We are eight days away from Arkansas baseball, and HawgBeat is continuing its annual lineup preview series for the Diamond Hogs.
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We continue things with the two-hole spot in the lineup, which shortstop Wehiwa Aloy is projected to fill...
#9 - Wehiwa Aloy - SS
Jr. | R/R | 6-2 | 200Wailuku, Hawai'i / H.P Baldwin HS / Sacramento State
2024: 60 GP, .270/.355/.485, 9 2B, 14 HR, 56 RBI, 25 BB/55 K, 7 SB
Aloy was a Second Team All-SEC selection after his first season in Fayetteville as a sophomore last spring. A former transfer from Sacramento State, he started all 60 games at shortstop for Arkansas in 2024 and he slashed .270/.355/.485 while leading the team with 14 home runs and 56 RBIs. The Wailuku, Hawai'i, native hit nine doubles and had 15 multi-hit games, plus he had a hitting streak of 14 games and a team-best 31-game reached base streak.
The big storyline for Aloy over the offseason was an adjustment to his swing that he made during the summer while in the Cape Cod Baseball League.
"I watched his batting practice up there the first day, up in the Cape, and I got him off to the side," Van Horn said Sept. 3. "I even videoed it and sent it back and said to the other coaches, ‘Look what’s going on here. He’s made an adjustment.’ And at the time, he was hitting over .300 and hitting home runs. I talked to him after BP and I said, ‘I love what you’re doing.’ He just stayed through the middle, hit line drive after line drive, hit some balls out of the park dead center, maybe left-center, right-center.
"Then in the game, his first at bat he singles up the middle, then he lined out to short. It was just taking BP to the game and not trying to do too much. Same guy showed up here. Last fall, he was trying to see if he could hit them up there by the picnic benches in BP when they had free rounds. Now it’s seeing if you can ping pong the middle and maybe hit one off the batter’s eye and go the other way. It’s called hitting and it’s been a great thing so far."
Thanks to the adjustment, the 6-foot-2, 200-pound infielder slashed .309/.352/.642 across 21 games with three doubles, eight home runs and 24 RBIs for the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox in the CCBL.
So far this preseason, Aloy has eight hits across 31 at bats, according to stats compiled by local media. Four of those eight hits have been home runs, but he's also struck out 13 times compared to three walks.
"On the offensive side, he's just really grown up," Van Horn said Jan. 5. "He's not trying to hit the ball 450 feet every swing, laying off a lot more pitches, and some of that is due to the stance and dropping the hands and closing it up and just really focusing on going through the middle. When you're a good hitter, you just see what you see, and you let it go and you pull balls, you go the other way. I think he's going to have a great year.
"I think he drove in maybe 60-70 runs last year. He's going to have every opportunity to do that again and more with the people they're going to have hitting around him and in front of him, and it'll take a little pressure off of him because we have a better offensive team. I mean, I know we do, and you never know when it's going to come out. I hope it's from day one, but I think he's gonna have a great year."
Aloy posted a .963 fielding percentage with six errors as the everyday shortstop last year. That was an improvement over his .928 fielding percentage and 17 errors during his freshman season at Sacramento State in 2023.
"Played every inning of every game, basically because we didn’t have another shortstop that was a true shortstop due to the draft taking three high school (seniors) for about nine million between those three high school seniors that we thought were going to come," Van Horn said. "We thought we’d get one of them and he handled it and he played through some pain that really nobody knew about, you know, and probably was tired and we just couldn’t really give him a break. And defensively, he's even better. You know, you never know how the numbers are going to go, fielding percentage, but he is better."
Arkansas will host Washington State at Baum-Walker Stadium on Friday, Feb. 14 for Opening Day. The first game of the season is set for a 3 p.m. CT first pitch.
HawgBeat's Lineup Breakdown Series
1. #24 - Charles Davalan - CF2. #9 - Wehiwa Aloy - SS
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