The analytical revolution that swept across professional baseball in recent decades is now making its way to softball, and right at the forefront is Blaze General Manager Dana Sorensen.
A former star pitcher at Stanford who played in the National Pro Fastpitch league and was later an assistant coach at UC Davis and Oregon State, Sorensen now operates her own pitching instruction and sports performance training business. She also works with Nate Walker at Diamond Solutions, helping college softball programs embrace and understand analytical strategies.
Sorensen combines high-level playing experience with a deep background in advanced analytics, and drew upon both to help build the Blaze’s roster this season. Blaze beat reporter Benjamin Rosenberg spoke with Sorensen about analytics in pro softball.
This conversation has been edited slightly for clarity and brevity.
Benjamin Rosenberg: What analytical measures do you have access to in the Athletes Unlimited Softball League that were not previously available in pro softball?
Dana Sorensen: We launched the Synergy and 643 platform this year for the first time. We have access to the last three seasons of AUX and AU. They went back and logged all the games for us, so we have those numbers, as well as access to all the college players when they were in college. We’re in this transition spot where we don’t quite have enough of a sample size on previous seasons to really dive in and draw conclusions. We’re certainly trying to apply all that and trying to build our scouting reports and our matchups and our processes, but it’ll keep growing now as we get more data in the system.
Rosenberg: How have things changed compared to what was around during your playing days?
Sorensen: The growth of this has been in the last five or six years. When I was playing, we were joking the other day, it was camcorders. It wasn’t even point-and-shoot iPhones where you can do slow-motion video. When it comes to advanced analytics, Trackman is introduced to softball now, and there are a handful of programs across the country that have it. The Women’s College World Series has it.
Now we’re moving into the realm, at least in college athletics, of understanding data sharing. Everybody has those numbers. That thought process in softball, where you’re going to get the opposing pitchers’ pitch metrics, pitch shape, ball flight data, but you’re also going to give up your own to them. That’s a new concept for our sport. We’re all going to get the same information. It’s really just how you use it. Those who have jumped on the analytics train a little bit earlier and were implementing things — maybe not the ideal best practices, but trying to get their feet wet with it and getting used to what the numbers mean — are certainly doing a little bit better job now.
Rosenberg: How are players reacting to having all of this data available to them?
Sorensen: We have athletes in this league who are in their late 20s and early 30s, and they were out of college well before Synergy, 643, Rapsodo, YakkerTech, and Trackman have all been in play. This is a new element for a lot of players in our league, if they haven’t been coaching at a university that has the resources to apply it.
A lot of our players, particularly pitchers, are really interested in it. Some of our pitchers don’t really know what their ball flight means. They don’t know what an average horizontal movement profile is; what’s an average vertical movement profile; what’s an average spin rate. What does a spin rate mean if it’s not relative to a spin efficiency and spin direction? So introducing that to them has been fun. How does it play against this type of hitter? How does it not play against that type of hitter? We’re just on the beginning edges of this. If you fast-forward three years from now, you’re going to see it across all Power 4 programs in college, which means those players coming into our league are going to be coming from that perspective and understanding those numbers already.
Rosenberg: How did you use analytics and advanced data to construct the Blaze roster, and how do data and analytics guide lineup and in-game decision-making?
Sorensen: On my pitching staff, I was trying to construct a balance. Do we have somebody who matches up against left-handed middle-opposite field fly ball hitters? Do we have somebody who matches up against right-handed fly ball pull hitters? We predict how many outs we think this pitcher can get based on the variability of their stuff.
From an offensive standpoint, it was looking at trying to balance and not allowing anybody to match up against us. So you’re looking at right/left splits, who can hit for a little bit of power, who can hit to get on base, who are ground ball hitters, fly ball hitters, line drive hitters. We wanted to give pitchers a lot of different looks through our lineup.
We try to decide before the game who will be the high-leverage option in the circle. Who is the pitcher we’re going to go to when that game turns and we need to give the hitters a different look? The last game we played against the Bandits, we went with the opener concept. We had announced our starter, and we had every intention of going with Alana Vawter, but as the series unfolded, we realized we needed to not give the Bandits’ hitters more than two looks at our pitchers. We opted to flip it and go with Hope Trautwein-Valdespino as our opener for the first inning and then go with Vawter. And the reason for that is Vawter is going in and she’s not going to see the top of their lineup. When the game turns, Vawter is only seeing the top of the lineup the second time, not the third time.
Rosenberg: What comes next in terms of analytics continuing to make their impact in softball?
Sorensen: Figuring out trends. From a pitching side, what are offenses preparing to do? Two or three years ago, we saw offenses really preparing for the rise ball, and that opened up a space for pitchers who had really good command of some sink. Our hitters are now transitioning and preparing for that, using the Synergy data to plan for that.
Giving players a little bit more context to the numbers is really helpful. When the talent is that even, you really can wear it mentally day after day. Finding those little hidden gems in there and presenting that to the athletes, that’s the next frontier.
Benjamin Rosenberg is the Blaze beat reporter for the AUSL this season. He has more than seven years of experience covering college, professional and high school softball, and graduated with a degree in journalism from Northwestern University in 2021.
