The statistics of the WBSC Women's Softball World Cup Finals 2024 allow us to understand how the world champions and world No. 3 Japan and world No. 1 USA proved to be the best teams.
Japan, the Tokyo 2020 Olympic champions, had the best batting average (.331), followed by world No. 5 Canada (.295) and USA (.294). The fourth-place No. 8 the Netherlands batted only .226, but had two players - Suka Van Gurp and Laura Wiissink - top the RBI leaderboard.
Superstar shortstop Kyoko Ishikawa, the tournament's best hitter with an outstanding .600 batting average, Hotaro Tsukamoto (.471) and Ayana Karoji (.429) were the best Japanese hitters.
USA had Hannah Flippen stand out at .538 while Jessie Warren posted a 444 average and Dejah Mulipola settled on .400.
Canada's only hitter over the..400 batting average was C.C. Wong (.412)
Van Gurp stood out for the Netherlands with a .533 batting average followed by Dino Oosting (.467).
Other .500 hitters were Italy's Isabella Dayton and China's Min Ren (.500).
Canada's Callum Pilgrim (2) was the only hitter with more than one home run, both against the Netherlands including the game-winning, walk-off homer in the bronze medal game. Canada also had the most home runs (5), followed by the hosts world No. 6 Italy (3).
Japan also had the best team earned run average (ERA) with 1.23, followed by USA with 1.29. No other team came close to these figures. Third-placed Canada had 3.34 while fourth-placed the Netherlands 3.7. Every other team averaged more than two runs more than Japan or USA.
Canada's Morgan Rackel was the only pitcher staying below ERA 1.
USA had the most strike outs (48), followed by Canada (41) and Japan (39).
China's Yinan Chai had the most innings pitched (27.1) and the most strikeouts (24), besting in both categories Miu Goto, who pitched 21.2 innings and struck out 20. There's no other pitcher with 20 + strikeouts.
Japan used four pitchers, but Goto pitched 21.2 innings, more than half of the team's innings pitched (40) over six games. USA also used four pitchers but Megan Faraimo (13.2 innings) and Ally Carda (12.1) shared almost the same workload, with Kelly Maxwell contributing with 9.
Japan, Puerto Rico, and Australia (10) allowed the fewest walks, followed by USA and Italy (12).
With a total of 160 runs, including 14 homers, scored during the tournament across 22 games at an average just over seven per game, there was plenty of great offence and outstanding play through out the six days of play, including four come-from-behind walk off wins, three extra innings thrillers and 10 games won by three runs or less.
