FAYETTEVILLE — A weekend that began with great promise for the No. 3 Arkansas baseball team with a win at top-ranked LSU unraveled in a Saturday doubleheader loss that put the team’s pitching futures back on the front burner.
The marquee Friday combination of southpaws Hunter Hollan and Hagen Smith did their part in a 9-3 win over the Tigers, snapping LSU’s 15-game winning streak at Alex Box Stadium in Baton Rouge.
But Hollan was obviously done for the weekend after his 87-pitch gem against LSU ace Paul Skenes, and Smith, who threw 80 pitches in 4 2/3 innings, could not participate in Saturday’s doubleheader, which could have been 18 innings but was shortened to 16 due to LSU’s 12-2 run-rule win in the opener.
Starters Will McEntire and Cody Adcock were tagged for a combined 11 runs on 12 hits and 2 walks in 6 2/3 innings. Relievers Austin Ledbetter, Zack Morris, Dylan Carter and Gage Wood also struggled to get outs, allowing 12 earned runs on 15 hits and 7 walks in 5 innings.
Freshmen Ben Bybee and Christian Foutch finally calmed the Tigers down on a day when the wind was blowing out and the conditions were ripe for long balls. The two right-handers combined for three shutout innings, preventing the 14-5 nightcap from being another run-rule decision.
Arkansas had a couple of key errors Saturday night that gave the Tigers five outs during a pivotal six-run fourth inning.
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“What I take away from today anyway is we need to shore up a little bit of our defense, we need to have another pitcher or two be able to pitch on the weekend,” Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn said late Saturday. “We’re just going to have to get a lot better if we’re going to compete with them.”
Van Horn also noted the Razorbacks’ struggles with runners in scoring position. They went 2 for 17 (.118) with runners at second or third base in the doubleheader and they left 17 runners on in those two games, including 11 in the nightcap.
The Arkansas offense that erupted for eight runs in the 10th inning on Friday — on pinch-hitter Reese Robinett’s three-run homer, Kendal Diggs’ grand slam and Brady Slavens’ sacrifice fly — accounted for just eight runs in the other 25 innings of the series, including three on Jared Wegner home runs and three by Caleb Cali in Game 2 on Saturday.
The Razorbacks are awaiting the recovery of right-handed reliever Brady Tygart, whose best-case scenario as he rests a strained elbow ligament appears to be a mid-April return.
In the meantime, some of the sorting of innings that appeared to be going in their favor since Tygart and fellow bullpen ace Koty Franks (lat muscle) were injured in a span of five days in early March, re-emerged as an area of concern.
Van Horn pointed to command and location as two issues for the starters McEntire (4-1, 5.23 ERA) and Adcock (2-1, 6.43).
“He didn’t command the ball today,” Van Horn said of McEntire. “I mean, he was behind in the count. I think he had one inning that was pretty good. Other than that, it was just a fight for him. He was up in the zone.
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“You’ve got wind blowing out about 10 miles an hour, air’s a lot thinner today, ball was flying. They were hitting some balls hard that just back spun. You’ve got to pitch down in the zone, and he didn’t do it.”
While McEntire was gifted a 2-0 first inning lead, Adcock was granted two of them, 2-0 in the first and 4-2 in the third. He allowed two first inning runs in the nightcap, then gave up two more in the third.
“They were all over him,” Van Horn said. “They were hitting him hard. Just needed to get him out because they were getting ready to hammer us. Needed a change, go to a left-hander.”
Speaking on the whole regarding the doubleheader, Van Horn said the Arkansas pitchers gave up too many fat pitches while well ahead in the count.
“There was a lot of 0-2 hits,” he said. “I mean, if a guy hits an 0-2 pitch, goes down and gets it, give credit to him. But those were just mistakes.”
Bybee worked scoreless innings in the sixth and seventh in Game 2. The 6-6, 235-pounder allowed one hit and a walk on 27 pitches.
Van Horn was asked if he entered the conversation for joining the weekend rotation.
“Our plan is to start him possibly Tuesday,” he said. “Doesn’t mean he has to go more than a couple innings. But he’s been pitching with a little bit of courage, so to speak, and just challenging people, throws that breaking ball.
“He made a couple of mistakes and got away with them tonight and just seemed like a couple of the guys earlier didn’t.”
The Razorbacks (20-4) return to action on Tuesday at 6 p.m. against Nebraska-Omaha (7-10), which lost a weekend series at home to North Dakota State that also featured a Saturday doubleheader.