FAYETTEVILLE — Perhaps this exact snapshot in time will reflect the best statistics the University of Arkansas weekend starting pitchers can achieve all season.
Who knows? Maybe they can keep it up, build their pitch counts higher as the season rolls along, still be strong and maintain their current string of performances when the postseason hits.
But right now, the numbers for lefties Hagen Smith and Mason Molina and right-hander Brady Tygart are close to ridiculous. The production out of that trio, which is a combined 9-0, has been the driver for the No. 1 Razorbacks (17-2, 3-0 SEC) through five weekends.
Arkansas is riding a 13-game winning streak heading into a three-game set at No. 24 Auburn (13-6, 0-3) starting Thursday.
Ten of pitching coach Matt Hobbs’ mainline pitchers have ERAs of 3.00 or less, helping Arkansas to the nation’s No. 1 ranking in five key pitching categories: ERA (2.35), strikeout-to-walk ratio (4.64), strikeouts per nine innings (13.6), WHIP (0.97) and hits per nine innings (5.77).
All of those statistics reflect a level of dominance. But the WHIP (walks and hits divided by innings pitched) in particular is a phenomenal stat, as the gap between Arkansas and the second-best WHIP of East Carolina (1.08) is such that the next seven teams fit in the same-sized gap between the Pirates and No. 8 Kentucky (1.17).
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Cracking the sub-1.00 WHIP mark all season would be a striking achievement, as only five teams have managed to be below 1.00 in the last 10 years, and only one of them — Oregon State’s 0.98 in 2017 — was done in a full season. The other four happened in the severely limited sample size of the covid-19 season of 2020.
The trio of Smith, Tygart and Molina, who have pitched in that order all season, is a key reason for all those numbers.
“It’s been fun watching those guys pitch, and again, you know we’ve only played [five] weeks,” Arkansas Coach Dave Van Horn said.
“The two guys that are in front of me, I haven’t really seen anything like it,” Molina said Sunday. “You can compare it to Wake Forest last year, but there’s still a lot of the year left. At the same time, it’s not like we’re reinventing the wheel. We’re just making pitches and the guys have good stuff. Same with the bullpen.”
Smith, Tygart, Molina and veteran right-hander Will McEntire combined to pitch 20 1/3 shutout innings with 4 hits allowed and 32 strikeouts in the Hogs’ sweep of Missouri last weekend to complete a 12-0 home stand. The WHIP for those four pitchers was a microscopic 0.64.
When the Razorbacks notched back-to-back shutouts of the Tigers by scores of 8-0 and 6-0, it was the first time Arkansas had done that against conference opponents since starts by Nick Schmidt and Jess Todd at the 2007 SEC Tournament. Which naturally brought up comparisons between those starters — headed by Schmidt, Todd and Duke Welker — and the current trio of weekend aces.
“They’re all experienced,” Van Horn said of the current staff. “In ’07, Nick Schmidt was a junior, Welker was a junior, I think. Todd, same thing. … That’s like 1,000 games ago, but it was a really good staff.
“Slider guy, right-hander, Todd. Had a good fastball with sink. I would say they are a lot alike when you really look at it. Velocity on Friday [with Smith] is better, but Nick Schmidt could throw the fastball inside to right-handed hitters better than anyone I’ve ever had.
“They all have things that they can do really well, and I think that’s what makes a good starter. You figure out what that is, and if you repeat it you can get good hitters out. I feel fortunate to have three veteran guys on the mound.”
The weekend opener, Smith (3-0, 1.57 ERA), has a .108 batting average against, a pristine 0.70 WHIP and the junior is averaging 18.24 strikeouts per 9 innings.
Van Horn pointed out Smith will be 20 when the season ends and is still getting stronger.
“I think what he can do is he can really repeat his delivery,” Van Horn said. “He stays balanced. He doesn’t get out of whack much and that’s why there’s not those bad misses, and when he does miss, they’re pretty good pitches.
“Some are just right there, a ball off, and that’s what you want. Just the development with Coach Hobbs, and growing up, practice. Everything combined is just making him the guy we thought he could be and even more, honestly. I mean, who could project how good he is right now when he walked in the door here? We knew he had a really good arm.”
Van Horn said Smith’s work ethic since a rocky outing against TCU at the 2023 NCAA Fayetteville Regional has been outstanding.
“This is a guy that is almost a unanimous pick for captain and he doesn’t talk a whole lot,” Van Horn said. “They picked him because they just see that guy working every day and probably as a young pitcher, you’re probably going, ‘How am I going to keep up with this guy?’
“They respect him a lot, then you watch him on the field and it’s been incredible. He’s not worried about all the other stuff. He’s not worried about the draft. … He’s just playing. He’s just pitching and playing for the team. He knows it’s going to be fine. That’s one thing that we as coaches really appreciate about him is just the way he is off the field and as a person and the way he leads.”
Tygart (3-0, 0.73 ERA), a junior whose collection of breaking balls ranks with the best in college baseball, has a .152 batting average against and a 0.93 WHIP, with 12 hits and 11 walks allowed versus 35 strikeouts. He has given up one extra-base hit, a solo home run.
Molina (3-0, 2.74), a junior transfer from Texas Tech, has a .122 batting average against, an 0.87 WHIP and he averages 16.8 strikeouts per 9 innings.
Van Horn was asked if Tygart’s high hit-batters count (9) and Molina’s pitch count were of concern.
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“You think about Tygart hitting people, it’s been with breaking balls — breaking balls, sliders,” Van Horn said. “It’s still early.
“Molina, he’s had a couple of good innings, but he had a couple innings where he had to throw 20-plus pitches. … If he could get that pitch count down just a little bit, yeah, it’s concerning, but it’s not been like it’s a major problem as far as winning and losing because he’s found a way to give us usually four to five innings. But there’s seven in there. There’s seven innings in there if he’ll just throw.
“Borderline, strikes, those are good. You throw an elevated fastball with an 0-2 count, trying to get them to chase it, that’s a great pitch. The pitches that aren’t good are the ones that are just way off the plate or way up right out of the hand. There’s no chance they’re going to swing at it.”
Tygart has pitched at least 4 innings in all 5 of his starts and 5-plus in three of them. He has allowed no earned runs in three starts and one run twice.
Molina allowed four earned runs in four innings against McNeese State on March 10. In his four starts, he has given up a combined 3 runs on 6 hits and 8 walks in 19 innings.
Smith gave up a walk, a hit batter and a wind-blown three-run homer to his first three batters of the season in a 6-4 win over James Madison on Opening Day.
Since then, he’s thrown 22 innings and has given up 7 hits, 6 walks, 1 run on a solo homer and has 48 strikeouts for an average of more than 2 per inning. He has allowed multiple hits only twice in five starts.
“He just comes at you,” Van Horn said. “And as a hitter, it’s just like the first pitch of every game the hitter is swinging, and they’re trying to hit the first pitch as hard and as far as they can because they know they’re going to get about 97 right over the plate. It’s been amazing, because they know he’s coming at them.”
The game plan all along has to keep the pitch counts for the three starters reasonable so they will be peaking at the end of the season. Hobbs and Van Horn have succeeded in that aim, with Smith’s 99 pitches the highest count for any of the trio through the combined 15 starts.