FAYETTEVILLE — Isaiah Campbell proved Friday night that he doesn’t need his best stuff to go deep into games.
Arkansas’ ace threw seven innings for the fourth time in his last five starts to help his team to a series-opening 5-3 win over No. 23 Ole Miss at Baum-Walker Stadium.
“I definitely had to compete out there,” Campbell said. “Had to battle, had to battle some fast ball command issues, but I really had the slider working right and just really mixed my pitches well and kept them off balance all night.”
After flying through the first three innings by retiring nine of the first 10 Rebels, Campbell ran into a little trouble in the fourth.
He left an 0-2 pitch up and Grae Kessinger lined it into left field. Thomas Dillard drove him in with a double following a Tyler Keenan walk and the Rebels had runners on second and third with no outs.
That prompted a mound visit by pitching coach Matt Hobbs, who calmed him down enough to sit Ole Miss down in order, albeit with an RBI ground out by Cole Zabowski that cut Arkansas’ lead in half. It was yet another example of Campbell fighting through the situations that typically led to his unraveling in 2018.
“A lot of times if they scored two, they scored four last year,” head coach Dave Van Horn said. “Pitching behind in the count this year, he hasn’t really given up that big inning this year. He’s shown that he can minimize the damage.”
Ole Miss threatened again in the fifth with a leadoff double and one-out walk, but Campbell retired the final eight batters he faced. Despite not commanding his fastball, he gave up just the two earned runs on four hits and two walks while striking out five on 95 pitches.
“He threw a couple of pitches that were close that he didn’t get some calls on and that’s the way the game works,” Van Horn said. “He just didn’t have the command that he normally has and honesty maybe not the velocity, but he did show late in the game he could get it back up there in the mid-90s if he wanted to.”
Campbell’s stamina has been evident in his last five starts, as he’s totaled 34 innings and thrown between 91-100 pitches in each. During that span, he’s posted a 1.06 ERA, 0.76 WHIP and 9.2 strikeout-to-walk ratio and averaged 12.2 strikeouts per nine innings.
It is difficult to replicate perfection, but Campbell has done about as well as anyone could have imagined following in the footsteps of Blaine Knight’s 14-0 record last season. Friday’s win improved him to 6-0 on the season.
Arkansas (22-4, 6-1 SEC) will go for the series win Saturday, with freshman right-hander Connor Noland (0-1, 4.50 ERA) set to take on Ole Miss freshman left-hander Doug Nikhazy (2-2, 2.88 ERA). First pitch is scheduled for 3 p.m. and the game will be televised on the SEC Network.
Roughing Up Ethridge
If he had pitched just 2/3 of an inning more, Will Ethridge would have come into Friday’s start with the fifth best ERA in the SEC at a microscopic 0.71. The junior right-hander had allowed just two earned runs all season for Ole Miss, but Arkansas needed only one inning to double that total.
With two outs in the first, Dominic Fletcher hit a hard grounder down the first base line that took a bad hop and got away from Zabowski for a hit. That scored the game’s first and because he was running hard all the way, Fletcher ended up on second with a double to set up an RBI single by Matt Goodheart.
The inning was possible because Casey Martin beat out an infield single that appeared to be a routine ground out to the shortstop. He was actually called out on the field before replay overturned it and he eventually scored on Fletcher’s double.
“Getting that overturned obviously was huge,” Van Horn said. “That’s how important one call can be or one pitch or one play. It can flip an inning or a game.”
In the second and third innings, Arkansas turned leadoff walks by Jacob Nesbit and Trevor Ezell into runs on RBI ground outs by Martin and Goodheart, respectively.
The highlight of that stretch, though, was an 11-pitch at bat by Fletcher. He fouled off seven pitches before hitting a single that moved Ezell to third.
“(I was) just sticking with the approach trying to hit a fastball the other way and battle off anything close,” Fletcher said. “You kind of get more comfortable each pitch in the at-bat because you know you’ve already seen all of his stuff really.”
Although no one else had an at bat quite that long, it displayed the plate discipline Arkansas showed against Ethridge all night.
Aside from a 10-pitch fourth inning, he threw at least 20 pitches in each of his other frames and was at 69 pitches through three. That led to his exit after giving up five runs - four earned - on seven hits and two walks in five innings. The outing raised his ERA to 1.78.
“That’s tough on a pitcher, it’s tough on a team,” Van Horn said of Fletcher’s at bat. “If you do that a couple times during a game, pitcher’s probably going to lose an inning or two… That was a big at bat.”
Much like the first inning, Fletcher hit another two-out double in the fifth to set up an RBI single by Goodheart. It was his third RBI in as many at bats, with two of them coming on singles the other way with two strikes.
“With two strikes, I was just looking to fight it off,” Goodheart said. “If he was in the zone, just try to put a good swing on it and do something productive. If it was out of the zone, try to leave it or foul off a close one.”
Since getting new contact lenses before the Missouri series, the junior college transfer originally from Magnolia, Ark., is 14 for 28 (.500) with eight RBIs, five walks and only three strikeouts. Before that, he was hitting .241 with four RBIs, two walks and nine strikeouts in 29 at bats.
“Once he decided he wasn’t seeing real good and we got him to the eye doctor and he had to get a new prescription, he’s been hitting ever since,” Van Horn said. “It’s a lot easier to hit the ball if you can see it.”
Those five runs were all Arkansas could muster against the Rebels, as reliever Houston Roth shut them down over the final three innings. Despite coming into the game with an unimpressive 7.36 ERA, he allowed only four base runners and notched five strikeouts.
The Razorbacks went 0 for 6 with runners on base against him, keeping Ole Miss in the ballgame.
“I never felt comfortable the whole game,” Van Horn said. “I just felt like once Houston Roth got in there, our at-bats were not good at all. That was disappointing.
“I just feel like we need to play nine innings. I didn’t see that tonight. I feel fortunate to win the game.”
Cronin the Closer
Things got really tight in the eighth inning when Ole Miss put a couple of runners on with one out against reliever Jacob Kostyshock.
With the tying run coming to the plate in Dillard, who was tied for the SEC lead in home runs coming into the weekend, Van Horn turned to Matt Cronin for a five-out save. He got the Razorbacks out of danger with a strikeout and fly out, preserving their three-run lead.
“The eighth inning, we felt like that was the save,” Van Horn said. “He needed to get through the eighth.
“If he got us through the eighth and struggled a little in the ninth, we could go to another guy. But we felt like the game was on the line in the eighth, so we felt like let’s just bring him in and we did and he did a great job.”
Cronin did give up a monster home run to Cooper Johnson that cleared the seats beyond the left field bullpen, but it was sandwiched between a pair of strikeouts. It was the first run he had allowed in 12 2/3 innings this season.
A two-out walk brought the tying run to the plate again, this time with the top of the Rebels’ order to the plate. However, he sealed the win by getting pinch hitter Knox Loposer to fly out to left.
On the same day he was named the No. 1 reliever in college baseball by D1Baseball.com, Cronin notched his second five-out save and seventh overall save this season. It required 28 pitches, though, which means he likely won’t pitch more than an inning Saturday and it could limit him to facing only a hitter or two.
“We’ll see how he feels tomorrow,” Van Horn said. “Sometimes they’re better the day after and if you wait another day then come Sunday they might not be ready, so we’ll let him tell us how he feels.”
Other Tidbits
~Bad weather moved out of the area earlier in the afternoon, allowing Arkansas and Ole Miss to play in pretty nice conditions. The result was the Razorbacks’ largest crowd of the season, with a paid attendance of 10,251 and “tickets scanned” number of 7,684.
~Nesbit extended his on-base streak to 23 games with a leadoff walk in the second inning, but failed to get a hit in his next three at bats. That ended his hitting streak at 15 games, which was the longest by an Arkansas player since Tyler Spoon had a 16-game streak in 2013.
~With his 3-for-4 performance against the Rebels, Fletcher now owns the longest active hitting streak on the team at seven games. During that stretch, he has five multi-hit games and is 14 for 31 with five doubles, two home runs and eight RBIs. That’s good for a .452/.485/.806 slash. It’s also worth noting that the only out he made Friday was a deep fly out to right field that would have been a home run on a normal night when the wind isn’t blowing in so hard.
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