HawgBeat - Box score, notes from Arkansas' Friday preseason scrimmage
HawgBeat provides a box score, notes and quotes from Arkansas baseball's Friday preseason scrimmage.
arkansas.rivals.com
FAYETTEVILLE — The Arkansas baseball team scrimmaged for the fourth time in 2024 on Friday afternoon at Baum-Walker Stadium and the White squad earned a 7-5 victory over Cardinal in 6.5 innings.
Left-handed pitchers Hagen Smith and Mason Molina got the starts for their respective squads but their appearances couldn't have gone any differently.
Smith worked through 2.0 innings for White with three strikeouts, two walks and zero runs allowed. Molina only made it through 1.2 innings and allowed four earned runs with one strikeout and three walks.
Center fielder Will Edmunson led the way for Cardinal with three RBIs and a 407-foot home run. Shortstop Jared Sprague-Lott went 2-for-3 at the plate with one run scored.
White had multi-hit performances from second baseman Peyton Stovall and first baseman Ben McLaughlin. Each had two hits and two RBIs, with the latter hitting a 358-bomb that came off the bat at 102 MPH. Right fielder Kendall Diggs also added a monster 410-foot solo-homer off of Molina.
Sophomore right-hander Gage Wood pitched a masterful 3.0 innings of work split between Cardinal and White. In that time he combined for two strikeouts and one unearned run.
The Rundown...
Arkansas ace Smith started things off on the mound and ran into trouble with two outs. The junior lefty issued back-to-back walks to Hudson Polk and Ryder Helfrick, but he responded by getting Parker Rowland to swing at strike three to strand the runners.
Texas Tech transfer left-hander Molina has been lights out since stepping on campus, but junior right field Kendall Diggs put an end to that with a 410-foot solo shot to dead-center in the bottom of the first. After walking Wehiwa Aloy, Molina struck out Ben McLaughlin to get out of the frame with Cardinal down 1-0.
After allowing a bloop single to Richmond transfer Sprague-Lott to leadoff the top of the second, Smith struck out two of the next three batters and retired them in order to keep Cardinal scoreless.
Third baseman Peyton Holt drew a one-out walk off Molina in the bottom of the second and Jayson Jones drove Holt in with an RBI single up the middle to make it a 2-0 lead for White. Ty Wilmsmeyer walked and Peyton Stovall brought Jones around with an RBI single through the right side to tag Molina for his third run.
A wild pitch allowed Wilmsmeyer to score and after getting Hudson White to groundout to third, Molina was pulled for junior righty Jake Faherty with two outs. The hard-throwing Faherty started off with a 98 mile per hour fastball and got Diggs to groundout to second to close the frame.
Redshirt senior Will McEntire took over for Smith in the top of the third for White and he went three up, three down in his first frame. Faherty saw the first two batters he faced reach base in the bottom of the third, but he retired the next three in a row and sat two of them down on strikes.
McEntire's second inning of work was another 1-2-3 frame, and he was at 26 total pitches, 19 strikes, one strikeout and no hits allowed by that point.
Sixth-year senior Koty Frank took the mound for Cardinal in the bottom of the fourth and he worked around a one-out single to face just one more than the minimum in a scoreless frame.
White turned to McEntire again in the top of the fifth and it ended up being a bad call, as he was tagged for five runs in the frame. Sophomore Reese Robinett got Cardinal on the board with a one-out RBI single. After a run crossed on a fielding error by McEntire, he gave up a three-run homer to Edmunson, who crushed the ball 407 feet to left to give Cardinal a 5-4 lead.
Frank returned to the mound in the bottom of the fifth for Cardinal. Aloy singled to lead things off and then he scored courtesy of a two-run homer from Ben McLaughlin that went 358 feet to right. Frank responded by retiring the next three batters in order to keep the White lead at 6-5.
Sophomore right-hander Wood relieved McEntire in the top of the sixth. The decision worked out as he forced Helfrick to ground out to short stop, Rowland to pop out in foul territory and Sprague-Lott to line out back to himself. White maintained a 6-5 lead following the action.
Wood stayed on to pitch for Cardinal in the bottom of the sixth. Wilmsmeyer singled to get things started and made it all the way to third off a stolen base and error by Helfrick. Stovall managed to drive him in with an RBI groundout for the first out of the inning. Wood bounced back by forcing another groundout to White before getting Diggs to pop out to end the inning at 7-5, White.
The Hogs chose to keep Wood on the mound for another inning in the top of the seventh for White. He continued mowing down batters and made quick work with a Nolan Souza flyout, a Ty Waid strikeout and Robinette strikeout to end the scrimmage with White leading 7-5.
