Syracuse’s lack of power is proving costly in sub. 500 season

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Roughly halfway through its season, Syracuse has the second-worst win percentage among Atlantic Coast Conference teams and ranks second to last in the league standings.

Before its series against Notre Dame, SU averaged 3.0 runs scored per game, tied for 236th in the NCAA out of 295 teams.

The Orange’s inability to score runs coincides with its underwhelming 10-15-1 overall record and 1-7-1 ACC record. While Syracuse has been able to scrape out five wins when scoring three or fewer runs, it isn’t a sustainable nor reliable method of winning.

A big reason why SU scores so little stems from its inability to hit for power. Syracuse has 147 hits on the season, but 115 have been singles making up 78.2% of the Orange’s hits. On the other hand, Syracuse only has 32 extra base hits — 23 doubles and nine home runs — which make up only 20.8% of its hits.

While there’s definitely a learning curve with its freshmen-heavy roster, Syracuse needs to start hitting for more power immediately to turn its season around.

Entering its series against Notre Dame, Syracuse was tied for 203rd in Division-I with 0.35 home runs per game. Eight different players have notched a home run for the Orange this season, but only Kelly Breen has multiple, leading the team with just two.

However, her season total isn’t an indication that Breen has recorded a good power season. Breen’s on-base plus slugging (OPS) is .596, which is almost what Syracuse’s team OPS is — .594.

OPS is the sum of a player’s on-base and slugging percentages and is used to quantify how well a player does getting on base and hitting for power. Although not a perfect statistic, OPS is relatively accurate in showcasing how good a hitter is.

Clemson, ranked No. 5 in the D-I Softball Rankings with a record of 32-1, leads the ACC with an OPS of 1.080. Meanwhile, the average OPS for ACC teams excluding Syracuse is .855. Syracuse’s OPS is considerably lower than the conference average and falls short by over .100 points compared to Boston College’s .696 OPS, which is the second lowest in the conference.

Syracuse’s .594 OPS is extremely poor, and only Madelyn Lopez, among players who meet the minimum requirement of 2 PA/G and 75% of games played, would be considered to be having a good season by the metric with a .795 OPS — the only player on the roster with such a number. While Syracuse’s poor .222 batting average isn’t helping it succeed, its horrific isolated power (ISO) is the biggest reason why the Orange struggle offensively.

ISO is calculated by subtracting batting average from slugging percentage, and is a stat, as stated by FanGraphs, that measures a hitter’s raw power and tells you how often a player hits for extra bases.

Virginia Tech, who is in second place in the ACC behind Clemson and No. 19 in the D-I Softball Rankings, leads the ACC with a .284 ISO. Excluding Syracuse, the average ISO of ACC teams is .191.

Syracuse has a .076 team ISO, more than half of the rest of the ACC’s average. The only SU players who are considered roughly average power hitters are Madison Knight (.129 ISO) and Tessa Galipeau (.146 ISO), but even they fall well short of the .191 average ACC team ISO.

Despite being fine power hitters, Knight and Galipeau are still considered below-average hitters by OPS due to their inconsistency at bat overshadowing the power numbers they generate. Knight has a .204 batting average and .671 OPS while Galipeau has a .195 batting average and .608 OPS.

During Syracuse’s final game in its series against Notre Dame on Sunday, the team didn’t score any runs – mostly because it had no extra base hits.

Luckily for the offense, Lindsey Hendrix also held Notre Dame scoreless, and the weather forced the game to end in a tie. However, Syracuse can’t continue to have games where it has no extra base hits or else it will continue to be among the worst teams in the ACC.

As Syracuse has seen all season, teams are quickly able to score in crooked numbers when they compile extra base hits and consistently hit for power.

One powerful swing can change the course of a game, but Syracuse has struggled to have a player deliver that game-breaking hit in most of its games.