Pitching is a lot like real estate: location, location, location.
That's an expression I've heard all my life, and just like a lot of properties in the struggling economy, pitching has depreciated quite a bit in the 2009 version of the Women's College World Series.
A year ago, the field of eight teams combined for five NFCA first-team All-America pitchers, another on the third team, a former WCWS Most Outstanding Player and a freshman who starred on the USA junior national team.
That was the field. Each team had a great pitcher inside the circle every game.
With a quick examination of the pitchers in this year's field, we can quickly answer two questions: Why has offense been so prevalent when history would suggest otherwise? And why UF and Washinton?
Well, Georgia and Arizona pitched by committee, and their best pitchers had ERAs of 1.95 and 2.52, respectively. Arizona State pitched Hillary Bach (2.82 ERA) every game and Missouri didn't trot out an impressive hurler on its way to a two-and-out.
That leaves UF, Washington, Alabama and Michigan.
The Crimson Tide have the most overrated pitcher in the country in sophomore Kelsi Dunne, who somehow got a first-team nod. My running joke this weekend was that Dunne has never NOT given up a grand slam to UF, and Ali Gardiner proved me right with her dramatic walk-off granny to put the Gators in the championship series. The grand slam was the fourth UF has hit off of Dunne in the last two seasons, and it ended Dunne's season with an unimpressive 1.62 ERA.
The Wolverines actually pitch the ball extremely well with Nikki Nemitz, a first teamer, and Jordan Taylor, who was a second teamer last season. They suffered a tough-luck, 1-0 loss to the Gators and ran into a hot Bulldogs offense in a 7-5 loss.
We'll count them as our first legitimately impressive pitching squad.
Now that we've done all that work, we're left with the Gators and the Huskies, the heavyweights of college pitching.
Stacey Nelson compiled a 0.48 ERA while earning Southeastern Conference Pitcher of the Year for the second straight season, and Danielle Lawrie, who led Canada to a victory over USA in the last Olympics, logged a 0.99 ERA on her way to winning USA Softball National Collegiate Player of the Year.
If you want to know why there have been a record number of home runs in the tournament, why Georgia broke the single-game WCWS record and why Alabama scored the most runs in a single tournament game, it's because the value of pitching has been depreciated here in 2009.
Crimson Tide coach Patrick Murphy attributed the power surge to the small field, but the dimensions of the field were the same last season when UF's six runs against Texas A&M were the second largest output in any one game.
This time around, the six-run plateau has been crossed nine times by six different teams, and there are still at least two more games to be played.
Yes, Nelson and Lawrie both got hit around in the semifinals, but their teams won the first two games because of the their aces.
The NBA missed out on a marketing dream because Dwight Howard and the Magic prevented a LeBron James-Kobe Bryant showdown in the Finals.
NCAA softball, however, got its best-case scenario, and ESPN should be happy it gets to show Nelson and Lawrie going head-to-head in a best-of-three format.
