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One of only a handful of regulars in the lineup Tuesday night, Christian Franklin made sure Arkansas didn’t slip up after an emotional weekend at Ole Miss.
The Razorbacks’ star center fielder went 3 for 4 with a career-high six RBIs in the Razorbacks’ 12-4 win over in-state foe UAPB at Baum-Walker Stadium.
Franklin got things started with a double that the Golden Lions couldn’t track down in left center, followed it up with an RBI single into center and then capped his performance with a three-run home run. He also had a bases-loaded walk mixed in there.
“I thought he had a great night,” head coach Dave Van Horn said. “He really stuck with the approach. He stayed through the middle of the field. … He did a really nice job there.”
The long ball - his team-leading ninth of the season - came after back-to-back walks in the eighth inning and was one of his signature opposite-field home runs.
He told reporters after the game that it was an off speed pitch low and away that he was able to hit off the new facility beyond the right field wall.
“I was just looking for a pitch out over the plate,” Franklin said. “I was just trying to go to right field. That’s what I had been practicing before the game and that was my approach, so when I finally got that pitch, just took a good swing and was able to hit it out of the park.”
It gave Franklin six RBIs, surpassing his previous career high of four - a total he had reached twice before, most recently against Murray State.
Although it came against a bad UAPB (2-20) pitching staff, the three-hit performance was impressive and important for the Razorbacks (27-5) because the rest of the team combined to go just 6 for 28 (.214).
That is well below the .337 average the Golden Lions were allowing coming into the game, but the struggles were likely due to Arkansas not being used to such a lack of velocity. Luckily, Franklin got experience against slower pitching in the Perfect Timing League in Springdale last summer, which he said helped him Tuesday night.
He has also been swinging a hot bat of late. Since the start of SEC play, he is hitting .359 and has risen his overall batting average 56 points to .311.
“The biggest thing for me at this point is not worrying about mechanics or anything like that,” Franklin said. “It’s just looking for a good pitch to hit. A lot of teams seem to try to pitch me outside of the zone, so I think what I’m doing, I’m doing pretty well.”
Winning by a comfortable margin was a positive in Van Horn’s eyes, as Tuesday had all the makings of a trap game. Not only is UAPB an inferior opponent, but Arkansas secured a wild series-clinching win at Ole Miss on Sunday and have another SEC series coming up next weekend.
Several of the players were still physically and emotionally tired, Van Horn said, so he gave several players the day off and started only four regulars to go along with three true freshmen and two other reserves.
“We knew this was one of those games - coming off a real emotional weekend, yesterday was a day off - coming out today, anything could happen,” Van Horn said. “So I’m just glad we played well, played good defense and got a win.”
Record-Tying Night
For the third time this season, Arkansas pitchers combined for 18 strikeouts Tuesday night, matching a single-game UA record that had been accomplished just twice before in school history.
The Razorbacks also reached that total against TCU and Murray State earlier this year, as well as against Missouri State in 2009 and Grand Canyon in 2017.
Half of those strikeouts were by starter Caleb Bolden, who pitched a solid five innings in which he worked around trouble and allowed only one earned run seven hits and one walk. The nine strikeouts were a career high, surpassing the seven he had against Texas earlier this season.
“Caleb got us off to a good start,” Van Horn said. “He had a pretty good slider going tonight. He was spotting his fastball. He kept the ball down.”
As the first guy out of the bullpen, left-hander Zack Morris pitched “extremely well,” Van Horn said. The Cabot native struck out four in two perfect innings that required only 23 pitches - all but five of which were strikes.
Although he contributed two strikeouts to the record-tying performance, Gabriel Starks was the only Arkansas pitcher who really struggled on the mound.
The freshman right-hander had thrown a scoreless inning of a midweek game in each of the last two weeks and seemed to be trending toward more playing time, but his command wasn’t nearly as good as those outings.
