BYU's McKenna Bull has pitched 406 career innings and has 436 strike outs. That's better than one SO per inning.

Not even counting her fielding put-outs, she's accounted for 36% of BYU's outs during her participation despite only comprising 11% of BYU's fielding contingent. That's statistically dominating a game defensively. Mind you, these are the FIRST TWO YEARS of her college career. She's only going to get better and have even more dominating numbers going forward.

Compare this with Felix Hernandez of the Mariners. He's arguably the most dominant starting pitcher in the League. He's pitched 2102 career innings and has 1995 strike-outs. That's less than one per inning which is worse than Bull's number. He's accounted for only 32% of the outs made during his participation, also inferior to Bull's number.

So, to summarize, an underclassman pitcher at BYU has been dominating games at a higher level than King Felix. Surprised? You shouldn't be. Welcome to women's softball. BTW, Bull isn't even in the NCAA Top 50 for strikeouts per 7 innings this year, so there are actually AT LEAST 50 PITCHERS around the country who have dominated defensively at a level even higher than Bull has, and she's ahead of King Felix!

NCAA softball places no limitations on pitching participation, either by pitch count, inning count or by number of games pitched. Pitchers are free to pitch EVERY INNING of EVERY GAME of an ENTIRE SEASON and of an ENTIRE CAREER if they and their coaches so desire and the nature of the fast-pitch delivery, unlike baseball, makes it feasible to do just that.

My contention is that pitching is a competitive problem in WSB. It's far too powerful a predictor of winning and is diminishing the team nature of the game. It's become all about one player winning games for teams and I'm not OK with that, despite the fact that BYU is benefitting mightily this year.