Diamond Hogs overpower Texas A&M, win series
FAYETTEVILLE — The Diamond Hogs followed their dramatic win in Thursday’s series opener against Texas A&M with a total team effort Friday under the lights at Baum-Walker Stadium, leaving their winless weekend at Georgia even further in the dust.
The bottom half of the line score featured three times as many positive numbers as zeros, backed up by nearly six innings of strong relief pitching from right-hander Will McEntire. Both were critical ingredients in a 10-4 Arkansas win over the Aggies to clinch the series with a game to spare.
"Tonight, you come out and we know we’re going to throw our pitcher one inning and then we’re going to bring in McEntire, who got roughed up last week," Arkansas head coach Dave Van Horn said. "And he comes out and he’s throwing the cutter and getting them out and you could kind of just see the momentum like ‘Hey, we can win this game.’"
Friday’s affair began with the return of sophomore right-handed pitcher Brady Tygart, who had been out since March 1 with a UCL sprain.
"I was scared to death when it first happened, ‘cause I’ve never felt anything like that in that part of my arm before," Tygart said. "So I mean, like I said, our staff, our trainer Corey, everybody worked really hard to get me back, and I’m very appreciative of them. It was very rewarding to get back tonight."
Twenty pitches was all Van Horn and company needed to see out of the 2022 Freshman All-American, who induced three groundouts and issued a walk in his one inning of work.
"I looked up one time and saw 94 (mph)," Van Horn said. "His breaking ball is usually always good. I don’t know if he threw much else. He’s got a good changeup now. He has a two-seamer that takes off, but we just wanted to see him go out and compete and kind of get his feet wet again. Kind of give us a little bit of hope, honestly."
Tygart turned the ball over to fellow righty Will McEntire for the second inning, and a leadoff walk led to the game’s first run. Designated hitter Ryan Targac, who was out at home in what would have been a go-ahead sacrifice fly in the eighth inning Thursday night, drove in second baseman Austin Bost from third with a long fly ball to center.
Arkansas used just about the same formula to tie the game in the home half of the second. Third baseman Caleb Cali made it home on a sac fly off the bat of pinch hitter Hunter Grimes. The right-handed batter got the nod over starter Mason Neville when the Aggies changed pitchers mid-inning. Right-handed starter Nathan Dettmer left with an apparent injury, giving way to lefty Evan Aschenbeck.
McEntire settled down to work a 1-2-3 top of the third, and he had a cushion to work with the next time he took the bump. Second baseman Peyton Stovall’s two-out hustle afforded him an infield single and the go-ahead run when center fielder Jace Bohrofen laced Aschenbeck’s 1-2 pitch 101 mph to right field for a double.
The Hogs remained opportunistic in the fourth, which began with first baseman Brady Slavens’ triple on a chopper that ate up his counterpart, bouncing over the infield and into foul ground in right field.
“Oh, Jesus,” Texas A&M head coach Jim Schlossnagle said during a mid-game interview on ESPNU as the ball hopped over Jack Moss’ head.
Catcher Parker Rowland doubled the Razorback lead with an RBI bunt that rolled halfway to first base and inched toward the chalk, slipping Aschenbeck’s tag attempt to earn himself a hit as well. After shortstop John Bolton’s sac bunt, right fielder Kendall Diggs beat out another play at first for the fourth run, and Stovall’s sac fly made it 5-1.
"The old-school small ball," Van Horn said. "I’ve had teams that played that a little bit. It’s been a while. Especially down in the order there, we needed to play it. Those guys are more defenders than they are offensive guys. And turn it over to the top, it was good the way we just kept passing it down the line. Everybody did their job."
The Aggies got one of those runs back in the fifth, when catcher Max Kaufer made McEntire pay for a 1-1 breaking ball that he left right over the heart of the plate. The solo shot marked the end of an 11-batter stretch during which he recorded the same number of outs.
Arkansas stretched the margin back to four runs in the same inning with a two-out wild pitch. McLaughlin led off against righty Josh Stewart with a double to left, moved to third on Slavens’ groundout and scored before the reliever could get strike three past Rowland.
Texas A&M finally put a stop to the bleeding with the first Arkansas zero since the first inning in the sixth, and it tightened the margin in its half of the seventh.
A two-out walk signaled the end of McEntire’s outing after 5 ⅔ innings and a season-high eight strikeouts.
"McEntire gave us everything he had," Van Horn said. "He got up to 90 pitches. I felt like when I took him out he was tired, and he looked tired, and he didn’t fight me at all."
Right-hander Christian Foutch took over and promptly allowed a two-run bomb to center fielder Jordan Thompson, which made it a 6-4 game.
Two more walks forced another pitching change, and it was Foutch’s fellow freshman Gage Wood who escaped a bases-loaded jam with a three-pitch strikeout of three-hole hitter Trevor Werner.
"It was the game," Van Horn said. "If they catch us there and get a base hit and tie it, it's gut-wrenching."
The Razorbacks could not seem to live with an advantage smaller than four runs. Cali’s 109-mph single with one out in the seventh set the table for McLaughlin, whose 18-degree line drive snuck over the right field fence for his first homer in an Arkansas uniform and an 8-4 lead.
"That’s when as a coach you start thinking, ‘OK, maybe this is our night,'" Van Horn said.
Pairs of walks and hits created another pair of Razorback runs in the eighth. The first came on an infield single followed by a throwing error, and the other scored on Bohrofen’s third hit of the night, a 107-mph single off pitcher Shane Sdao.
Wood capped off his fourth save in five weeks, a seven-out effort that did not go without some drama in the ninth. Two free passes and a single loaded the bases with two outs, but he got Werner to bounce out to third to end it.
"I kind of just expect that out of him now," McEntire said. "He’s come up in a lot of big situations for us."
With the victory and third-place Alabama’s loss to LSU, Arkansas stands in second, 3 ½ games clear of the Crimson Tide and trails the first-place Tigers by one game. Texas A&M, meanwhile, fell four games behind the Hogs.
The Razorbacks can sweep the Aggies when the two teams wrap up their three-game set at 11 a.m. Saturday in a contest that will air on the SEC Network. Texas A&M will start left-hander Will Johnston after pitching to five batters Thursday, and Arkansas will go with righty Cody Adcock.
"I’m proud of our team, especially after the way it went last week. It was a rough week. We’re going into the third game tomorrow, and we’ve already won the series. We’ve just got to figure out how we’re going to pitch it."
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