. . . an elite or near-elite presence in the circle BUT (and it's a big but) IMHO no one in the league has that. If Mazz and Bree have good week there's no reason we can't go undefeated for the next seven days.

We replaced an elite bat with more overall balance, i.e. instead of having one batter represent 30% of our home runs, our home runs are spread across more batters. That does make it so we can't necessarily predict that we will consistently hit HRs by anyone person. Even Michelle Chatfield ends up with decent HR numbers because she has a flurry of 2-3 in a game.... I would rather have those 13-19 HR spread out over more games. We have good-to-great hitters and we have more depth in that nearly everyone is hitting above .300 and we have doubles/HRs across the lineup. That same lineup can have issues against some pitchers. And agree, we don't have elite arm. We have good arms that are inconsistent. So, IMO, this make VT a team that (a) can beat anyone and (b) can be beaton by many teams that will be in the NCAA