FAYETTEVILLE — Down the home stretch the Arkansas Razorbacks go, with only SEC and postseason games remaining on their schedule following Tuesday’s 6-4 loss to Missouri State.
With only nine regular-season games left over three weekends, where does the University of Arkansas baseball club stand right now?
On the plus side, the Razorbacks (34-11, 14-7 SEC) are ranked No. 3 in the USA Today coaches poll, a solid position from which to land both NCAA regional and super regional host roles. They lead the SEC West by two games over three teams — Auburn, LSU and Texas A&M — heading into a three-game set against Auburn at Plainsman Park starting Friday.
So there’s a solid chance for Coach Dave Van Horn’s Razorbacks to win the outright SEC West title for the second season in a row, or at least a share of the division championship for the fourth year in a row. The overall SEC crown looks like a lost cause for the Hogs with No. 1 Tennessee storming in the SEC East with a 19-2 conference record, a five-game lead over Arkansas. Coach Tony Vitello’s Volunteers can match last year’s Arkansas team and the 2013 Vanderbilt Commodores as the only SEC clubs to win every conference series in a season if they can take sets at Kentucky, versus Georgia and at Mississippi State to close out the regular season.
On the flip side for the Razorbacks is how the team looks in the here and now.
They compiled a 10-1 record in midweek games, which isn’t bad, but that one loss took place Tuesday against a team whose pitching staff entered the game with a 5.54 earned run average, good for 142nd in the country.
Van Horn said Tuesday night that he wouldn’t mind having one more midweek game, as weather cost the Razorbacks games against Nebraska-Omaha and the University of Arkansas-Little Rock.
“I do like … where we sit,” Van Horn said when asked about wrapping up non-conference play. “Maybe we’ll get some of these guys, once they finish up school here the next week, really just focused in.
“It’s a different feeling once the guys are done with school. So, yeah, SEC games and hopefully we’ll have a chance to continue to play. … We’ve got to keep getting better.”
Arkansas went its final 22 innings of midweek games without stringing together back-to-back hits against Missouri State, the University of Central Arkansas and Arkansas State University. The last time the Razorbacks did it was the fifth inning of a 10-3 win over ASU on April 20, when Jace Bohrofen doubled, followed by successive singles from Braydon Webb, Kendall Diggs and Dylan Leach in a four-run inning.
Postseason pitching would surely stack up saltier than that.
In the latest RPI rankings, Arkansas dropped four spots to No. 29, not a favorable metric. In those rankings, the Razorbacks are eighth among SEC teams behind 1 Tennessee, 3 Georgia, 4 Auburn, 11 Vanderbilt, 13 Texas A&M, 14 LSU, and 20 Florida.
Arkansas has swept one of those teams (LSU), lost series to two (at A&M, at Florida) face two (at Auburn, Vanderbilt) over the next two weekends, and are not scheduled to face the others (Tennessee, Georgia). Thus, this weekend’s set at No. 18 Auburn, which has a couple of key pitchers — Friday starter Hayden Mullins and closer Blake Burkhalter — questionable for the series, looms large.
The Razorbacks went 4 for 33 (.121) against Missouri State pitchers Reece Lang, Eric Loomis, Trey Ziegenbein and Jake McMahill on Tuesday, dropping their team batting average to .277.
The earned run averages of those four pitchers, in order, heading into Tuesday night: 5.07, 4.26, 4.00, 5.12. Yet the foursome largely mowed the Razorbacks down, allowed one extra-base hit on Leach’s home run, struck out eight batters and walked two.
Chris Lanzilli hit a first-inning single, Robert Moore and Jalen Battles hit ninth-inning singles around a key Missouri State error, Leach and the pinch-hitter Diggs drew walks, and pinch hitter Zack Gregory was hit by a pitch. Those were Arkansas’ only base runners outside Leach’s home run and Brady Slavens reaching base on a first-inning error.
“We just didn’t do much,” Van Horn said. “Just give credit to Missouri State’s pitching staff. They did a really good job against us.”
Van Horn talked last week about needing to have four or five hitters turn in big weekends, rather than just a couple, but only a minimal amount of Razorbacks’ batters look to be in a groove right now.
Over the last 10 games, dating back to the first game of the midweek series against ASU on April 19, the hitting stats for the top players in the rotation, roughly in batting order, are: Cayden Wallace (.231, 9 of 39), Slavens (.220, 9 of 41), Lanzilli (.321, 9 of 28), Michael Turner (.250, 9 of 36), Moore (.205, 8 of 39), Webb (.333 , 11 of 33), Battles (.237, 9 of 38), Gregory (.083, 1 of 12), Bohrofen (.200, 3 of 15) and Diggs (.444, 4 of 9).