How Grace Sparks and Sidne Peters bulk the Texas A&M bullpen

Texas A&M was one win away from making it to the Women’s College World Series this past season. Emiley Kennedy was a huge part of the Aggies’ success in the second year under Trisha Ford. However, Kennedy carried a huge load in the regular season and especially the postseason as Texas A&M lacked a second trustworthy arm.

Ford has ensured that won’t be the case, at least not for the lack of trying after this offseason. Ford convinced a pair of Texas natives to return home through the transfer portal. Grace Sparks, formerly of Ole Miss, and Sidne Peters, who spent her freshman season at Washington, are both headed to College Station.

Sparks became the Rebels go-to arm down the stretch. After only making seven appearances the first two months of the seasons, Sparks really found herself. She pitched really well against Texas A&M, yielding two runs and seven hits 8.1 innings against the Aggies and probably made an impression on Ford. She also had a stellar complete outing against Arkansas later in the season.

According to Synergy Sports, Sparks relied on her drop ball about 40% of the time while mixing in a combination of a curveball, screwball, rise and changeup. As with most drop-heavy pitchers, Sparks tends to roll more groundballs than anything else.

In the clip below, you’ll see all the groundouts Sparks induced with her drop ball when she blanked Arkansas last season.

Peters is the opposite of Sparks being a rise ball pitcher. She doesn’t have overpowering velocity, sitting at around 66 MPH most of the time but has good spin that led to a 38% chase rate on her primary pitch. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s her outpitch. Based on the numbers from Synergy Sports, Peters’ strikeouts were essentially split between curveball, rise, drop and changeup.

Looking back to last week’s 18U Super Cup, Impact Gold Jackson 18U’s Sidne Peters had herself a day in the circle tallying 13 K’s against the Fury!@ImpactGoldOrg | @thealliancefp | @UWSoftball pic.twitter.com/pe1CZOlWWm

— Synergy Sports Softball (@SynergySportsSB) July 5, 2023

The chart shows Peters strikeouts data from Synergy Sports – note this isn’t every strikeout:

An interesting note about Peters is that she came out of the bullpen 21 of her 26 outings. In the ever-changing softball landscape, bullpen pieces are becoming more of a normality. Peters would offer a change of pace from both Kennedy and Sparks, we could see her in a similar role in College Station.

It’s also important to understand that what the two new pitchers did in the past might not use the same variety of pitches. Ford challenged Kennedy before the season to focus on her other pitches to make her more well-rounded, even taking away her curveball for some time to force her to trust the rest of her arsenal. We’ve see other transfer pitchers go through the transition as well.

This will arguably be Ford’s deepest bullpen. Emily Leavitt will be back for her senior year. Freshmen California Gatorade Player of the Year, Missouri GPOY Kate Munnerlyn, New Mexico GPOY Sydney Lessentine, Taylor Brown and Della Jasinski all throw.

The next biggest question for the Aggies will be who will catch this large staff? After Julia Cottrill graduated there isn’t a clear-cut answer to that position. Gracyn Coleman was the only other player that caught last season as she entered her junior season. Mac Barbara, the San Diego State transfer, has caught in the past but will also be relied on to be the main power source in the lineup. DeeDee Baldwin is a local freshman coming and the Aggies could always add another catcher through the portal such as Washington catcher Olivia Johnson, who is originally from Texas. Regardless, Ford has assembled an impressive staff heading into 2025.