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FAYETTEVILLE — Cayden Wallace homered twice Saturday night and his teammates added to the lead Sunday morning, helping Arkansas even its series with Vanderbilt.
Both of the sophomore’s long balls put the Razorbacks up by one before lightning postponed the game in the sixth inning and they tacked on another three runs when play resumed to pull away for an 11-6 win over the Commodores at Baum-Walker Stadium.
Similar to the series opener, Arkansas found itself in an early hole, trailing 5-1 after the top of the third.
The one run the Razorbacks had at that point came in the first inning, when Wallace crushed starter Chris McElvain’s second pitch of the game 109 mph off the bat for a solo home run to left.
They had pulled within 5-3 when Wallace hit his second long ball, which was a three-run, opposite-field blast off the bottom of the scoreboard. It’s the second multi-homer game of his career, as he also did it against Florida last season.
When lightning moved into Fayetteville, Arkansas had pushed its lead to 8-6 with the help of a two-run double by Jace Bohrofen. Vanderbilt’s only run after a big third inning came on Tate Kolwyck’s solo homer in the sixth.
A run-scoring wild pitch and two-run home run by Jalen Battles gave the Razorbacks plenty of insurance for Will McEntire, who started the resumed portion of the game.
The right-hander allowed only two base runners — both singles — in three scoreless innings to finish off the game and earn his first career save.
Here are several other key takeaways from the win…
Another Short Start
Left-hander Hagen Smith got off to an encouraging start, working around leadoff base runners in a pair of scoreless innings, but ran into trouble in the third.
The freshman didn’t make it through the inning and was ultimately charged with five earned runs on four hits and four walks while striking out three in 2 2/3 innings.
Another leadoff man reached to start the disastrous inning, as Enrique Bradfield Jr. hit a soft chopper that just got over Smith’s head and he got an infield single out of it.
The speedy center fielder moved to second on what was essentially a swinging bunt by Jack Bulger and then stole third, setting up Dominic Keegan’s game-tying sacrifice fly. It just got worse from there.
Javier Vaz followed with an RBI double off the wall in left and, after a walk to Davis Diaz, T.J. McKenzie beat the shift with a slow roller through the right side for an RBI single. That was it for Smith, but both runners eventually scored and were charged to him.
Unfortunately for the Razorbacks, Smith’s outing continued a recent trend of poor starts on the weekend by the whole rotation, which also includes right-handers Connor Noland and Jaxon Wiggins.
