Arkansas Baseball Notebook: Gorilla Ball, Technology, Pitching Powers Hogs
HawgBeat has a loaded Arkansas baseball notebook touching on Gorilla ball, technology, pitching and much more.
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FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas baseball head coach Dave Van Horn held his third Swatter's Club luncheon of the season Monday afternoon to provide plenty of updates for the No. 1 Razorbacks, who own a 23-3 overall record and an 8-1 mark in conference play.
The Diamond Hogs are fresh off a series sweep of the reigning national champion LSU Tigers, and they are now looking ahead to a Tuesday matchup with Arkansas State before SEC West rival Ole Miss comes to town this weekend.
HawgBeat was in attendance for Van Horn's speech to the Swatter's Club, plus his press conference with reporters after. Check out a loaded notebook touching on gorilla ball, communicating with watches, more crazy pitching numbers, the plan for Arkansas State and much more.
In The Polls
Baseball America: 1
D1Baseball: 1
NCBWA: 1
Perfect Game: 1
USAT Coaches: 1
Pitching plan vs. Arkansas State
There's no drama as to who the three starting pitchers are on the weekend, but it has become interesting to see who the Hogs decide to start in midweek matchups. Tuesday against Arkansas State, freshman lefty Colin Fisher will get his fifth start of the season.
Fisher owns a 4-1 record and a 2.50 ERA across 18.0 innings pitched. He has 20 strikeouts compared to just three walks and opponents are hitting .261 against him.
With a loaded pitching staff comes the issue of not enough innings to go around. Tuesday is shaping up to be a bullpen type game for the Hogs, as Van Horn also listed names such as Ben Bybee, Dylan Carter and Parker Coil as names that might throw Tuesday.
A sophomore right-hander, Bybee made his season debut by throwing three scoreless innings and striking out five in the start last Tuesday against Little Rock.
"Bybee will pitch," Van Horn said. "Since we didn’t use Colin over the weekend, we’ll start him."
Other pitchers such as Gage Wood and Cooper Dossett were also mentioned Monday, but it wasn't said that they would throw Tuesday. Wood has appeared just twice in conference play and his last outing was March 22 in the 6-5 win over Auburn.
"Been up and down this year," Van Horn said. "Had some really good innings, had some okay innings. Again, we're just trying to get guys out on the field and we're trying to win. He can help us win. He hasn't had a lot of opportunity. He's has something over 10 innings. It's been spotty, but his stuff is really good."
Dossett's last appearance was March 23 against Auburn, when he gave up two earned runs on two hits in an 8-6 loss just one day after throwing well the day before.
"Cooper's got really good stuff," Van Horn said. "Second time we pitched him, it didn't go quite as good the next day... It didn't go so good, so kind of just showing us some things there."
Arkansas State owns a 16-14 record on the year and it most recently dropped a weekend series at home against Georgia Southern. The Red Wolves are 4-8 away from home this season, and they do own a midweek win at Ole Miss, which was a 4-2 victory on Feb. 21.
"We know a lot of their players, because they’re in-state and we’ve had them in our camps and different things," Van Horn said. "But we haven’t seen them in a while, so it’ll be kind of new for us as well. We just want to play.
"Hopefully the weather holds off or gets out of here and we get a chance to play tomorrow night. Because there’s three or four position players I really want to get in there, and obviously there are some pitchers that really need to throw."
Tough decisions in the lineup
It's been well-documented that it's a good problem for Arkansas to have more than just nine guys worthy of being in the starting lineup. It's hard to not think about those sitting on the bench while the starter isn't performing well. It's also hard to complain about much at all when your team has a 23-3 overall record.
"If you can pitch and you can field, you can be in every game," Van Horn said. "And I tell our guys that. We've got some guys that aren't playing everyday that may be a little better hitter than the guy that's starting everyday because they're not as good of a defender."
The most notable example of that is at third base, where Richmond transfer Jared Sprague-Lott started all weekend despite having just one hit against LSU. Sprague-Lott has been getting the nod over senior Peyton Holt, who has a .327 batting average with 16 hits this year.
"Kind of a numbers game and then a defensive thing," Van Horn said. "The other third baseman (Sprague-Lott) is really experienced, longer-armed and defensively is just a little bit more advanced. But we really like him and he's been a great teammate, too."
Van Horn did say that Holt will be in the lineup Tuesday against Arkansas State, and he didn't seem to worried about Holt not playing as much as he maybe would like to.
"He’s been a great teammate," Van Horn said. "Real popular. He’s going to do big things for our team this year. To me, it’s still early."
Technology speeding up the game
College baseball has changed a lot during Van Horn's time at Arkansas, and technology has now allowed the game to speed up a bit. With position players wearing watches and pitchers have communication systems in their hats, communicating to players during the game has never been easier.
"It looks like a watch, and it'll pop up and tell you steal, bunt to third base, hit and run on the offensive end," Van Horn said. "Our pitchers have something in their hat. Our catcher has something that's like velcroed on and he pushed buttons.
"We also have a walky-talky and we can talk to a head piece with the catcher. It keeps the game rolling. We let our catchers call the pitches. When you see them looking over at us, they're looking for help."
The most common system used in college baseball is PitchCom, which is a communication system that uses a proprietary push-button, player-wearable transmitter that allows players on the field to communicate plays to each other without using physical signs or verbal communication. I'm not 100% sure if PitchCom is what Arkansas uses, but it's definitely something similar if not.
Van Horn said he's able to just push a button on offense and tell his players to take pitches.
"I like giving the take sign with this team," Van Horn said. "I've given take more this year up to now than I have in my previous 20 years combined. I give take a lot. 2-0, game situation — take."
Gorilla Ball
Most fans are well-aware of the gorilla action figure that the Razorbacks award to the top performing position player of the game.
While captain Peyton Stovall came up with the idea of the gorilla, Van Horn took credit for encouraging the guys to do something like it.
"I talked to the team about it early in the season, before the season that I needed to see a little more personality from our team," Van Horn said. "It was just a little too 'blah' is what I told them. Kind of boring. Whenever we do any of that stuff it just needs to be in our dugout for our team. We're not trying to point at the other team. It's just kind of fun and camaraderie and they love it."
Van Horn did clarify that he didn't bluntly tell his team they were boring. The Head Hog just wanted more personality.
"We don’t play every day like the big leagues," Van Horn said. "They play six days a week. We play three to four. Sometimes five, sometimes three. When we start playing, you need to be into it. I get it every now and then, they’ll be tired with the season or whatever. However things are going but they kinda took it to hear a little bit. I like the way they approach it."
The team also has a gorilla mask that the players throw on in the dugout for a brief moment after they hit a home run.
"It's a good-looking gorilla mask," Van Horn said. "It's kind of scary actually. They stick it on their face for about two steps and then they rip it off because they can't see. It's all in good fun. They want to win that thing. What's really good is some nights it's tough to figure out who to give it to... It's all good."
