FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas freshman outfielder Heston Kjerstad can hit a ball at least 419 feet and flip a bat afterwards.
Kjerstad, now hitting .424 this season, did both Thursday afternoon when he launched a no doubt, three-run homer as No. 6 Arkansas downed Dayton 11-0 to sweep a two-game series before 2,152 fans at Baum Stadium.
Dayton right fielder Tate Hagan didn’t flinch an inch when Kjerstad, who starred for Amarillo, Texas, Randall last season, powered a fastball that statcast said traveled 419 feet - way over the 365-foot fence.
“He is hitting the ball pretty good,” Arkansas head coach Dave Van Horn said. “He didn’t like that submarine lefty though, did he? But other than that his at-bats have been really competitive and he has been a tough out.
“He fouls off pitches and doesn’t get cheated and if you make a mistake, he showed what he can do with it - no matter which way the wind was blowing - on that one.”
Kjerstad, a 36th-round pick of the Seattle Mariners in the 2017 Major League Draft, hit his first collegiate home run last week in Arkansas’ 1-0 win over Arizona in San Diego.
He is 13-of-29 at the plate so far this season with the two homers, 10 RBIs and just two strikeouts.
“I am just seeing all pitches well, driving the ball well and staying relaxed,” Kjerstad said.
Kjerstad’s homer put Arkansas up 6-0 and was part of a four-run fifth inning that also included Jared Gates’ RBI single.
“I was down in the count and there were runners in scoring position so I was just trying to drive in a run and give our pitching staff some more runs so they could just go back out there and do their thing,” Kjerstad said.
“The pitcher happened to leave something up that I could drive and I put a good swing on it.”
Arkansas (7-2) is in the middle of five games in five days with USC (7-1) scheduled for a trio of contests beginning with Friday’s 3 p.m. opener.
“They (the Trojans) are playing solid baseball and they do everything well,” Van Horn said. “They field well, they have been pitching well and getting a lot of timely hitting. They have played a good schedule. Most of the teams that were in their area are good whether they are playing a bigger conference team or maybe even a mid-major type out there, they are a quality opponent.
“They have seen teams like ours and they are not going to be intimidated. It should be a good series.”
The 11 runs - which included two runs scoring via wild pitches - were plenty for the Razorback freshmen pitching trio of left-hander Hunter Milligan and right-handers Bryce Bonnin and Cole Ramage.
Milligan, a former Greenbrier standout coming back from injury, was on a pitch count and went the first two innings while fanning four, giving up two hits, walking a batter and throwing 37 pitches, 23 for strikes.
Bonnin followed with five hitless innings while whiffing six, walking a batter and hitting one in just 60 pitches, 37 of which were strikes.
“I thought he was outstanding today,” Van Horn said of Bonnin. “Six strikeouts and one walk and throwing the ball as hard as he does, that is impressive. He showed me that he was under control. He wasn’t stomping around on the mound when he wasn’t getting a call. He acted like he had done it before and just showed a lot of poise out there. I gained a lot of confidence in him today.”
Bonnin’s outing was stellar and he picked up his first collegiate victory.
“It felt great and the slider was really working today,” Bonnin said. “I have really been working hard on that in my bullpens and I was able to mix up my spots pretty well and just located fastball.”
Ramage pitched the final two frames as Arkansas and worked out of a two-on, one-out situation in the ninth to preserve the shutout.
He capped the scoring with a base hit to left field.
“That was fun for the team,” Van Horn said. “…I asked Ramage ‘you hit in high school a little bit, didn’t you?’ He said ‘yeah’ and I said ‘well you know where the batter’s box is.’ He made his way to it and I thought he did a good job.”
All five pitchers that Arkansas used in the two wins over Dayton were freshmen and none of the five gave up an earned run in the 18-1 and 11-0 wins.
“Really you just looked at the past two days and we threw five freshmen pitchers and I thought they all did a really good job,” Van Horn said. “It gave us the opportunity to save some of our more experienced bullpen guys for the weekend, which is good, plus they gained a lot of experience.
“We got some really tough mid-week games coming up in a couple of weeks. We have Texas in here for two and we got to Charlotte in the middle of the week between Kentucky and Florida so we are going to have to pitch those guys and depend on them to give us some quality innings to give us an opportunity to get through a couple of those weeks where we have five games.
“They all threw good enough that they gained confidence, we get confidence in them and we can put them in tough situations against good teams.”
Freshman Casey Martin had two hits for the second straight day while Gates added a pair as well on a day the Razorbacks had eight as a team.
Arkansas piled up 20 hits against 10 Dayton pitchers in the win on Wednesday.
“We swung the bats pretty well,” Van Horn said. “We got off to a slow start today. I thought their pitcher was kind of like fooling us. He has us out front throwing a little cutter, velocity wasn’t great and it had us fooled for a couple of innings. But we kind of nickled and dimed him a little bit and popped a couple and built up a little bit of a lead. The two game series went well for us and I looking forward to getting to the weekend.”