HawgBeat - Arkansas baseball in good shape entering postseason
Adversity throughout the regular season has the Diamond Hogs primed to make another postseason run.
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While the No. 2 Arkansas Razorbacks faced more injuries during the 2023 regular season than head coach Dave Van Horn would've liked, the injuries led to the Diamond Hogs being well-prepared entering postseason play.
Arkansas has four significant contributors done for the year — Jaxon Wiggins (torn UCL), Koty Frank (torn lat), Dylan Carter (torn UCL) and Peyton Stovall (torn labrum). Despite those four, plus a slew of smaller injuries along the way, the Razorbacks finished with a 39-15 overall record, a 20-10 conference record and a share of the SEC regular season championship.
The feeling of being able to call themselves overall SEC and SEC West champs is bittersweet for the Hogs right now, as they lost their last two regular season games in a tough way at Vanderbilt over the weekend.
"I mean, it’s amazing to be able to say you’re an SEC champ," redshirt junior pitcher Will McEntire said following Saturday's 7-6 loss to the Commodores. "We fought hard all season long, but I think it’s kind of a good thing. I think this might leave a salty taste in our mouth and have us coming out fired up for the postseason."
It is worth noting that since 2017, Arkansas has lost its final series of the regular season four times and won it twice. Three of the four times they lost, the Razorbacks made it to Omaha, with the fourth being this year. The two times it won the last regular season series — lost in regional and lost in super regional. (notes via Cory Stewart, a.k.a. Stewhog)
Van Horn has put together one of his best coaching jobs yet in Fayetteville, given all of the injuries that have led to him plugging guys in all year. One thing about this Arkansas team is that it likely has as much in-game experience up and down the roster than any team it will face moving forward.
"Man, I feel great about where we’re at," Van Horn said last Wednesday ahead of the Vanderbilt series. "I’m so proud of our team and how they’ve played all season long with all the adversity and ups and downs of the injuries. But one thing, and I say it all the time, they show up everyday and play hard. Hey, if we win it, awesome. If we don’t, awesome, we’ll just move on and get ready for the postseason."
On the injury front, Arkansas is fairly healthy entering the postseason. Tavian Josenberger has played two straight weekends after missing time with a hamstring injury. Jared Wegner returned against Vanderbilt from a hairline fracture in his thumb that sidelined him for over a month.
After missing a significant amount of time with a sprained UCL, Brady Tygart has now made four starts over the last four weekends and he's looked sharp. He went a season-high four innings on Friday and struck out a season-best seven batters while giving up just two runs — both solo homers.
"You take away those couple of pitches and he had a really good outing," Van Horn said Friday. "I think he’s building his pitch count up and hopefully his next outing he’ll be able to go longer."
The only injury — not season ending — that Arkansas seems to need to worry about now is a sprained ankle that shortstop John Bolton suffered during a collision with Peyton Holt in Friday's loss to the Commodores.
"As of now I’d say he’s definitely not playing on Wednesday, Thursday, maybe not at all," Van Horn said Saturday. "He should be ready in a while, though. A week or so. We’ll see."
Given all that has happened throughout the season, the Hogs are in great shape moving forward. Guys have been forced to step up out of necessity and it has the chance to pay off in big moments moving forward.
A great example of that has been Peyton Holt, who has a .455 batting average, 1.193 OPS, eight RBIs, four doubles, one home run and 10 runs scored all since he took over the starting shortstop spot for the injured Stovall beginning on May 5 at Mississippi State.
"He’s played good defense," Van Horn said of Holt on Thursday. "I felt like his best position was second base coming out of fall ball. He just seemed to have a little feel over there and works around the bag well.
"And on the offensive end, you never know how it’s going to go offensively for a guy who hasn’t been an every-day starter and then he gets plugged in. But you know he had a couple of pretty good games throughout the season in mid-week games. And I do think he’s a gamer. I think he has a mentality about him that he thinks he can. He’s athletic and he’s strong."
Names like Ben McLaughlin, Hunter Grimes, Harold Coll, Jayson Jones and Mason Neville have all played in meaningful games and taken at bats that were in high leverage situations.
On the mound, freshmen such as Parker Coil, Ben Bybee and Christian Foutch have all stepped up at some point and all three should get a chance to throw this week at the SEC Tournament to get more in-game action ahead of the NCAA Tournament.
"The guy that needs to get on the mound is Foutch," Van Horn said Saturday. "We need him. I feel bad that we didn’t throw him today. I know he’s had a couple rough outings in a row, but he’s got really good stuff and we need to get him on the mound and get him going a little bit.
"Need to get Bybee an opportunity to pitch some. We gotta get (Gage) Wood out there. We need to get him going. We have to have him throwing like he’s thrown before for us a lot. I’m going to spread it out as best I can. We’re not going to overdo it with anybody and we’re going to try to win as many as we can and get ready for a Regional."
While competing for an SEC Tournament championship is a fun experience, it doesn't mean much compared to what comes next. Arkansas is virtually a lock to host a Regional and a Super Regional, and that is what's most important moving forward.
"As far as the games, we’re going to try to win them, but definitely going to mix it up a little bit," Van Horn said Saturday. "We don’t know who we’re going pitch yet. We’ve got two or three hours on the bus to discuss that a little bit."
Arkansas is the No. 2 seed and is set to play the second game on Wednesday at the SEC Tournament in Hoover, Alabama. The Hogs will face the winner of 10-seed Texas A&M and 7-seed Tennessee approximately 30 minutes after the conclusion of the first game Wednesday, which is set to start at 9:30 a.m. CT. The game will be broadcast on the SEC Network.
