BATON ROUGE, La. – Change is coming. Again.
For a third consecutive season, the ASU softball team will undergo significant alterations to its team make-up in 2016.
After the 2013 season, ASU hired a new head coach, and this year, the Sun Devils went through a complete pitching overhaul, losing 95 percent of their innings from the 2014 season. Next season, the offensive approach will have to differ, as the team loses 64 percent of its 2015 home runs.
"We’re going to lose some power, there’s no doubt about that," ASU coach Craig Nicholson said after his team's 4-3 loss to fifth-seeded LSU Sunday. "We’re going to have to play the game a little bit different, run a little bit more and try to make some things happen."
2016 marks an opportunity for Nicholson to shape the ball club in his way. He inherited a good team (ASU had been to the Women's College World Series in seven of eight seasons), but that's the thing: ASU was elite before his arrival, and the team returned almost everyone from the last Oklahoma City run.
Now, no 2016 starters will have been in their role before Nicholson took over. ASU's only four-year starter for next season is second baseman Nikki Girard, who received significant time at both first base and designated player in her freshman season.
Chief among the departures will be catcher/designated player Amber Freeman, whose 56 home runs rank fourth in the all-time program and .389 career batting average places her third.
Third baseman Haley Steele remained consistent throughout her career, hitting in the .330s in her past three seasons, accumulating double-digit home runs and doubles all four years. First baseman Bethany Kemp hit 35 home runs in her career with 15 coming in 2015. In addition to those three, ASU also loses corner outfielders Elizabeth Caporuscio and Sierra Rodriguez.
“It’s an amazing class," Freeman said. "We call ourselves the Fab Four; me, Beth, Haley, and Liz and then we added Sierra last year and she became the fifth member. We’re very proud of what we accomplished here and I think we’re going to be remembered as people who never gave up, people who always fought to the very last out.”
How ASU goes from here is unclear.
Katee Aguirre could step into the alternating designated player/catcher role. In limited playing time spanning three seasons, she's shown power potential (seven home runs in 97 at-bats). Abby Spiel (.364) is a decent bet to take over one of the corner outfielder roles, bringing the slap-hitting approach back into ASU's lineup, but after those two, any projected changes are difficult to project so early on in the process considering the lack of starting experience from the rest of the team.
“We’re going to have to adjust," Nicholson said. "We’re going to graduate five seniors that all started. They did a great job for us – most of them four years. We’re going to be a different type of ball club."
Reach the reporter at jmjanss1@asu.edu or follow @jjanssen11 on Twitter
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