State of the Hogs: Martin, Kjerstad taking care of details

Arkansas NCAA college baseball coach Dave Van Horn, right, follows team practice at TD Ameritrade Park, as Casey Martin throws in Omaha, Neb., Friday, June 14, 2019. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

This is the time of year when expectations soar for the best college baseball programs.

Arkansas is an annual top 25 team and no doubt has its fans thinking College World Series. Never mind that coaches can’t tell you their starting rotation or their batting order.

Players know this is the time of year to grind through practices and fight the chill of February and March. They have to do the mundane tasks of taking batting practice and infield and go over their technique in fine detail with the newfangled metrics now available to college teams.

That doesn’t stop them from setting goals or speaking to expectations. The stars like Casey Martin and Heston Kjerstad, both juniors who started in the CWS the last two years, know why they came to Arkansas.

“We want to win the national championship,” Martin said. “Obviously, we went to the College World Series the last two years. We want a third trip and we want to win.”

Without a prod, Martin went one step deeper. With a nod to Dave Van Horn’s office, Martin spoke about the coach who has taken the Hogs to the brink of the title. With six Omaha trips in 17 years with the Hogs, Van Horn lacks only the ring that says he’s the best in college baseball.

“Coach Van Horn is very deserving,” Martin said. “We should have won it for him by now. We want to win it for him this year.

“That’s our main goal. You want to be the best player you can be, but you want to have the program reach its full potential.”

Kjerstad said much the same thing, but went in a little different direction when asked about his coach.

“What I’d say first is that I’ve learned so much under Coach Van Horn,” he said. “He taught me how to grow up.

“This might surprise some, but he’s not crazy strict. He will have fun, but the main thing is that he teaches you to take care of your stuff in your own way.

“For instance, if you need two hours to warm up, get here early and take care of it. He teaches you to understand the small details and that it’s going to add up by the end of the season.

“I’ve learned that over the last two SEC seasons with Coach Van Horn. He’s right, too. You get to the last series and you see all the one- and two-run games over the course of a season decided by little things and they are the difference in winning a championship. That’s what you learn from him here.”

Goals and expectations don’t change the process in the minds of the Arkansas coaches. For example, hitting coach Nate Thompson has a plan for the first month of school for the spring semester that leads up to the first game, and it doesn’t change.

It’s about doing the work and watching to see who elevates their game to fill in the blanks around some of the obvious great talents on the team.

For instance, it’s a given that Kjerstad is going to play right field. Martin is going to be the shortstop. Those two are both probably first-round draft picks.

Casey Opitz is going to be the catcher. He’s also a high-round draft candidate.

So those three names are on the lineup card in ink. What happens elsewhere is still in pencil, emerging as preseason practice grinds for another month.

Thompson goes back to last year as a perfect example. Coaches didn’t know how some of the newcomers would perform. How would Matt Goodheart adjust after just one season in junior college? How about graduate transfer Trevor Ezell and his recovery from serious shoulder surgery? Could he play first, or just DH?

“But what we had is a group that kept elevating their performance in practice,” Thompson said. “Then, it continued throughout the year.”

The questions are just as numerous this season. Here’s a sample:

Can 17-year-old Robert Moore provide the double play combination at second base that Jack Kenley gave Martin last year?

Can Christian Franklin defend like Dominic Fletcher did the previous three seasons in center field?

Can Moore or Franklin produce at the plate like Kenley and Fletcher?

Is there anyone to produce so many clutch hits at the top of the lineup like Ezell? Or grind on pitchers with deep counts like Ezell?

“Those three guys — Fletcher, Kenley and Ezell — will be tough to replace,” Thompson said. “But we like what we have. Our depth is so much better.”

That’s a tribute to Thompson’s recruiting over the course of nearly three years. The best is yet to come, as the next two classes may be among the nation’s best. But what’s on campus now is pretty good.

No one questions the talent of Martin, Kjerstad and Opitz, but Braydon Webb, Cole Austin and Moore are among the SEC’s most highly regarded newcomers as far as position players.

The fun part is that it’s easier to find complementary parts than stars. The heavy lifting was done three and four years ago when Martin and Kjerstad were recruited. And, because of them, the national media has always circled 2020 as the year when the stars might finally align for Van Horn’s program.

If that is to happen, there are details to cover. If anyone understands, it’s Martin. He learned the ropes at shortstop last season after playing third his first season. Despite committing 23 errors, Van Horn stuck with him and said it was just a process.

“Mostly, it was the easy plays,” Van Horn said last year. “He’s making the hard plays and he gets to so many balls that others do not because of great range. He just needs to slow down. Sometimes he gets ahead of himself on the easy plays.”

Martin laughed about that in January the day before the spring semester began.

“It was on the easy plays,” he said. “I think I had too much time to think. I’m a fast-paced guy and I do get going too fast.

“What most don’t really think about, it was my first time to play shortstop in three years. It took awhile to get in the groove.

“It was good in the fall. I don’t think I made one error. For sure, no throwing errors.”

That was an abbreviated fall. He broke the hamate bone in his hand on Oct. 7. Surgery was required but he recovered quickly.

“I’ve seen him and he’s good to go,” Thompson said. “His swing looks great.”

Martin is full speed now, but the down time was almost unbearable.

“It’s about as hard as anything I’ve ever been through,” Martin said. “Five or six weeks of not swinging the bat was horrible.”

It was tough to figure out how to fill the time devoted to the batting cage.

“I probably get 300 swings a day,” he said. “It’s probably more than most people think. The hand feels great now.”

The Lonoke product with the quick bat and quick feet is all about mentoring the new defensive phenom. He’s heard all the stories about Moore and is anxious to work with him as the probable double play combo.

“I reached out to him on the phone during the Christmas break,” Martin said. “I’d never met him. I just wanted him to know that we were excited to have him.

“I wanted him to know he’d be accepted by the team even with not being here in the fall. We are going to make sure he fits in. Carson Shaddy was the same with me when I got here as a freshman.

“I figured he thought it was going to be a tough transition, but it won’t be. He’s played everywhere. I know he’s 17 and he’s playing with guys who might be 21, 22 or 23. That’s a big change, but it’s just baseball.”

There will be ups and downs and if anyone knows, it’s Martin. After leading the team in hitting as a freshman at .345, his average slipped to .286 last year.

Martin’s power numbers did increase. He hit 13 homers with 49 RBI as a freshman. He hit 15 with 57 RBI last year.

“My mindset at the plate will be different this year,” he said. “I don’t want to chase stats. Everything went so well as a freshman, but I don’t want to chase stats like last year.

“I want to cut down on my strikeouts and just stay inside myself.”

Martin led the team with 79 strikeouts last year. That was up from 64 as a freshman.

Thompson said the goal was for Martin to “stay inside the zone.” Of course, that’s the same thought process he’s given Kjerstad, too.

“Teams really pitched those two guys hard last year,” Thompson said. “They were marked men. Teams had a better scouting report on both of them. They were such special players as freshmen and teams really concentrated on them last year.

“The key for both is approach. They have to stay inside the zone. It sounds simple, but it’s not.”

Martin said, “No, it’s not. Easier said than done. The pitchers we see in the SEC are going to play in the big leagues. They are going to pitch you good.

“You have to figure it out. Heston did. He has done a terrific job. He made some changes to approach. I have to make those changes, too.

“What you have to remember is that this is a game of failure. You just have to keep grinding and adjusting.”

Kjerstad followed a great freshman season (.332, 14 HR, 58 RBI), with an equally impressive sophomore campaign (.327, 17 HR, 51 RBI). But there was a slow start. Thompson helped with an adjustment midway through the year.

“The biggest thing is plate approach and keeping it simple,” Thompson said. “That’s for Heston, but even more so for Casey. But we did find something to help Heston.”

It had to do with a return to a dynamic leg kick that had been reduced in the offseason. Generally, a big leg kick makes a hitter weak against the off-speed pitch because of too much weight shift.

“Too much lower movement is bad for most, but every hitter is different,” Thompson said. “We found that Heston needed that movement. His swing looked good (without the leg kick), but he was swinging through things.

“By lowering his kick, he wasn’t loading his hip. We changed that and all at once, things settled in.”

Kjerstad said it’s not just a matter of the mental game.

“You have to maintain plate discipline,” he said. “I have learned some things, like how to work the count and lay off pitches.”

But there have been physical changes, too. He’s more fit than his first two years.

“I’ve worked hard in the weight room,” he said. “Blaine Kinsley has also taught me how to run.”

That prompted a chuckle about his running style. Some thought he was injured because of a hitch in his gait.

“It’s just how I run,” he said. “You can tell it’s me without a number on my back because of how I run. That part has not changed, but I am faster. We worked on running form to help my speed and it worked.”

Thompson has given him a few tricks at the plate, too.

“He’s learned to back spin the ball a little more to the pull side,” Thompson said. “He did that to the opposite side. He’d spin it out to left field. But he hit a lot of top spin line drives to right and right center that were just crushed to the pull side.”

Kjerstad wore out the base of the wall in right center with line drives his first two seasons and also hit some top spin liners that fell in front of the right fielder.

“Those doubles will go out of the park with some back spin,” Thompson said. “He’s naturally gifted as a hitter, but a little back spin to the pull side might make his home run numbers jump.”

Kjerstad agrees, but said he’ll gladly take those two baggers.

“If the homers come, fine, but I don’t mind hitting the base of the wall,” he said. “I guess it’s like hitting a golf ball. The top spin hit hooks and dives down. The back spin goes up. I did have a lot of those top spin drives that went right at someone and dove to their glove.

“I’ve seen it work in the fall. Those back spin hits to the pull side just glide out of the park. I don’t want to change too much, but I can see that it’s going to help.”

For now, it’s not about hitting home runs. Kjerstad knows the Van Horn way.

“We know we are going to be a good team,” Kjerstad said. “It’s kind of weird, but right now, it’s just taking care of the small details. It will fall in place.”