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FAYETTEVILLE — As expected, Arkansas is sticking with Jaxon Wiggins as its Game 3 starter this weekend at Auburn.
The right-hander has struggled of late, but is still slated to follow Connor Noland and Hagen Smith in the rotation, the UA announced Thursday — confirming what head coach Dave Van Horn told reporters earlier in the week.
After giving the Razorbacks at least five innings in six of his first seven starts, Wiggins has failed to get them deep into games recently, throwing four or fewer innings in three of his last four outings.
“We’re standing behind him,” Van Horn told fans at the monthly Swatters’ Club meeting Monday. “We’re going to start him this weekend against Auburn. If it goes good, great, because we need him. If not, we’ll have somebody ready to go. That’s what you gotta do — you’ve gotta back these guys up.”
Prior to his recent rough stretch, Wiggins had excellent numbers for a Sunday starter in the SEC. He was 4-0 with a 3.69 ERA and 1.10 WHIP, plus opponents were hitting just .169 against him.
The sophomore right-hander was even better in his first three SEC starts, posting a 2.95 ERA and cutting down his walks from 5.2 per nine innings in non-conference play to 3.9 per nine innings against conference foes.
That included a great start in a rubber match at Missouri in which he went 7 1/3 innings — showing the coaching staff what he’s capable of when he’s on.
“Missouri is a team that likes to take a lot of pitches and they tried that on him and it didn’t work,” Van Horn said. “(They) got behind in the count and he got them. We know it’s in there.”
Armed with a fastball in the upper-90s, Wiggins came to Arkansas as a heralded recruit from Roland, Okla., and actually threw 23 innings across 17 appearances — including four starts — as a true freshman last year.
Command and mixing in pitches other than the fastball have continued to be his biggest hurdles this year as he earned a spot in the weekend rotation.
“The key for him is to be able to throw off speed pitches early in the count and finish guys with fastballs and not just fastball every time,” Van Horn said. “More than anything, you’ve just got to throw strikes. If he does that, he’ll be good.”
Those issues have come to a head the last four weeks. Even with a solid start against LSU, Wiggins has allowed 17 earned runs in 12 2/3 innings over that stretch — causing his ERA to balloon by more than two runs to 5.75.
He’s averaged 7.8 walks per nine innings over his last four starts and opponents are hitting .400/.443/.617 against him.
Luckily for the Razorbacks, the emergence of left-hander Zack Morris in an already solid bullpen has allowed them to have a quick hook and get Wiggins out of the game, which could continue to be the case if he doesn’t get back on track.
“He’s struggled the last few weeks, but we’ve had guys available,” Van Horn said. “We had maybe a mental plan how we were going to handle it if it didn’t go good the first two or three innings, who would be first and then kind of go from there.”
Van Horn did mention he was encouraged by last week’s outing against Ole Miss. He got through some early struggles by allowing only one run in the first inning and followed it up with two really good innings.
In the fourth inning, though, he issued another leadoff walk and then gave up back-to-back hits that resulted in two runs.
“He actually threw some really good breaking balls (last Sunday), but you’ve got to land more of them because there’s two philosophies against him — take until you get a strike early or jump that first fastball and try to hit it as hard as you can,” Van Horn said. “We’ve seen everything. Then they mix it up a little bit.”
Although he didn’t rule out reevaluating the plan for Wiggins, which could mean coming out of the bullpen and pitching in the middle of the game, Van Horn is optimistic that he’ll turn things around down the stretch.
After all, the veteran coach has seen something like that happen in the not-so-distant past. In 2018, Isaiah Campbell has an up-and-down season as part of the Razorbacks’ rotation. In eight SEC starts, he posted a 5.57 ERA in just 32 1/3 innings — about four innings per start.
Campbell failed to record an out in the Fayetteville Regional that year, but was solid in the super regional and retired the first 14 batters he faced in Omaha, helping send Arkansas to the College World Series finals.
There are certainly parallels between the two talented right-handers, even though their particular issues aren’t quite the same. While Campbell’s problem stemmed from his confidence, Wiggins’ is his command.
The former eventually got things figured out and became the ace on a team that made it back to Omaha, but the jury is still out on the latter.
“I remember always talking to Campbell like, ‘When you start believing you’re a guy, you’re going to be a guy,’” Van Horn said. “I think Wiggins believes he’s a guy, but he’s just got to control that talent. You can’t coach that — that velocity.
“To me, it’s really his battle there, and it’s the same as it was with Campbell when he started believing. When he came back that next year in ‘19…you saw what kind of year he had, it was amazing. One of the best Friday guys I’ve ever had.”
Wiggins will get the ball at 1 p.m. CT Sunday, following the first two games that are scheduled for 7 p.m. Friday and 4:30 p.m. Saturday.
