No pitcher in college softball wants to throw to Bri Ellis. Given the choice, most players throwing from the circle would rather intentionally walk her every time. And if pitchers actually have to throw to the senior first baseman for Arkansas, they don’t even want to flirt with the strike zone.
Because if the barrel of Ellis’ bat meets the highlighter-yellow-colored ball coming her way, she’s going to try to send it to the moon.
Ellis is the NCAA’s active leader in home runs, launching 74 moonshots in 573 career at-bats. That means Ellis is averaging one dinger in every 7.74 at-bats for her career.
By comparison, Barry Bonds — you may know him as the guy accused of taking steroids, but by the books he is MLB’s home run king — was hitting a four-bagger in every 12.92 at-bats during his decorated 22-year career in the big leagues.
Like Ellis, pitchers feared Bonds. They never wanted to throw him strikes and rarely would. But when Bonds did see a pitch slip into his zone, he would absolutely smash it more often than not.
That’s what Ellis did against Georgia in the SEC Tournament last week. The Bulldogs had walked her in each of her previous at-bats and hadn’t thrown her a strike all day. But with the bases loaded in the bottom of the seventh inning, Ellis finally saw a pitch she could connect on.
But of course, Ellis did more than just make contact. She drove the ball over the left field fence for a walk-off homer, giving Arkansas the victory. Ellis’ bomb also made her the holder of Arkansas’ single season records for home runs and RBI.
The similarities between Bonds and Ellis are even more easy to draw when the numbers are hyper-focused on what she is doing this season and what he did in 2001, in which he won the National League MVP.
Arkansas even made a graphic for it:
A native of Houston, Texas, Ellis was named SEC Player of the Year and is a strong candidate for the National Player of the Year award. She ranks second nationally in home runs this season (26), fourth in batting average (.475), seventh in RBI (72), and second in walks with 58.
She also ranks first in the country in on-base percentage with a mark of .649. The best Bonds ever had in his career was .609 in 2004. Ellis is the only player in the Power 4 this season with an on-base percentage over .600.
One more stat: Ellis has the best on-base-plus-slugging percentage in softball this season at 1.838, which is better than any mark that Bonds, Hank Aaron or Babe Ruth ever put up in a single MLB season.
She gets on-base and she hits jacks. Ellis has fans from the moneyball corners of the sport and the folks who just like the long ball. She’ll be a must-watch in the NCAA Softball Tournament, where Arkansas is seeded fourth and opens postseason play against Saint Louis on Friday at 6:30 p.m. ET on ESPN+.
