(Photo: Alli Cline/WCSN)
With one tournament to go before entering conference play, one thing is for sure about the 2015 Arizona State softball team:
These girls dig the long ball.
The team as a whole has cranked out a total of 31 home runs over the course of its first 22 games. If this continues, the club is currently on pace to hit about 77 on the season.
But contrary to what the statistics say, hitting for power hasn’t necessarily been a point of focus for the Sun Devils in their approach at the plate.
“We’re trying to hit hard ground balls,” Head Coach Craig Nicholson said. “Sometimes you will get a mistake and hit the ball out of the ball park…but we are not trying to do that at all.”
Bethany Kemp, Haley Steele and Amber Freeman have been the leaders of this power surge. Each of the three seniors have hit at least five home runs through the team’s first four non-conference tournaments.
Freeman has been a catalyst of success in the middle of the ASU lineup, hitting a team leading six home runs while getting on base in nearly 50 percent of her at-bats. It’s been a hot start to say the least for the unofficial captain, as she looks to propel her team back into Women’s College World Series contention.
“She’s had some big hits in some big spots,” Nicholson said. “I think she’s feeling good about what she’s doing and she’s off to a great start.”
The big time production out of the gate may be due to a less strenuous workload on Freeman’s knees, as the manager has tried to her limit her duties as a backstop.
“We’re trying to not have her behind the plate a ridiculous amount,” Nicholson said. “She’ll never be 100 percent, but I think closer than she was at this time last year.”
And even though she has been humble in agreeing that she has kicked off this year in fantastic fashion, Freeman has taken note of the influx in power that she and her teammates have experienced this season.
“Last year I think I only had one home run at this point in the year,” Freeman said. “I have just been trying to square that ball up as best as I can. Like coach said, we’re just trying not to hit the bottom of the ball, but when you square it up and get that backspin going it can get out of the park really fast.”
As a freshman last year, shortstop Chelsea Gonzales showed us all that she was capable of with the bat. She hit .333 with nine doubles and eight home runs, and became the first Sun Devil in history to hit a homer in three consecutive postseason games.
Yet somehow, Gonzales may be in for an even better campaign in her sophomore season. She’s quickly narrowing in on her last season’s home run total of nine, after already smashing five this year.
“Our hitting coach, (Robert Wagner) has had a big impact on my power,” Gonzales said. “He’s helped me get back to a more normal swing after I was feeling uncomfortable at the plate early this year, and now I’m just trying to attack the first pitch every time.”
The Sun Devil offense trails only the Washington Huskies for the Pac-12 home run lead, the team that they will fittingly face in their first conference series of the season.
And as spring turns to summer in the valley, expect the big yellow balls to be soaring far over the fences of Farrington Stadium. This ASU offensive attack has turned the Sun Devils’ Tempe ballpark into a launching pad for its fifteenth birthday, and they’re showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
