Via @RileyMcFerran
Arkansas head coach Dave Van Horn and the Diamond Hogs have emphasized baserunning fundamentals and the seemingly lost art of bunting during fall ball, according to the Razorbacks’ skipper.
"Haven’t scrimmaged as much," Van Horn said Thursday. "We don’t have near as many at-bats as we’ve had probably the previous seven or eight falls here. Normally probably around 80 at-bats is what you’d get in the fall. The guys are mostly 40 at-bats maybe.
"Just because we’ve done a lot more just practicing. What I mean by that is working on skills and really offensively working on other things besides just hitting. Working on a lot of base running and bunting."
Last season, the Razorbacks ranked 60th nationally in home runs (87), but 213th in sacrifice bunts (15) and 218th in stolen bases (44). The year before that, Arkansas had 92 home runs (36th), 53 stolen bases (172nd) and 15 sacrifice bunts (197th).
RELATED: Arkansas pitcher to miss 2025 season with torn UCL
In fact, the last time Arkansas finished top-50 in either of the latter metrics was during the 2019 season, when it totaled 81 stolen bases (50th). It's clear that Van Horn wants to find a place for seemingly "old-school" strategies in his offense, but he'll first have to get freshmen on the roster up to speed.
"You know sometimes you assume things as a coach," Van Horn said. "The guys, when you think about it, the kids we get out of high school, they don’t work on a lot of things (that) they probably do in high school, but in summer ball, they just play. So they’re not working on refining things like baserunning, bunting, bunting for a hit."
"Some organizations are better than others at teaching those things. But we put in a lot of time with that. We felt like we needed to do that, just to make sure we’re good at it when spring rolls around."
According to Van Horn, the Razorbacks will be able to take advantage of teams not paying attention to the base paths and might take more risks than in previous seasons. That's a credit to the program's portal haul, which features athletes like Justin Thomas Jr. (35 SBs last season), Charles Davalan (13 SBs last season) and Logan Maxwell (10 SBs last season), among others.
Not only has the new crop of players added an extra wrinkle into Arkansas' scoring output, but it's also helped Diamond Hog defenders improve their comfort in stopping it.
"You know in the fall you’re going to run wild if you think that’s what you can do and that’s what we did," Van Horn said. "But it made us better. Really the last, I’d say 10 days, our pitchers have done a lot better job of holding runners, being able to defend it. It helped everybody. It helped us gain a little confidence in stealing bases or having the opportunity to steal them.
"There’s going to be days where the other team is awfully good on the mound or things aren’t going our way or the wind’s blowing in. We can still hit home runs. We’ve got power. We’ve got athletes and yeah, I feel like with most of the lineups we can put out there we’re going to be a lot better equipped to score runs so to speak"
The Diamond Hogs are set to host Oklahoma State on Friday and Saturday for exhibition matchups at Baum-Walker Stadium in Fayetteville. Friday's game will start at 6 p.m. CT and Saturday's will begin at noon CT. Both exhibitions are open to the public.
Arkansas head coach Dave Van Horn and the Diamond Hogs have emphasized baserunning fundamentals and the seemingly lost art of bunting during fall ball, according to the Razorbacks’ skipper.
"Haven’t scrimmaged as much," Van Horn said Thursday. "We don’t have near as many at-bats as we’ve had probably the previous seven or eight falls here. Normally probably around 80 at-bats is what you’d get in the fall. The guys are mostly 40 at-bats maybe.
"Just because we’ve done a lot more just practicing. What I mean by that is working on skills and really offensively working on other things besides just hitting. Working on a lot of base running and bunting."
Last season, the Razorbacks ranked 60th nationally in home runs (87), but 213th in sacrifice bunts (15) and 218th in stolen bases (44). The year before that, Arkansas had 92 home runs (36th), 53 stolen bases (172nd) and 15 sacrifice bunts (197th).
RELATED: Arkansas pitcher to miss 2025 season with torn UCL
In fact, the last time Arkansas finished top-50 in either of the latter metrics was during the 2019 season, when it totaled 81 stolen bases (50th). It's clear that Van Horn wants to find a place for seemingly "old-school" strategies in his offense, but he'll first have to get freshmen on the roster up to speed.
"You know sometimes you assume things as a coach," Van Horn said. "The guys, when you think about it, the kids we get out of high school, they don’t work on a lot of things (that) they probably do in high school, but in summer ball, they just play. So they’re not working on refining things like baserunning, bunting, bunting for a hit."
"Some organizations are better than others at teaching those things. But we put in a lot of time with that. We felt like we needed to do that, just to make sure we’re good at it when spring rolls around."
According to Van Horn, the Razorbacks will be able to take advantage of teams not paying attention to the base paths and might take more risks than in previous seasons. That's a credit to the program's portal haul, which features athletes like Justin Thomas Jr. (35 SBs last season), Charles Davalan (13 SBs last season) and Logan Maxwell (10 SBs last season), among others.
Not only has the new crop of players added an extra wrinkle into Arkansas' scoring output, but it's also helped Diamond Hog defenders improve their comfort in stopping it.
"You know in the fall you’re going to run wild if you think that’s what you can do and that’s what we did," Van Horn said. "But it made us better. Really the last, I’d say 10 days, our pitchers have done a lot better job of holding runners, being able to defend it. It helped everybody. It helped us gain a little confidence in stealing bases or having the opportunity to steal them.
"There’s going to be days where the other team is awfully good on the mound or things aren’t going our way or the wind’s blowing in. We can still hit home runs. We’ve got power. We’ve got athletes and yeah, I feel like with most of the lineups we can put out there we’re going to be a lot better equipped to score runs so to speak"
The Diamond Hogs are set to host Oklahoma State on Friday and Saturday for exhibition matchups at Baum-Walker Stadium in Fayetteville. Friday's game will start at 6 p.m. CT and Saturday's will begin at noon CT. Both exhibitions are open to the public.
