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FAYETTEVILLE — With virtually nothing to gain, there has been a lot of debate about how much Arkansas should use Kevin Kopps in the SEC Tournament.
Regardless of their performance in Hoover, the Razorbacks are widely believed to be locked in as the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament.
However, the right-hander will be ready to go and available out of the bullpen this week - albeit not in the same role that helped him earn SEC Pitcher of the Year.
Head coach Dave Van Horn said he doesn’t anticipate using Kopps on back-to-back days or for extended innings multiple times like he did for much of the 2021 conference slate. The plan is for him to rest up for the part of postseason that matters while also getting on the mound some.
“These games are important, but we’ll just have to see what the stress load is or how stressful were the innings he’s pitched,” Van Horn said. “Were they easy? What’s the temperature? We’re going to take care of him, but he needs to work. He wants to work.”
Despite not starting a single game, Kopps finished the regular season with the second most innings on Arkansas’ staff at 60 1/3. He also appeared in exactly half of the Razorbacks’ games this season, including 18 of 30 SEC games.
Even though he wants to pitch, Kopps admitted that he would probably benefit from some rest this week before pitching in the regionals the following weekend.
“I think for the majority of relievers, no one really feels 100 percent super rested,” Kopps said. “I feel like we usually stay around 80-90 percent, if you're being honest with yourself. I think a little bit of rest - just throwing a little bit in this tournament - I’ll actually be able to get up to 100 percent in the regional.”
Just how much the Razorbacks use him in Hoover will depend on multiple factors, including the temperature. It is expected to be in the 80s all week and that doesn’t factor in humidity.
As well as he has pitched this season, Arkansas doesn’t want to shut Kopps down entirely. He’ll still get some work and if he can be efficient with his innings, the Razorbacks might be inclined to pitch him more than once.
“I’ve talked to a lot of coaches over the years that say they’ve rested guys in tournaments and then when they’ve pitched them again, they don’t pitch good,” Van Horn said. “They want to pitch, they need to pitch, so we’ll try to figure that out.”
On a normal weekend, Kopps has proven he’s capable of throwing well over 100 pitches across multiple appearances with little to no rest in between.
Van Horn said he doesn’t have a pitch count the first time he pitches on a weekend, but he could for his second or third appearances.
“It just depends - a lot of times it's what you see,” Van Horn said. “Has Kevin been pitching with a lot of runners on base or is Kevin just rolling? Are they fouling off a bunch of pitches? Is it stressful? That's how we judge it.”
A perfect example of that came in the series opener at Tennessee. Kopps threw three scoreless innings to earn the win, but needed 66 pitches to do so. A lengthy at bat by Luc Lipcius was a major reason his pitch count got so high despite him allowing only two base runners.
Because he threw so much, Kopps was not available the next day and he watched from the dugout as the Razorbacks blew a two-run lead in the ninth inning.
“You think about Tennessee, the first baseman had a 15 pitch at-bat on him,” Van Horn said. “That hurt us. We would've rather him got a single and move on. That's how you evaluate that. You kind of look at the overall body of work a little bit or what he's done the last maybe week."
The following weekend against Florida, he once again threw the final three innings of the series opener. This time, though, he needed just 39 pitches and was available to pitch the ninth inning the next day.
Kopps ended up throwing just 51 total pitches against the Gators, but he went 111 and 125 pitches against Georgia and Tennessee, respectively, the two weekends before that.
The heavy workload hasn’t impacted his numbers, as he leads all qualified Division I pitchers with a 0.75 ERA, and he said Tuesday that his arm feels good heading into the SEC Tournament.
“I don't really get sore at all or anything,” Kopps said. “I don't really feel fatigued. The only time I've actually felt maybe tired after a series was the Auburn series where I threw in all three games and then the Ole Miss series with the back-to-back three innings, but besides that, I feel pretty good.”
The uniqueness of Kopps’ durability has been a big weapon for the Razorbacks this season. He is 10-0 with eight saves on the year and most of that has come in conference play, as he’s 7-0 with seven saves. That means he’s been a major key to 14 of Arkansas’ 22 SEC wins.
“We know he’s going to come in and shut the door,” teammate Cayden Wallace said. “He’s the best in the country and we just know if we’re ahead or put some runs up, we’re going to win the game.”
