Gator Softball defeated Jacksonville 2-0 and 5-0 Tuesday evening to maintain their death grip on state teams. More importantly, UF is now 53-2 heading into their last six games; three at home versus Auburn Saturday and Sunday and three at Tennessee next weekend. The lone senior, Mary Ratliff, will be honored Saturday. (Yeah, the team that is 51 games over .500 has one senior. Insane.)
The most impressive thing this season for UF has been pitching. Stacey Nelson is 33-2 with a 0.71 ERA and the two starter, Stephanie Brombacher is 17-0 with a 1.55. But ERA is not a perfect stat. Anyone who has sat next to an official scorer and watched him make a diving catch into an error to make a three-run homer all unearned, knows this. So let's look at WHIP.
Depending on who you ask, Walks + Hits / Innings Pitched, measures how effective a pitcher is (a WHIP of 0.00) or lucky (a WHIP of 3.00 with an ERA of 0.00). The average pitcher will have a WHIP between 1.25 and 1.75. Below that is great and below 1.00 is outstanding. Not surprisingly, UF's one-two punch is outstanding.
Nelson: 80 BB + 118 H / 227 IP = 0.87 WHIP
Brombacher: 18 BB + 95 H / 117.2 IP = 0.96 WHIP
As a team, including Kristen Adkins (5 APP, 1-0, 0.00 ERA) and Kelsey Bruder (6 APP, 2-0, 0.57 ERA), UF's team WHIP is 0.90. With numbers like this, UF should be a favorite to win the Women's College World Series. If they did that, UF would be one of five schools not named UCLA or Arizona, to win the title. One of those teams, 2000 Oklahoma, had UF coaches Tim Walton and Jennifer Rocha on their staff.
If you don't get the title of this post, look here.