HOOVER, Ala. — Success, or lack thereof, in the SEC Baseball Tournament is no kind of barometer to project the trajectory of an NCAA postseason for the No. 4 Arkansas Razorbacks or any other team.
The 2021 Razorbacks tacked on their first SEC Tournament title to a dominating regular-season conference championship. but lost their home NCAA super regional to North Carolina State.
The 2022 Razorbacks went 0-2 at the SEC Tournament during a sluggish stretch, then won a regional at Oklahoma State and a super regional at North Carolina before making the College World Series semifinals in Omaha, Neb.
So the team’s two-and-out showing at the SEC Tournament this week with a 6-5 loss to South Carolina and a 9-6 loss to No. 2 Kentucky basically has no bearing on the ultimate end for these Razorbacks.
Yet, their first two postseason showings follow in the mode of a recent, worrisome trend. Arkansas has lost seven of its past 10 games and dropped three in a row for the first time this season.
“It’s time to take a step forward,” Arkansas Coach Dave Van Horn said he told his team after Thursday’s elimination game loss to the Wildcats. “We kind of went backward a couple weeks ago. Sideways. We’ve been up and down. We need to make a move and finish this thing up the right way.”
What does the Hogs’ two performances in Hoover say about the state of the team?
The Hogs’ pitching and defense were not sharp in either game at the tournament.
Their hitting was OK, with 11 runs scored in the two days, but a well-placed hit here or there instead of a sacrifice fly or an RBI groundout could have turned the outcome in one or both games.
The “clutch” hits have run sparse recently, with Arkansas leaving 18 men on base at the tournament. Peyton Holt’s three-run home run when the Razorbacks trailed Kentucky 6-1 was the only multi-run producing hit of the week.
“We left a lot of runners on base in the last two days,” Van Horn said Thursday. “Really the biggest hit we got was that three-run homer. We got a hit here or there or a sac fly [Wednesday]. But [Thursday’s] game was, again, in our big inning, we needed another hit.
“We’ve got to get better. … That’s what I just told them: We’ve got to get more production up and down the lineup. It’s spotty right now.
“I think guys are trying too hard, trying to do too much instead of just take what they give you sometimes. What I’m talking about is maybe a couple guys going out of the zone, put themselves in a bad count. We’ve got to flip that, take the pitch, work for the next one. Yeah, we’re going to have to swing the bats a lot better when we get to the regional.”
Ten Arkansas pitchers combined to allow 15 runs in 17 innings at the tournament and four of those runs were unearned. Only Christian Foutch, Jake Faherty, Will McEntire and Mason Molina managed to have scoreless outings in Hoover, and McEntire only recorded one out.
Hagen Smith and Brady Tygart, the team’s 1-2 starting pitching combo for much of the season, both had errors in the tournament that led to unearned runs. The Razorbacks won Smith’s first 13 starts on the season and have lost his past two. Kentucky hung the first “L” on the ledger for Smith (9-1), who actually dropped his ERA to 1.48 with two innings and no earned runs allowed.
Tygart (4-3, 3.94) threw a clean sixth inning against the Wildcats, but his own fielding error parlayed into a two-run home run and he wound up allowing three runs, though only one of them was earned.
Van Horn and pitching coach Matt Hobbs will have some tough decisions to make for next week’s regional, which is virtually certain to take place at Baum-Walker Stadium, where the Hogs are 33-3 this year.
Do they hold Smith back for a Game 2 start, ostensibly against a tougher team that Arkansas will face in a regional opener? If they make that decision, who starts Game 1?
Ben Bybee and Gage Wood, sophom*ore right-handers who have made recent starts, have been knocked around some. Tygart has allowed 10 earned runs in his past 5 2/3 innings. Molina, who was in the starting rotation for 12 weekends, has thrown 5 scoreless innings in relief in his past two outings after giving up 9 earned runs in his prior 3 appearances over 7 1/3 innings.
McEntire, who was so dominant as a piggyback to Smith with a 1.75 ERA through his first 15 appearances, has not located pitches well his past 13 outings and his current ERA is 4.26. The veteran right-hander started Game 3 at Texas A&M last week and gave up 4 earned runs on 4 hits and a walk while retiring 4 hitters.
Arkansas’ defense has been strong almost all season with a .981 fielding percentage that ranks 10th in the nation and second in the SEC. However, it dropped by one-hundredth of a percent in the past few games. The Razorbacks committed five errors in Hoover, the same number they committed in the 11 games leading up to the postseason.
Van Horn was asked whether the SEC Tournament held importance and he broke it down.
“Depends on where you are,” he said. “Depends on your record at the time coming in here, you know, or depending upon how you’re playing. If you’re not playing very well, you come in here, play really good, you can gain some momentum.
“Come in here, you got things locked up and you just don’t want to get anybody hurt … obviously you want to win, you don’t like losing, you’re used to winning, that’s why you’re in this position that you’re in.
“It just depends on who you are and where you’re at as far as wins and losses and how you’re playing. And I wouldn’t say that it’s not important. It’s more important for some teams than it is others, like everybody knows.”
