baseeeeeeeeballllllllll

Kelsie Whitmore hits a hat trick and celebrates thrice (LA @ SF 12/08/26)

bonus:

New from my blog #myblog:

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Let’s start with some figures. Through her first seventeen professional at bats, Denae Benites sits at a 2.484 OPS1, a 1.706 slugging percentage2, a .778 on base percentage, and a .824 batting average. Her OPS is a full 1,000 points ahead of her next closest competitor, her teammate Natsuki Yonetani. Even if you don’t fully understand what these statistics mean, I want to impress upon you that to be 1,000 points ahead is a lot. To have a 1.000 or above OPS at all is exceptional, and Benites is nearly triple that. She’s doing so good that hitting a single or getting a walk is going to bring her stats down.

Benites has hit five homers in her seventeen attempts, meaning .294, or 29%, of her at bats have resulted in a homer. Only five other players have hit a homer. Of the sixty one women who have played in a WPBL game at all, thirty two - over half - have a batting average below .294 entirely. Denae Benites, at this precise moment, is more likely to hit a homer as half the league is likely to get a hit at all.

Here’s her clobbering one on opening day:

Here’s her hitting her third in three games:

And here’s her hitting her fifth in four games:

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Among women’s baseball players in recent history, this offensive performance is near entirely unmatched. I flipped through the last 10 years of Women’s Baseball World Cups, sorting by players with at least twelve at bats in the tournament. The only competition to Benites’ numbers happens to be none other than Ashton Lansdell, who in the recent 2026 Women’s Baseball World Cup Group Stage had eleven hits in thirteen at bats across five games. Of those hits, Lansdell recorded two doubles and two homers, resulting in a batting average of .846 and an OPS of “just” 2.351, still a full one tenth point shy of Benites.

Among men’sbaseball players of recent history, the only near-comparable performance in the first twenty-ish at bats of a season comes courtesy of none other than Mr. Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees, who in the month of March 2025 went 6 for his first 11, hit four homers and two doubles, and had an OPS of 2.461, which is still two-one-hundredths lower than Benites.3 It was a dark time, when Judge was doing those homers. I don’t even play Major League Baseball and I was scared. What if he came to my house and hit a home run off of me? Now I have to worry that at any moment Denae Benites will appear and take me deep. Thanks!

Judge is known to be a bit lacking in personality, but Benites — how can I put this — she has swag. Catchers are traditionally big, stiff guys, but Benites, 5’6” according to Baseball Reference, moves around the bases in a relaxed, loose, swinging way, particularly during her home run trots. Her beach blonde hair shines. She smiles talking to her pitchers and she smiles at the plate. On her own Instagram she shared a tweet that said “fun fact: babe ruth’s favorite player was denae benites.”

Much has been made of historicity and firsts in the opening games of this new league, but despite what the people say, I think you do forget your first. In the end, what people remember is the best. Denae Benites made history as the first player to hit a homer in the WPBL, but she’s backing it up now by producing the best offensive results of any WPBL player to date. She’s almost certainly having the best rookie season offensive debut of any women’s baseball player in all time.

Will Benites ever come down to Earth? Probably, but honestly, maybe not this year. The Heights only have eleven more games to play this season. Only three opposing teams and small pitching rosters mean hitters will soon become very familiar with their opponents’ repertoires as relievers rapidly cycle back into games. I fully believe Benites could keep up her performance through September. Even if her numbers decline, she is still setting the standard by which future rookies will be compared in their debuts forever. We are witnessing something truly great at the plate here. I feel lucky to be able to do so.

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1

“OPS adds on-base percentage and slugging percentage to get one number that unites the two. It's meant to combine how well a hitter can reach base, with how well he can hit for average and for power.” via mlb.com

2

“Slugging percentage represents the total number of bases a player records per at-bat. Slugging percentage differs from batting average in that all hits are not valued equally.” via mlb.com

3

the minnesota d-js, named for saint paul's favored child Dora Jean Dougherty (later Strothers). born in 1921, dora was just the right age to join the civilian pilot training program (CPTP), getting her license in the summer of 1940 at the age of 18. she joined the Ninety-Nines, a women's aviation group founded by amelia earhart and contemporaries, and when word came that the united states army would accept female pilots and train them to do stateside ferrying of aircraft, training flights, maintenance, and so on. dora was part of the third class of WASPs, women airforce service pilots, training in 1943

in 1944, dora jean became one of only two women certified to fly the B-29 Superfortress bomber. this is a Big Ass Plane, friends, and was notable for the muscle needed on the controls at landing and takeoff. dora jean and didi moorman not only flew them, but served as instructors to teach male pilots how to fly before they shipped off to the front.

postwar, dora got graduate degrees in psychology and aviation education, eventually working for Bell Helicopter as an engineer. after she learned to fly the helicopters, she joined the Whirly Girls, an org for female helicopter pilots. she set records, broke barriers, and was instrumental in getting the WASPs recognized as military veterans rather than civilian volunteers.

obviously, a uniform honoring a WASP should be gold and black. i chose green as an accent color both because it looks cool and because it's similar to the pop of green the wnba Lynx have in their color palette. didn't go overboard on the stripes but you can see some on the sleeves. the plane in the name logo is distinctly not a b-29 but a more modern generic jet; the icon with the name on the wings is a bit closer to the correct silhouette. the looping contrail under the name is intentionally reminiscent of baseball stitching. oh, and to be entirely technical, i don't know that dora jean ever went by DJ, but i'm too much of a women-in-aviation nerd to pass up the chance to feature her

meet the Seattle Knights, named for Bertha Knight Landes! Bertha was a Seattle city council member who became acting mayor in 1924 before running for and winning the post in 1926, making her the first woman to be mayor of a major American city. Seattle in the 1920s was notoriously corrupt and a haven for bootleggers and liquor fans during prohibition. Bertha fired the chief of police for ignoring prohibition and cleaned house in the city government, promoted municipal utilities instead of (price gouging) private companies, and tried to reduce spending and balance the budget, all of which ultimately contributed to her failure to win re-election.

Quote: “Since politics — until recently — has been a man’s world, men, as a whole are responsible for its corruption.”

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