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FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas made things interesting in the ninth, but ultimately came up just short in a rare midweek loss Tuesday night.
Trailing by five entering their final inning, the Razorbacks benefitted from a couple of errors to plate a few runs and put the tying runs in scoring position before falling 6-4 to Missouri State at Baum-Walker Stadium.
It was the Razorbacks’ first midweek loss since March 16 last season, when Oklahoma beat them 8-5, snapping an 18-game winning streak in midweeks. They narrowly missed completing a perfect midweek slate for the first time since 2005.
“Losing never feels good,” head coach Dave Van Horn said. “Missouri State, they just played better than us tonight in my opinion.”
Had its bullpen not collapsed in the top half of the ninth, Arkansas might have managed to overcome the deficit.
Instead, the Bears got much needed insurance runs on a two-run home run by Drake Baldwin and tacked on another with the help of two wild pitches by Nick Griffin.
“We were trying to keep the game at two runs and the next thing you know we’re down four or five,” Van Horn said.
Those runs proved costly when Arkansas staged a two-out rally in the home half of the inning.
Robert Moore drove in the Razorbacks’ second run of the game on an RBI single before Zack Gregory was hit by a pitch and Jace Bohrofen reached on an error to load the bases.
It looked like Bohrofen might be the final out, as second baseman Mason Hull did a nice job ranging to his left and fielding the grounder, but his throw took first baseman Mason Greer off the bag.
With the bases loaded, Jalen Battles hit a single that just barely got by the shortstop to drive in two more. Left fielder Spencer Nivens’ throw back in to second was wild, allowing the runners to advance to second and third.
They represented the tying runs, but were stranded when Walker Jenkins fielded Dylan Leach’s sharp grounder and threw him out to end the game.
Here are several other key takeaways from the loss…
Prodigious Home Runs
Prior to the wild bottom of the ninth, it seemed like a pair of two-run home runs had provided all of the run support Missouri State needed to pull off the midweek upset. Nivens and Baldwin each took advantage of hitter’s counts by blasting long balls well over 400 feet.
With two outs in the third inning, Nivens crushed a 2-0 pitch from starter Will McEntire to dead center to get the scoring started. It had an exit velocity of 101 mph and traveled 418 feet, according to the UA’s TrackMan system.
What felt like the knock-out blow came in the ninth inning, when Baldwin — who came into the game with a 1.025 OPS — jumped on a 3-1 pitch from Heston Tole and nearly hit it over the scoreboard.
It was actually hit harder and further than the third-inning blast, with an exit velocity of 103 mph and distance of 424 feet.
