Hey, I'm a big fan of this site, and hope you guys keep up the good work.  I have a question that hopefully isn't too far out there:

As a student of sabermetrics and a sports columnist at a D3 university, I have done some recreational research into my university's athletic teams.  I have recently taken a close look at my university's softball team (admittedly for reasons beyond statistics).  

I plugged in the softball team's past three seasons into the Pythagenport Formula, using the ((r+ra)/g)^.287 exponent developed  by David Smyth.  The sample size may have been small (approximately 50 games each season), but the correlation between the Pythagenport win percentage and the team's actual win total was exactly the same two out of the three years, and deviated by only three wins the other year.  

I also used Bill James' run created formula to calculate how many runs each player was worth to the team this past year.  When I added each player's total, it came within 10 runs of the total runs scored by the team (the difference can probably be accounted for by luck and small ball).

I am therefore wondering if any research has been done with softball and sabermetrics?  I did not see any such research on the internet, and am curious if you believe the same baseball ideas that have arisen out of sabermetrics may apply to softball.  Certain difficulties stand out in my mind:
-The small sample size.
-The fact that games only last seven innings and that the rules for extra innings are very different than those of baseball.
-The fact that the bases are much closer together, and that the different ball and pitching motion may produce different outcomes.

Nonetheless, I believe much like John Hollinger at espn.com has done with basketball many of the ideas of sabermetrics could be applied to softball, and I am curious to hear what you guys think.  Thanks!

-Steven