FAYETTEVILLE — After UALR whipped Arkansas 17-7 Tuesday night, the reaction was quick and as expected.
The sky is falling. The end is near. Frank Broyles tried to warn us.
In the grand scheme of things, though, losing to UALR is insignificant. The Razorbacks could have lost to Lipscomb or Presbyterian - the two teams immediately behind the Trojans in the RPI going into the game - by 10 runs and it wouldn’t mean anything different.
Ugly midweek losses are part of college baseball. Ole Miss followed up its series win in Fayetteville by losing to RPI No. 285 North Alabama - a team in its first Division I season. No. 17 Auburn fell to Georgia Tech in its final tuneup before hosting Arkansas, UCA knocked off No. 25 Oklahoma State and No. 23 UConn dropped a game to Fairfield.
Top recruits from the Natural State are still going to want to play for the Razorbacks. The fact they were beaten so soundly in their first regular-season matchup with an in-state foe since a decades-long ban of such games was lifted will merely be the answer to a trivia question in 15 years.
What fans should be worried about are a few concerning trends and potentially fatal flaws with what was generally considered a top-10 team just one week ago.
Pitching depth is the No. 1 issue at the moment. Isaiah Campbell is a bonafide SEC ace capable of giving Arkansas seven strong innings every Friday, while Connor Noland can be counted on for about four and Cody Scroggins can go five.
That leaves 11 innings, on average, for Arkansas’ bullpen over a weekend. Matt Cronin is dominant as the closer, but the other relievers have been so shaky in recent games that he hasn’t been needed.
Until his last two outings, Kole Ramage has been a long-relief guy capable of throwing three or so innings without getting hit. However, he gave up a game-tying home run against Ole Miss on Saturday and then allowed the go-ahead grand slam against the Trojans.
Before the Ole Miss series, Kevin Kopps had a minuscule 0.69 ERA. It has since ballooned to 3.07 after giving up the game-winning run in the ninth inning Saturday and blowing a lead Sunday, earning the loss in both games.
Those kind of setbacks happen to even the best pitchers in baseball from time to time, but for them to both struggle at the same time - with Jacob Kostyshock out with an injury - is not a good sign for the Razorbacks. Zebulon Vermillion and Marshall Denton couldn’t stop the bleeding, either.
On top of that, none of the lightly-used freshmen have yet to step up. Head coach Dave Van Horn would likely prefer to use one of them for midweek games so Patrick Wicklander can focus on the weekends - although he’s struggled to find the strike zone out of the bullpen.
“Right now we don’t have the pitching depth,” Van Horn said after Tuesday’s loss. “That’s the bottom line. It kind of showed on Sunday and you saw it again today.”
Another issue has been Arkansas’ inability to consistently drive in runs. Against UALR, the Razorbacks stranded 14 runners on base, including eight in scoring position.
The most damning inning in that game was the fifth, when Arkansas loaded the bases with no outs and Casey Martin, Heston Kjerstad and Dominic Fletcher - its three preseason All-American - due up to face a pitcher with an 11.77 ERA.
With a chance to at least tie the game or take the lead, the trio went down in order to strand three. Although Martin had a two-run double earlier in the game to give him 24 RBIs on the season, Kjerstad and Ezell have only 17 and 15 RBIs, respectively. Those are the two lowest totals of the seven Razorbacks with at least 70 at bats.
The team leader in that category is still Christian Franklin, who has 26.
“When your 9-hole hitter is leading the team in RBIs, that kind of tells you something,” Van Horn said. “We’ve had runners on a lot. You’ve got to hit when people are on base. That’s one thing we have not done.”
Because of that, Van Horn shuffled the top of his lineup for the first time this season against UALR. He moved Ezell out of the 3-hole and into the leadoff spot, moving Martin and Kjerstad each down one spot.
It seemed to work out well for Ezell, as he went 3 for 5 with a walk and was robbed of another hit on a diving catch, but Van Horn was still not happy about the performances of his two sophomores.
Martin - who is still hitting just .262 - has been antsy at the plate all season, making several first-pitch outs and finding himself in a lot of 0-2 and 1-2 counts. In the bases-loaded situation Tuesday, he struck out on three pitches.
Kjerstad has a respectable .319 batting average, but he swung at a pitch that was up and in following Martin’s strikeout and the result was a shallow fly ball that couldn’t drive in the tying run from third with less than two outs.
“They’ve got to take control of their at bats and they have to be a little more patient and get pitches they can handle early in the count,” Van Horn said. “When you’re behind in the count and have two strikes on you, you have to fight and do what you have to do, but we need to get better pitches early with runners in scoring position because pitchers will let you get yourself out and I feel like that’s been going on a little bit lately.”
The Razorbacks haven’t seemed to respond well to adversity, either. In Tuesday’s game, one mistake led to another. They were charged with four errors that led to seven unearned runs, but they also made a few mental mistakes that don’t show up in the box score.
Third base and hitting coach Nate Thompson was late throwing up a stop sign for Ezell after Martin’s two-run double in the second inning, preemptively ending what could have been a lengthy two-out rally.
In the third inning, Kjerstad got a bad jump on what turned out being a two-out, two-run bloop double. Catcher Zack Plunkett was credited with one passed ball, but he could have had another on one of Arkansas’ wild pitches. Third baseman Jacob Nesbit fell down catching a fly ball in foul territory instead of Martin or Franklin taking charge, allowing a runner on third to tag up and score.
That doesn’t even include the official errors: Franklin dropping a routine fly ball, Martin letting a grounder go under his glove, Jack Kenley booting a double play ball and Jacob Burton throwing the ball in the dirt to first base.
All three phases of the game - pitching, hitting and fielding - were rough Tuesday night and had very little to do with the opponent.
With only four Arkansas kids on its roster (and only one who played), UALR did not play inspired because it was finally getting an opportunity to play big brother. To the Trojans, it was just another ranked SEC opponent, something they had faced earlier in the year at Ole Miss and Mississippi State.
If Arkansas is going to right the ship and keep the season from spiraling out of control like it did in 2016, it will have to establish some pitching depth, come up with timely hitting and get back to playing solid defense - none of which it had Tuesday night.
That is a concerning combination with SEC series at No. 17 Auburn, at No. 3 Vanderbilt and against No. 7 Mississippi State the next three weekends.
Losing to an in-state team means nothing for the Razorbacks. How they lost means everything.
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