Outside of two beatdowns over UT Arlington, the Purple & Gold Challenge was not friendly to Northwestern’s offense.
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When Kelsey Nader strikes out twice in the first game of a weekend slate, it never bodes well for how the rest of the weekend is going to go.
That was certainly true at the Purple & Gold Challenge as Northwestern lost a pair of games to No. 7 LSU and was held off the base paths entirely as No. 18 Virginia Tech’s Emma Lemley pitched her second consecutive perfect game of the season in the Wildcats’ 3-0 loss Friday. Although the ‘Cats mustered two emphatic victories over a weaker UT Arlington squad, these losses to strong ranked opponents shows this Northwestern squad has a long way to go in the batter’s box.
In its three games against ranked opposition last weekend, Northwestern was outscored 18-1. The Wildcats mustered just six hits in that stretch, striking out 35 times. On Friday alone, Northwestern struck out 28 times, as Lemley’s 16 strikeouts and Tigers’ star freshman Jayden Heavener stonewalled Wildcat hitters. Lemley and Heavener are two of the best pitchers in the country, but 28 strikeouts in 51 plate appearances are not a sign of offensive health, especially when drawing only five walks.
Every Northwestern hitter with multiple at-bats this season is pictured above. With strikeout percentage on the x-axis flipped so higher strikeout percentages are to the left and lower strikeout percentages are to the right, you’ll notice there is only one lineup lock better than the team average in walk rate and strikeout rate: Kelsey Nader. But even then, her 14.3% strikeout rate is comparatively high after striking out just 6.3% of the time last season and once in the season’s final 24 games.
Ainsley Muno, Avery Garden and Lauren Sciborski, who have a combined 21 plate appearances through 10 games are also listed above, with Sciborski joining Nader in the upper right quadrant, Muno joining Bridget Donahey in the upper left quadrant and Garden just below the team average in walk rate in the lower right quadrant. After Muno and Garden hit homers in the weekend’s final game against UT Arlington, they could be in line for more action as the rest of the lineup struggles.
In the top left, Donahey continues to be the definition of a three true outcomes hitter, smashing her first home run of the season alongside Muno and Garden in the weekend finale. A strikeout rate of 34.5% is scarily high, but a walk rate at 27.6% balloons her pedestrian .211 batting average to a team-leading .483 on-base percentage. It also balloons the team average walk rate to 9.1%. For reference, if you took Donahey out of that calculation, the team average walk rate falls to 6.9% — way too low for consistent production.
Last season, Donahey’s strikeout (22.9%) and walk (20.9%) rates were still relatively high, but at some point, Donahey will need to cut back the strikeouts and put the ball in play after racking up four strikeouts on Friday alone. We started to see that in the weekend’s final three games where she didn’t strike out in eight plate appearances, bringing her strikeout percentage from 47.6% down to the 34.5% number she’s at now. As the sample size gets larger with more games, expect to see that number continue to tick toward 20-25%.
On the complete opposite end, Grace Nieto has been phenomenal this season after missing the entirety of last year. In the lower right corner, she’s seeing the ball well batting .391 with a pair of RBIs and just one strikeout. She’s also not walking, but that’s better than the growing cluster of key hitters in the bottom left corner.
Kansas Robinson, Emma Raye and Ayana Lindsey all have at least 25 plate appearances, while Riley Grudzielanek’s 21 plate appearances aren’t far behind. But as those strikeout rates increase and the walk rates stay right around the team average without Donahey’s outlier included, this offense isn’t generating enough baserunners to consistently create pressure on opposing pitchers.
While Lindsey and Grudzielanek have struggled to find consistency, Robinson and Raye struggling as fundamental pieces in the top half of the lineup is especially concerning. Robinson might have found something though in the finale against UT Arlington, with a career-high four hits in four plate appearances alongside two doubles and two RBIs. Yet even then, that only moved her slash line to .226/.286/.323, well below the .383/.486/.705 numbers she posted last season.
If you toggle through the dropdown in the top left of the graph, you’ll be able to compare last year’s first 10 games to this year for the five early-season lineup mainstays from 2024 who are still starters again in 2025. On average, with one exception per group, batting averages, on-base percentages and strikeout rates have dipped.
Even with her four-hit game, Robinson’s start has been nothing like her first 10 games of 2024. Her strikeout rate has roughly tripled, while her batting average and on-base percentage have been slashed in half compared to her start to 2024. During her late-season struggles last year, the issue was when she put the ball in play, she just kept finding the defense. Over her final 15 games of 2024, her batting average on balls in play (BABIP) was .222 alongside a really healthy strikeout percentage of 8.5%. That is nothing like the Robinson at the dish right now who has a .333 BABIP and a 31.4% strikeout percentage.
Raye has always been prone to strikeouts, but she improved as her freshman season continued, eventually getting her strikeout rate down to 18.9% in year one in Evanston. Next weekend will be an opportunity to continue the three-game streak without a strikeout she ended the weekend on.
Of course, the biggest thing to keep in mind is the level of talent Northwestern had to go against to start the season last year. Already two weeks in, Northwestern’s six games against ranked opponents is more than the five such games it played all of last season.
With games against top 10 ranked Oklahoma State and Texas getting canceled at the Shriners Children’s Clearwater Invitational to start 2024, this season’s first 10 games have been especially difficult in comparison. But even then, in its first 10 games of 2024, Northwestern’s offense mustered 12 runs in a thriller against No. 12 LSU in Clearwater, but a week later were shutout against No. 19 UCLA at the Mary Nutter Classic.
The Mary Nutter Classic is where the ‘Cats are headed next, where they will face Seattle, Utah, Saint Mary’s and a preseason ranked California squad that went 3-0 at the Wilson Invitational last weekend with power conference wins over Kansas and Iowa State.
Those games are all winnable for the Wildcats after the gauntlet of ranked opponents Kate Drohan’s squad has had to navigate thus far. But with just two hitters batting above .260 and the third worst strikeout to walk ratio in the Big Ten, the offense needs to show signs of life, especially from Robinson and Raye in the top half of the order.
Beating UT Arlington 11-3 on Sunday was a good sign, but the ‘Cats need a strong weekend and a flurry of decisive wins to escape the cloud of questions hanging over their offense.