inning of every game to stay sharp and improve. Too many great pitchers get ridden when the games are important. He was saying basically a quarter of the innings is plenty and reduces the risk of injury. So letting someone else be the workhorse made sense to him.
DD didn't play this summer, but her last experience with travel ball (and my last experience coaching) was at the 23u level. Our entire team was college players. Honestly, not a single player cared how much they played. Several actually requested breaks. But that was not because they were not competitive. They wanted to win every single game. But there was definitely a completely different mindset than I was used to from previous years. Honestly, I really enjoyed it.