Alabama softball struggling after strong start, but still finding success

Alabama Softball dominated early in the season but has slowed recently. Despite dropping a series to South Carolina, the Crimson Tide have opportunities ahead during the next few weeks.

Alabama Softball currently sits at 38-4 and is in second place in the SEC standings. Auburn is right behind the Crimson Tide with a similar 8-4 conference record. LSU is currently in first, but that is mainly due to the fact that LSU has lost as many SEC games as Alabama, but is one SEC series ahead of them with 11-4.

To get to this point and lose just 4 games is impressive. What’s more is that Alabama softball has four more SEC weekends to prove itself.

What’s happened to the dominance?

Probably the easiest cause of the issues is that the pitching rotation has been interrupted the last couple of weeks due to an undisclosed injury from ace freshman Montana Fouts. Montana’s last game, Texas A&M, was her first loss of the season. She has pitched really well this year, keeping her ERA at 1.05.

Not having her has put the load on the three upperclassmen in the rotation and there have been jams that Alabama hasn’t been able to get out of. Having Montana come back to the lineup soon will help create some badly needed depth in that area.

But pitching isn’t the only issue. The SEC as a whole is the cream of the crop in NCAA Softball. Of the 13 teams in the SEC, 11 are in the USA Softball/ESPN.com rankings.

That all means that, week after week, Alabama softball will be facing top teams each weekend through the season and through the SEC Tournament. In the next few weekends, Alabama will play 16th-ranked Georgia and 23rd-ranked Kentucky at home, while they travel to 5th-ranked LSU and 9th-ranked Florida.

If there was one fundamental that Alabama was missing, it would be offensive opportunities. Alabama is laying down the bats and getting on base. However, they haven’t been bringing those runners home to score. The left-on-base numbers were higher against the Gamecocks than they were at any other point in the season. That has to be corrected if they expect to compete against these top-tier SEC teams.

What’s next

Alabama softball has a mid-week game with Georgia State. That will be followed by a rare Sat-Mon series against Georgia for A-Day weekend. Alabama will begin game one on Saturday at 11am. Sunday and Monday’s game will be played at 6pm. ESPN2 will broadcast the Saturday game, with SEC Network to cover Sunday and Monday.