At lunch today I saw an inning of women's softball, Canada vs. Australia.

Canada's #2 hitter led off with a single.

The #3 hitter (SS) tried to bunt, and popped out.

Rod Black: "The pitching has been excellent, but the Canadians are having trouble scoring runs"

The #4 hitter (LF) bunted successfully, pushing the runner to second and being thorwn out herself.

The #5 hitter (DH) struck out on four pitches. Inning over.

I can see three possible explanations for this sequence of events:

1) Softball tactics are VERY DIFFERENT from baseball tactics. This is I guesss possible, since perhaps there's less power in women's softball.

2) Either because of extremely poor team offensive skills or perhaps a weird stadium, our women are in an unbelievably low-run environment.

3) Our ladies are being victimized by wickedly poor in-game management.

Anyone know anything about women's softball and can educate me?

Going on my knowledge of baseball and very, very limited knowledge of softball, the pitcher should be credited for making a good pitch on the failed bunt attempt (she threw a riser which has tons of top-spin and forces the ball up). That said, the batter just didn't get on top of the ball. If you're giving up an out you *must* be able to execute the play properly. When the next batter also bunted, the corners were in about 5ft, making it a terribly small infield smaller and virtually impossible to bunt against for a base hit so I have to believe she was attempting a sac bunt. I'm not a big fan of that play (gotta love Earl Weaver) but I suppose it's not the worst thing a manager's ever called because the Canadian women have been having a wretched time creating runs. And the commentators stressed that the woman on second had speed enough that she would likely score on a 2-out hit. So with the DP coming up, the marginal base seemed very valuable. In the end, like the Jays, the hitting with RISP was non-existant.

From what I've seen, here and in the College World Series (I remember seeing Jennie Finch in the 2002 final, and thinking that the opposing pitcher was better looking), high level womens' softball is indeed an extremely low-run environment. Top pitchers are so dominant that small ball is definitely the way to go. I think the game is clearly too hitter-unfriendly, though since (I believe) the TSN/CBC commentator is an ex-pitcher, you probably won't hear her say that.

(It doesn't seem to just be Canada that always bunts when a runner gets on... I think it was one of Canada's opponents I saw having their cleanup hitter bunt with one out, and two on)

They actually made changes before this tournament to try to increase offence... the mound was moved back from 40 to 43 feet (which, with 65+MPH fastballs, still only gives the women about the same amount of time a MLBer gets to handle a 90MPH pitch), and the fences were moved back, to create more room to drop balls in the OF. The yellow ball was also supposed to help the batters better see the pitches.

But, apparently it wasn't enough, at least not for Canada. IIRC, the team had no hits off Japan in regulation, scoring their extra-inning run only because teams get to start with a runner on second base in extra innings. (I'm not sure if the rule only applied because it was 0-0, or if it's in effect for all ties)

teams get to start with a runner on second base in extra innings.

What's the logic there? Why change the rules after regulation? If I'm an offensively challenged team like Canada, that makes me want to play for a 0-0 tie and hope I get a single in extra-innings. Ahhhh, there are so many flaws with that concept!

http://www.athens2004.com/en/SoftballWomen/results?rsc=SOW400924&frag=SOW400900_C85A&btnSubmit=%3E%3E
COMN for team stats. Definitely a low-run environment. China appears to have 148 AB and zero extra-base hits.

With three 1-0 games yesterday as prime examples, it's not surprising that one-run strategies are employed.

I think it's mostly 1). I don't think the park factors are too significant, rather just the physical dimensions of the game which make the pitchers dominant. Sort of like with tennis, good servers are just extremely hard to break. It's not exactly a fair fight when the pitcher is only 40 feet away and throwing the ball pretty hard.

COMN for team stats.

Holy crap. Yeah, OK.

Canada's team OPS is .330 (not a typo), and that's average.

Wild.

A:

I wasn't really talking about poor execution so much as I was talking about how, in MLB, bunting a runner to second is pretty much never a good play, and bunting a runner to second with one out already and your cleanup-hitting LF at the plate is absolutely always a terrible play.

Anyways, it seems that the run environment is different enough that this sort of thing may make sense in elite women's softball.

This isn't unique to women's softball. Fastpitch softball in general is defined by low/no runs.

The International Softball Congress championships (like a club world championship) are on right now in the US (Fargo, maybe?). Sub 3-hitters are as common as anything.

It makes softball excruciating to watch, for me. So few players are actually making real swings. Between bunts and that running swing thing, blech.

SPOILERS FOR TODAYS GAME:

In case it's on later and you want to watch it:

Canada lost to Japan 9-1.

I can see three possible explanations for this sequence of events:

1) Softball tactics are VERY DIFFERENT from baseball tactics. This is I guesss possible, since perhaps there's less power in women's softball.

Its not a question of "power"...
Because the pitchers dominate, so much, its almost impossible to get a runner on and THEN have 2 hits, (3 hits in an inning or 1 walk followed by 2 hits), so the usefulness of "productive outs" goes way up..

ie, the odds of scoring a runner from second with two outs, is MUCH higher than the odds of scoring from first with two outs, (that is a given) but the odds of that second out being "unproductive" are very high too.. thus the sacrafice

teams get to start with a runner on second base in extra innings.

This is called the "International Tie-breaker Rule", since the odds of scoring in any inning must be close to 1:6 or more, and there is a 1:12 chance that BOTH teams might score in an inning... its possible for a tight game to go on for a very long time without resolution...

its more or less the same idea as playing hockey 4 on 4 in overtime.

think about it though, would you rather they used the "shoot-out" model?? We could have a Home-Runderby to settle ties.. I THINK NOT!

Simon Pond has been a disaster. He's now 1-for-16 in the tournament and yesterday was his second straight game with three strikeouts.

Right now the 5-6 hitters, Pond and Betts, are 2-for-33 in the tournament. Something needs to be done, if only because Pete LaForest keeps getting on base and keeps getting stranded. Ernie needs to think about moving Radmanovich and Stern up to the 5-6 spots, just to get a better chance at putting together big innings.

The bullpen did its job once again. Jason Dickson has a massive responsibility against Cuba, a game that Canada needs to win to get a favorable semifinal matchup.

One interesting thing that they talk about on the softball broadcast was the qusi-bunt swings. The have a bunt, a tap, and slap. From what I can tell taps and slaps are just bunts without moving your hands up the bat. They are not consirered bunts for scoring. This I assume is the natural product of the low scoring.

Italy shocked Taiwan by scoring 2 in th 9th to win 5-4. Updated standings:

Japan 4-1 (Taipei, Greece)
Canada 4-1 (Cuba, Australia)
Cuba 3-1 (Netherlands, Canada, Italy)
Australia 2-2 (Greece, Netherlands, Canada)
Netherlands 2-2 (Cuba, Australia, Taipei)
Taipei 2-3 (Japan, Netherlands)
Italy 1-4 (Greece, Cuba)
Greece 0-4 (Australia, Italy, Japan)

Canada has almost guaranteed itself a place in the semi-finals. Assuming the Dutch don't win all their remaining games, Canada holds the head-to-head edge over both Taiwan and the Netherlands.

Japan is now the clear favourite to win the first seed, so if Canada wants to avoid playing them in the semis they need to beat Australia.

Gah! I wanted to watch an un-spoiled replay today, but I had no idea when it was on. I flipped to CBC's site, and at their Olympic site, at the top of the screen is "Japan hands Canada first Olympic loss", below is the TV schedule. I think next time, I'll just tape the live coverage tommorow morning, and watch it before it can be spoiled.

It's a bad loss, but hopefully Canada will be able to beat either Cuba or Australia.

The Greek bats have finally exploded and they have already chased the Aussie starter Craig Anderson (AAA pitcher with Seattle). Australis have fired back and it's 4-3 Greece after 3.

Still 4-3 Greece after the fifth. Can someone please tell Australia that it's not fair to beat Japan's top professionals and lose to Greece in consecutive games?

Alex Cremidan, who pitches in the Midwest League, is doing well in relief for Greece. Cremidan is no piker; it's only low-A ball, but he's got 42 strikeouts and just 10 walks in 37.1 innings for South Bend this year.

Now 5-5 after the sixth. Except for their first game, Greece have played far too well at this tournament to go away winless. Beating Australia would be a good win for them.

Where are you guys getting the scorecast?

Australia has finally pulled away: 10-5 after 7.

you can find the results updated each inning at:

http://www.athens2004.com/en/BaseballMen/

http://www.athens2004.com/en/BaseballMen/results?rsc=BBM400919&frag=BBM400919_C73
or if you're really lazy, COMN for the Australia-Greece game.

Nevermond. I see on NBC's results page they have in-progress boxscores. Cuba pounding the Dutch, 5-0 in the 4th and the Aussies scored 5 in the 7th for a 10-5 lead.

on Canada - Japan, Johnson's biggest problem was not being able to locate his 12-6 curve. Didn't hit the zone with it until the 4th.

With Japan's 2-0 win over China in softball, Canada will finish fifth and will not make the playoffs.

On the plus side, Canada is almost assured of a playoff spot in baseball. The only scenario that I see where we could miss the playoffs is if Canada loses both remaining games, Australia loses to the Netherlands and Taiwan wins both remaining games over Japan and Netherlands. In that case we would be in a 3 way tie for third and it would be decided by runs scored/against. (I suppose if Japan loses to Greece, they could make it a four-way tie for second, but that is even less likely than the rest of this scenario :)

http://tbirdbaseball.net/
Anybody else here think that it's ironic that, about seven hours before Canada's loss to Japan, Jeff Francis got hammered in what was probably his final start for Colorado Springs; gave up seven runs, seven hits in only three innings. This was easily his worst outing this year.

Jeff is scheduled to start for the Rockies in Atlanta on August 25.

One other piece of Jeff Francis trivia; he has had several turns at bat with Colorado Springs. He's hitless so far, but he got a bunt down that eventually resulting in a run scored. I've checked around, and his last turn at bat prior to a couple of weeks ago was sometime prior to enrolling at UBC.