Five, eight, 13 and 17. What’s the odd one out?
You might be tempted to hoist your hand and say eight — it’s the only even number after all. Or maybe 17, the largest of the four. Perhaps you’re going to go with the smallest number and pick five. Well, if you did, you would be right.
But where you’re wrong is assuming it was odd because it was small.
You see, these four numbers are runs from Northwestern in this week’s stretch of games. The five came against DePaul on Wednesday, a game filled with the allure
of an “easy win” on paper, but ultimately exposed some of the same inconsistencies that have lingered throughout the season.
Five is the odd one out because of the structure that came with it. A loss, yes, but a sloppy one at that. All hands on deck couldn’t save the ship from drowning, and sometimes I think that’s a good metaphor for the downs of this season.
The Waterfall
Offensively, Northwestern showed clear improvement compared to its midweek loss to DePaul. After only managing six hits in that contest, the Wildcats posted 10, 14 and 15 hits across their three-game series against Penn State and outscored their opponent 39-9.
Despite this surge, lineup imbalance remains a concern. Production declines sharply from the top to the bottom of the order. The top three hitters combined for an average of .625 over the weekend, followed by .400 from the middle third and just .310 from the bottom third. Perhaps in a 10U league, this decline was acceptable; you put your “worst” hitters at the bottom and “best” at the top. But in a power five D1 program? You need and expect depth from all areas of your roster.
Yes, you can still have your power hitters in the four spot and a great eye as your leadoff, but this drastic decline is concerning. The bottom of your lineup is supposed to bring it back around to the top, to keep momentum going, and Northwestern is not showing that now.
The only reason why the bottom-third production was as high as it is at the moment is due to Izzy Cunnea’s .667 performance, the second-best on the team for this weekend. This is phenomenal and exactly what you need from the bottom of your roster. Even recent lineup adjustments, particularly replacing Garden with McCue in the eight spot, have yet to yield positive results.
Above are the averages from this weekend and this season. For simplicity in who is leading the team, I also included the player rankings to the far right. As the numbers show, season-long trends support this imbalance, indicating the issue is not isolated to a single weekend.
Situational hitting further underscores the importance of a lineup flow. Leadoff hitters reached base seven of the 18 times this weekend, and in those instances, Northwestern scored in six innings. When the leadoff failed to reach, seven of those innings resulted in no runs. Although contrary to last weekend, there were four innings where, without the leadoff producing a baserunner, the ‘Cats scored.
They had multiple two-out rallies, scoring 11 in this situation, but never did they happen strictly with two outs. Importantly, these were rarely true two-out rallies; most were sustained by baserunners who reached earlier in the inning. While this indicates a great job at finishing, it does not indicate sustaining.
Starter Pack
This is a trend I’ve noticed for some time, but the sample size initially felt too small to draw meaningful conclusions. Then, I remembered that softball is a game of inches, and the smallest of things always matter.
If Marina Mason is consistently the most effective pitcher, when others are struggling you might ask why the first-year isn’t brought in for relief.
On the surface, it seems like a logical adjustment, but in practice, it’s not. Head coach Kate Drohan has tried this change a couple of times, and it’s rarely ever a good one.
Here are the stats.
Due to a limited sample size in relief (just 23 batters faced compared to 445 as a starter), raw numbers alone are misleading. I tried my best to normalize the stats by dividing each statistic by the number of respective batters faced, and the totals are below.
As shown, Mason demonstrates stronger command and zone control when starting games compared to entering in relief. The split in performance is significant: in relief appearances, she allows nearly 30% more hits and roughly 25% more runs.
What I find interesting is that in relief situations, the first-year is generally capable of escaping inherited innings without immediate damage, which is definitely a good sign. However, when she does concede runs, they tend to come via high-impact hits or in subsequent innings after her initial entry. This suggests the issue is not situational pressure, but rather a stylistic mismatch. Her rhythm and command simply sit better when she’s the first option.
I bring this all up to hammer home yet again that Northwestern needs more reliable pitching options, for starting and relieving. Mason, as shown, cannot do everything all the time, and it’s taking a toll to assume that she can.
Sweeping it up
There were significant strides in defense this weekend. I am very happy to report that the team only committed one error, and no runs resulted from it. This marks the cleanest stretch of the season, and reinforced a fundamental truth: when you make fewer errors, you win more games. Who would have thought!
In a breakdown between DePaul and the three-game matchup in Happy Valley (a loss vs three wins), the ‘Cats also showed significant differences. I went ahead and did the defensive efficiency ratios for each circumstance. DER captures the percentage of balls put in play that are converted into outs. Against the Blue Demons, Northwestern posted a DER of 61.54% compared to 78.57 in the Penn State series. That nearly 17-point difference reflects a significant shift in how consistently the defense was able to end plays.
For this stretch of games, the percentages aren’t even about fielding cleanly. Instead, it’s more of how these balls are being handled. On several extra-base hits and playable balls, players appear to be taking less-than-optimal angles to the ball, which turned what could have been routine outs or singles into more damaging contact.
I see this specifically with the outfielders in the DePaul game. Hits to the fence are always a guaranteed single, maybe a double, but it felt like slow routes off the bat had these turn into clear doubles and triples — costing more runs in the process.
Eleven to go
I’m excited that Northwestern has hit 20 wins on the season, even if it came a couple of weeks later than last year. What’s important now is winning each series that stands before it and closing out the season with 30 wins. A tough feat, as I’ve expressed before, but not one I don’t think is possible in some universe.
I’ve talked about so many varying things in this column, but it ultimately boils down to one thing: trust and consistency.
There is trust in lineup construction, trust in pitching decisions, trust in defense. Can your production come from each spot in the lineup? Can you trust any of your pitchers to hold it down? What about the defense making the plays it needs to?
Trust is the first step, but it’s not enough on its own. It needs consistency to back it up. The patterns this season have made it clear that when the ‘Cats play clean, they look like a team capable of beating anyone on the schedule.
That is the challenge and opportunity for the final stretch of the season. Not to find perfection, but to find repeatability. Ten more wins won’t come from nowhere; they will come from stacking dependable innings, dependable at-bats and dependable defensive sequences. One series at a time.
And if that consistency finally clicks in, the goal that once felt ambitious might not feel so far away after all.
