April 15, 2003

Arkansas playing well heading into road swing

Charlie Shields
SEBaseball.com Staff Writer

Finally.

This past weekend at Baum Stadium felt like real baseball for the first time this season, because it's just not baseball unless you choke on the heat and take a third degree burn home with you as a souvenir.

The Hogs were playing host to Vanderbilt, in an important (but aren't they all) home SEC series.

The last two weekends were vital to the Hogs season, as they were presented with a great opportunity to pick up important conference victories against two East division teams, Georgia and Vanderbilt, before heading on the road for two series against tough SEC West opponents (Auburn and Alabama).

The Hogs took two of three from both Georgia and Vanderbilt, and going into Tuesday's game at Oral Roberts, the Hogs are 27-7 and 9-6 in the SEC. The Hogs won just 30 games in the regular season last year.

The pitching and hitting have looked alternately anemic and muscular. In Game 1 and Game 2 of the Georgia series, Arkansas pitchers held the Bulldogs to 4 and 3 runs, respectively, and scored 9 and 14. In game 3, however, the Hogs managed just 4 runs and gave up 10 as Senior Jarrett Gardner went just 1 1/3 innings. (Gardner is a previous SEC Pitcher of the Week.)

Against Vanderbilt, the Hogs were beat by good pitching on Friday night, as Jeremy Sowers had a no hitter going until the seventh inning. The Hogs were up 4-3 after seven, but the usually stable Razorback bullpen faltered and allowed 3 runs in the top of the 8th as the Commodores beat the Hogs 6-4.

Game two was a completely different story as the Hogs put on a show for SEC-TV and put up 17 runs (including 5 home runs, 4 of them 3 run shots). Razorback starting pitchers pitched just five innings though, and gave up 5 runs. In Game 3, starter Charley Boyce pitched just 4 innings and got another no-decision as Scott Roehl picked up his 6th win of the season.

Scott RoehlRoehl's six wins leads the team in victories, and he's started just one game. This is a problem for the Hogs, and will be an even bigger problem going into postseason play. The Razorbacks seem to have a lot of middle relievers, but no real dominating starters that can eat up innings. Razorback starters have pitched just two complete games, an 8 inning loss for Charley Boyce at South Carolina and a 7 inning win at South Carolina (the second game of a double header) for Jarrett Gardner.

In SEC play, the three Razorback starters (Charley Boyce, Clint Brannon and Jarrett Gardner) have gone fewer than five innings in six of the fifteen games and they have just four of the nine victories.

But the Razorback bullpen is solid. Roehl is 6-1 in 13 appearances with an ERA of 4.23; Boyd Goodner is 3-0 with a 1.61 ERA in 7 appearances; Jay Sawatski is 3-1 with 2 saves, and a 3.15 ERA in 13 appearances; Caton Hall is 1-1 with 3 saves and a 3.66 ERA in 14 appearances.

On the offensive side, junior outfielder Andrew Wishy leads the Hogs with a .373 average. In fact, the Hogs have eight regular players hitting above .300 which is in stark contrast to last season. Wishy also leads the team in RBIs, with 41. Senior outfielder Ryan Fox has 36 RBIs and leads the Hogs in home runs with 13 (tied for the lead in the SEC), including two home runs in the first two innings of the Saturday Vandy game. Junior first baseman and Miami transfer Haas Pratt is also hitting big for the Hogs with 9 home runs and 31 RBIs.

Defensively, the Hogs are in good shape since the return last Friday of shortstop Scott Hode. Hode was hit in the face by a pitch on March 19th against Louisiana Tech and broke several bones in his face, which required surgery. With Hode back in the lineup - and more importantly - back in the infield, the Hogs are solid again. Second baseman Scott Bridges also missed time with a shoulder injury, but he is back as well.

Razorback catchers are also doing very well. Last season, Hog catchers allowed 47 stolen bases and threw out just 27. Current starter Brady Toops allowed 13 and threw out 4 in his role backing up (now Wichita State Shocker) Cody Clark. This season, Toops and Judd Kindle have combined to throw out 15 runners, and allowed 13 stolen bases. Toops has thrown out 9 already.

All of this points to how well the team is taking to the new coaching staff, particularly the pitchers and catchers. The only area for improvement with this current Razorback team is starting pitching, and despite the old adage that good pitching always beats good hitting, I believe that in college baseball, monster hitting can smash the crud out of good pitchingespecially two out of three.

Charlie is the webmaster of HogNation (http://www.hognation.net), the online (and only) source for information on former Razorbacks. When she isn't watching sports, she works as a Marketing Assistant at the University of Arkansas Press.