Making the case for Kopps as 2021 Golden Spikes Award winner

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In college football, a dominant performance in a big game - usually late in the season - by the eventual Heisman Trophy winner is commonly referred to as his “Heisman moment.”

The top honor in college baseball is the Golden Spikes Award and, if what he did against Tennessee and Florida the final two weekends of the regular season wasn’t enough, Kevin Kopps may have had his “Golden Spikes moment” Thursday night.

Facing the best statistical offense in the country’s best conference in a No. 1 vs. No. 2 showdown, the right-hander retired all nine batters he faced to finish off a 6-4 win over Vanderbilt that sent Arkansas to the SEC Tournament semifinals.

The Commodores never got the ball out of the infield, as five of them struck out and the other four hit easy ground balls. It took the SEC Pitcher of the Year just 28 pitches - 22 of which were strikes - to earn his ninth save of the season.

A relief pitcher has never won the Golden Spikes Award, which was first awarded in 1978, but the Razorbacks’ sixth-year senior has emerged as a legitimate candidate because of his video game-like numbers.

Here is an updated look at Kopps’ resume through Thursday’s performance…

~With the three scoreless innings, Kopps lowered his season ERA to 0.71. That leads all qualified Division I pitchers by a wide margin - Alabama State’s Payton Harris is second at 1.29. The closest pitcher from a high-major conference is Pete Hansen, who has a 1.80 ERA for Texas in the Big 12.

~That would be the lowest ERA by an SEC pitcher since 1981, when Kentucky’s Jeff Keener posted a 0.51 ERA. The only other SEC ERA champion with a sub-1.00 ERA over that span was Mississippi State’s Aaron Weatherford, who posted a 0.85 ERA in 2008.

~That would also shatter the UA single-season record (with a minimum of 45 innings), which is currently held by Phillip Stidham. He posted a 0.95 ERA in 1990.

~By not allowing a base runner against Vanderbilt, Kopps also lowered his season WHIP to 0.76. That leads all qualified Division I pitchers, as well, but it’s just 0.003 better than Indiana State’s Geremy Guerrero.

~Opponents are hitting just .151 against Kopps - which is second only to Vanderbilt’s Jack Leiter (.128) in the SEC - and he’s holding them to only 4.69 hits per nine innings. That latter figure ranks fifth among qualified Division I pitchers and is tied for eighth on the SEC’s all-time single-season list.

~Kopps has a team-high 102 strikeouts - 30 more than Patrick Wicklander - in just 63 1/3 innings. That is 14.5 strikeouts per nine innings, which ranks fifth nationally and second only to Leiter (14.97) in the SEC. He is also just four strikeouts shy of cracking the UA’s single-season top-10 list.

~He has already cracked the UA single-season saves list. Thursday was his ninth of the year, which puts him in a five-way for ninth in school history. Matt Cronin had a school-record 14 saves in 2018.

~Making Kopps’ saves total even more impressive is that all but one of them have been multi-inning saves. In fact, five of them have been three innings and another was four innings. By contrast, just one of Cronin’s 27 career saves was three innings and only 11 of them were multi-innings.

~With a 10-0 record to go along with those saves, Kopps is also one victory shy of cracking the UA single-season top-10 list. Six pitchers are tied for fifth with 11 wins.

~Kopps has thrown 63 1/3 innings this season despite not starting a single game. That is the most by any Arkansas pitcher without a start during the Dave Van Horn era, surpassing Boyd Goodner’s 60 innings in 32 appearances during the 2004 season. It’s also worth noting that Kopps has appeared in exactly half - 27 of 54 - of Arkansas’ games.

~Dating back to the final out of the Tennessee series, Kopps has thrown 7 1/3 hitless innings. During that stretch, he’s retired 22 of 23 batters - including the last 17 in a row.

~That is not even close to his most dominant stretch in 2021. Over a span of four games earlier this season, Kopps actually retired 28 consecutive batters - the equivalent of a perfect game, plus an out. In that stretch, he had 19 strikeouts, including 11 in a row at one point.

~Those 28 consecutive outs were part of a 28-inning scoreless streak, which was one shy of matching the school record of 29 innings set by David Walling in 1998.

~Kopps has thrown 934 pitches this season and 645 of them have been strikes, which is 69.1 percent. That jumps up to 69.5 percent (538 of 774) against SEC competition.

~Kopps has generated 235 swings-and-misses this season, accounting for 25.2 percent of his total pitches. In SEC play, 26.4 percent of his pitches (204 of 774) have been swings-and-misses. College baseball data isn’t available, but Jacob deGrom leads all MLB starters with a swing-and-miss rate of 21.2 percent and Josh Hader leads all relievers at 22.0 percent. The MLB average is 11.5 percent.