(Photo: Nicholas Badders/WCSN)
Following a season which saw the Arizona State softball program reach the College World Series, head coach Trisha Ford and her staff have a new challenge ahead of themselves as they enter the 2019 season.
On Oct. 30, the Sun Devils announced that top pitcher Giselle Juarez and sophomore first baseman Danielle Gibson intended on transferring. With Juarez and Gibson departing from the program, the Sun Devils will look for new leaders in ERA, wins and home runs to step up in 2019.
In the circle, each of the four Sun Devil pitchers from the previous season have departed from a pitching staff which boasted a 1.56 ERA while holding opponents to a .190 batting average. With the departures, No. 12 Arizona State is left with redshirt junior Cielo Meza and two true freshmen, Abby Andersen and Mikayla Santa Cruz, as the only pitchers listed on the roster. Meza, a transfer from Long Beach State, ranked 20th in the nation with a 1.26 ERA in 2017 for the 49ers.
“[Meza] has had a phenomenal fall and she’ll tell you the last couple of weeks has felt better than ever,” Ford said Thursday afternoon. “She’s ready to take this program to where we expect it to go. She embraces it, she enjoys the challenge and we work well with chips on our shoulder.”
Offensively, the Sun Devils return the core of their lineup in spite of the loss of their 2019 team leader in home runs. With the loss of Gibson and the graduation of Marisa Stankiewicz, ASU loses the only two players who produced double-digit home runs for a team that ranked 15th nationally in home runs per game.
The Sun Devils, who ranked 52nd in the country in scoring at 5.16 runs per game in 2018, will be led by junior Kindra Hackbarth. Hackbarth was the Devils team leader in batting average while starting in all 61 games for ASU in 2018. She was named to the All Pac-12 Second Team for her play.
“We’re pretty lucky,” Ford said when speaking about ASU’s depth at the position player level. “We were really young last year so we have quite a few that are returning… They’re comfortable, they know what it takes to play at a high level, and they know the expectations.”
With a 16-8 mark in conference play last season, the Sun Devils finished in third place in the Pac-12 standings. With Oregon and UCLA being separated by only one game in the 2018 conference race, it will require an improvement from the eight conference losses ASU suffered last season to compete for the Pac-12 crown in 2019.
Schedule Notes
Arizona State opens their season Friday at 4:30 p.m. with a matchup against Western Michigan. The meeting with the Broncos kicks off the Kajikawa Classic in Tempe, as the Sun Devils begin with five different opponents including power-fve foes Missouri and Kansas.
“It’ll give us a good gage of where we’re at,” Ford said. “I’m very confident that we’ll come out and compete so I’m ready to see what they’ve got.”
Speaking of power five foes, the Sun Devils entertain six such opponents at home during non-conference play in 2019, including two matchups with the Texas Longhorns during the Sun Devil Classic March 1-3.
Pac-12 play for the Sun Devils opens March 15, with Arizona State playing host to the Oregon State Beavers, who they defeated twice in three tries during a series in Corvallis last Spring. The Sun Devils end conference play with a trip to Eugene to play the Ducks May 9-11.
“[The Pac-12]’s going to be tough again,” Ford said. “It’s going to be crazy… For me it’s going to be the grind again but you’ve got to love it. If you don’t love it, you shouldn’t be playing in the Pac.”
