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Pitching in a hitter’s league can be a trying, deflating exercise. Lefty Evan Webster leads the Florence Y’Alls with 108⅔ IP, and his 4.80 ERA means he allows a run about every 1.8 innings. It’s tough, gritty work. But that 4.80 ERA looks a lot prettier when you realize the Frontier League, in which the Y’Alls play, has a league average 5.86 ERA. Heck, that works out to an 82 ERA-. It’s not too shabby.
So I welcome you now to the Women’s Professional Baseball League (WPBL), where the league average is a stomach-twisting, comeback-rich, never-say-die 7.64 ERA. Composite bats. Low fences. Shallow dimensions. And offense, offense, offense!
At the same time, this being the only women’s professional baseball league on the planet right now means the best pitcher in this hitter’s paradise of a league, the pitcher who climbs atop the mountain of skulls that is the pitching mound in Springfield, is in fact the best pitcher in the world. And until such time that another women’s league assembles more talent than this—and frankly, no previous pro league has drawn this much female talent from across the globe—this year will determine the best pro female pitcher of all time, so far as we can tell.
Maybe Jackie Mitchell, who famously struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, was better. Maybe 27-year-old Ayami Sato, in the midst of her 2016 Women’s World Cup MVP run, was better than anyone around today, including herself. We can’t say for sure.
But we can assert, comfortably, that the best female pro pitcher is in Springfield, Illinois, right now. And she very well might be named Jaida Lee.
