[Papa John]

Softball infields have 60-foot baselines and a pitching distance of 43 feet from the front of the pitcher's rubber to the back tip of home plate. Little League infields, at least for the LL World Series (the Majors or "U12" Division), have the same baselines but the pitcher's rubber is 46 feet from the rubber to the back of home plate. So yes, a college softball pitcher of any size is closer to home plate than a Little Leaguer.

Over 24 regular season conference games in 2026, Stanford as a team had a .339 BA/.432 OB%/.590 SLG%. That's a 1.022 OPS. Stanford scored 190 runs, which comes out to 7.9 runs/game. Stanford had 234 hits, but it's possible that some (many?) of them were of the infield variety. But then again we had 44 doubles, 14 triples and 34 HRs, which comes to 3.8 extra-base hits/game. Granted, Stanford had one of the best offenses in the ACC, but still that's a lot of offensive output, IMO.

I don't know how much more reaction time a batter would have on a typical pitch if the softball rubber was moved back 3 feet, and I certainly don't know how much that change would increase the number of balls hit out of the infield per game. But I guess I'm old-fashioned in that I prefer to not make it easier to score runs.

[Papa John]

Softball infields have 60-foot baselines and a pitching distance of 43 feet from the front of the pitcher's rubber to the back tip of home plate. Little League infields, at least for the LL World Series (the Majors or "U12" Division), have the same baselines but the pitcher's rubber is 46 feet from the rubber to the back of home plate. So yes, a college softball pitcher of any size is closer to home plate than a Little Leaguer.

Over 24 regular season conference games in 2026, Stanford as a team had a .339 BA/.432 OB%/.590 SLG%. That's a 1.022 OPS. Stanford scored 190 runs, which comes out to 7.9 runs/game. Stanford had 234 hits, but it's possible that some (many?) of them were of the infield variety. But then again we had 44 doubles, 14 triples and 34 HRs, which comes to 3.8 extra-base hits/game. Granted, Stanford had one of the best offenses in the ACC, but still that's a lot of offensive output, IMO.

I don't know how much more reaction time a batter would have on a typical pitch if the softball rubber was moved back 3 feet, and I certainly don't know how much that change would increase the number of balls hit out of the infield per game. But I guess I'm old-fashioned in that I prefer to not make it easier to score runs.