Sixth inning gives Campbell second wind, Hogs beat No. 2 MSU

FAYETTEVILLE — It took a while, but Arkansas’ bats finally woke up and knocked around Mississippi State’s ace Thursday night.

Ethan Small retired 15 of the first 16 Razorbacks before they got to him with three runs in the sixth inning, carrying Arkansas to a series-opening 5-3 win over the No. 2 Bulldogs at Baum-Walker Stadium.

“We were calm in the dugout,” head coach Dave Van Horn said. “We knew what we were up against…a quality pitcher that doesn’t really give you a whole lot. We talked about when we get a chance to get him, we’ve got to get him because it might be one shot.”

That chance came with a 1-0 deficit in the sixth.

Casey Opitz worked the count full and drew a walk to start it off and then Christian Franklin followed with a line drive into center despite falling behind 0-2 for the first of four hits by Arkansas in the inning.

“We got a leadoff man on, then Franklin got the big two-strike hit and we were kind of off and running there,” Van Horn said. “Just a really good job by the offense of hanging in there and not getting too frustrated and we put together a big inning.”

After a sacrifice bunt by Trevor Ezell moved the tying and go-ahead runs into scoring position, the slumping Casey Martin - trying to stay in the middle of the field - drove Small’s 0-1 pitch into the left-center gap.

It was his 16th double of the season and gave him 31 RBIs, but more importantly it put Arkansas on top 2-1 - a lead it wouldn’t relinquish.

“He had been working me middle out and I wasn’t getting on time with it, so I told myself to go up there and get on time with it in the circle before I got up,” Martin said. “The first pitch I swung at was a ball, but I was sitting fastball. On the very next one, he left it outside a little bit, left it up and it worked right into my approach.”

The Razorbacks weren’t done, either. Matt Goodheart hit Small’s next pitch to nearly the same spot for an RBI single that gave them a two-run lead that felt pretty safe with ace Isaiah Campbell on the mound.

With the win, Arkansas (28-10, 10-6 SEC) moved into a tie with Mississippi State (32-7, 10-6) for second in the SEC West standings, just half a game behind Texas A&M’s 10-5-1 conference mark.

It should also take some stress off freshman left-hander Patrick Wicklander (3-1, 4.25 ERA) going into his second SEC start in Game 2 of the series.

“He doesn’t have to be so fine,” Campbell said. “We’ve got a 1-0 lead in the series going into Game 2, so Wicklander can just be more calm and confident that we already have a game under our belt and just go out and get a win and do it tomorrow.”

First pitch is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. and the game will be streamed on SEC Network-plus, meaning it can be watched online on ESPN3.com or on the WatchESPN app.

Campbell Dominant Again

For the eighth straight weekend, Campbell gave Arkansas a quality start to start a series.

He kept Mississippi State’s potent offense - which came into the game with the No. 3 batting average in the country at .327 - at bay the first four innings, scattering just three singles.

In the fifth, though, Campbell hung an off-speed pitch in a 1-2 count and Rowdey Jordan made him pay, lining it into the right field bullpen to break a scoreless tie.

Having thrown 77 pitches through five innings, Campbell mentioned to the coaches that he was getting a little tired, but he caught a “second wind” after seeing his offense give him a lead to work with, Van Horn said.

“In the sixth after that one run, I knew I just had to keep us in the ballgame,” Campbell said. “To have our hitters score three runs for me and take the lead, that just gives you the adrenaline to go out there and keep pumping strikes.”

Instead of falling apart after the home run, it was just a blip on the radar and he seemed to get stronger. He actually retired the next nine hitters and needed only 16 total pitches - seven in the sixth and nine in the seventh - to get through the two innings.

It was just the latest outing in which Campbell has worked through trouble and still been effective in future innings, something he struggled with in 2018.

“His command is better than ever,” Van Horn said. “He’s walking one or two a game, tonight none, and he can usually throw three to four different pitches for strikes, but really I just think he’s able to work out of jams better than he did in the past.”

Because he got through the sixth and seventh innings so quickly, Van Horn sent him back out in the eighth. Dustin Skelton hit a leadoff double and eventually scored with the help of a wild pitch, but Campbell retired the next two Bulldogs on groundouts.

With the top of Mississippi State’s order coming up, he left the game to a standing ovation from the Baum-Walker Stadium crowd after throwing a season-high 105 pitches.

“I kind of found a groove in that fifth inning and took it,” Campbell said. “After the game, my body feels the same that it would if I threw 95 pitches.”

It was Campbell’s second straight outing of 7 2/3 innings and he was charged with only two earned runs on five hits. He also struck out 10 while walking none. The performance improved him to 7-1 with a 2.44 ERA.

“What more could you want?” Van Horn said. “(He) limited one of the best hitting teams, if not the best hitting team, in the league to five hits. That’s a great outing.”

Small Stellar for Five

As good as Campbell was, Small was even better for the first five innings. He retired 12 straight batters to start the game, including seven via strikeouts.

Because the hesitation in his windup messed with Arkansas’ timing at the plate, Small didn’t even have to throw much off-speed stuff. In fact, he relied solely on his fastball the first time through the order.

“We weren’t really on time with his fastball even though we knew it was coming,” Martin said. “For some reason, we were just late or we were swinging at high fastballs out of the zone instead of staying in the zone.”

Small mixed up his pitches a little more the second time he faced the Razorbacks’ lineup, but it wasn’t until Dominic Fletcher “clubbed” a leadoff single the other way on a bad pitch, according to Van Horn, to start the fifth inning that they broke up his perfect game.

That hit didn’t hurt him, though, because he struck out Heston Kjerstad and got Jack Kenley and Jacob Nesbit to fly out.

Up to that point, Small was pounding the strike zone while not leaving anything over the middle of the plate in only 59 pitches - 71.2 percent of which were strikes.

“He’s got deception with his delivery when there’s nobody on,” Van Horn said. “He throws you off a little bit with hanging and leg movement and different things, and he can still command the baseball in and out.”

He ran into the aforementioned trouble in the sixth, starting with the leadoff walk to Opitz and spiraling from there. After needing no more than 15 pitches in the previous five innings, it took him 33 to get through the sixth.

One reason the Razorbacks started having success against him was that they calmed down and started laying off the high fastball. Because they didn’t go out of the zone quite as much as their first two times up, Small’s strike rate decreased to 57.6 percent

That resulted in a three-run inning, which was more runs than he had allowed in any of his previous nine starts this season.

Fletcher Provides Insurance

With the Razorbacks clinging to a one-run lead in the eighth inning, Fletcher came to the plate with two outs and a runner on first.

Although he knew Riley Self liked to throw a cutter, it was his first time facing the Mississippi State reliever, so he let the first one go by for a strike just so he could get a good look at it.

“Then he threw a slider down in the dirt and I kind of had a feeling another cutter was coming,” Fletcher said. “I got on time with it.”

Fletcher got just enough backspin on the ball and help from a light wind for the ball to clear the glove of a leaping Elijah MacNamee and land in the right field bullpen for a two-run home run.

“He got the bottom of that ball and it just kept going,” Van Horn said. “We didn’t know it was going to get out but thank goodness it did. We needed it.”

It was the sixth home run of the season for Fletcher and the 28th of his career. He needs five more to crack the UA’s all-time top-10 list.

Cronin the Closer

When Van Horn took Campbell out of the game in the eighth, he turned to closer Matt Cronin for a four-out save in a 3-2 ballgame.

The junior left-hander looked like he might get a quick out to end the inning, but he went inside on a 1-2 pitch to Jake Mangum and it hit his elbow. Cronin followed that up with four straight balls after Jordan Westburg fouled off the first pitch and suddenly the tying run was in scoring position and the go-ahead run was on base.

The self-inflicted danger seemed to wake him up, as he struck out Tanner Allen to end the threat.

“He just tries to get us scared in the dugout,” Campbell said. “Matt’s going to do that, but he’s tough and he’s going to get out of that game.”

Sure enough, given a three-run lead thanks to Fletcher’s blast, Cronin made things interesting by giving up a home run to MacNamee on the first pitch of the ninth inning.

He bounced back by striking out the next two batters and getting Dustin Skelton to pop out to end the game. It was his eighth save of the season, but first since March 29 against Ole Miss.

“Once MacNamee hit the home run, I think it got his blood pumping a little bit,” Van Horn said. “He started locating some fastballs in instead of just throwing it over the plate.”

Cronin’s velocity was done a bit, but Van Horn said he wasn’t concerned about that at the moment. Instead, he was pleased with the curveball he threw to one of the final three batters of the game.

“The first two he threw, he didn’t get on top of them; he got on the side of them and they didn’t do much,” Van Horn said. “That one had some downward action to it.

“That was really good to see because if he starts to land that, it’s going to make a big-time difference.”

Other Tidbits

~Despite the No. 2 team in the country being in town, the paid attendance for Game 1 of the series was just 8,338 with a “tickets scanned” number of 4,077. The 8 p.m. start on a Thursday probably didn’t help.

~With hits in the sixth and eighth innings, respectively, Goodheart and Kjerstad extended their hitting streaks to 11 games. Goodheart has also reached base in 16 straight games.

~For just the third time in 37 games, Nesbit failed to reach base via a hit, walk or hit by pitch. He went 0 for 4 with two strikeouts.

~Needing eight hits to break the SEC career hits record held by LSU’s Eddy Furniss, Mangum went 1 for 3 with a single and hit by pitch. His hit came on the first pitch of the game and extended his hitting streak to 19 games, although he’s had exactly one hit in the last six.

~New basketball head coach Eric Musselman threw out the ceremonial first pitch before the game. While he was still being introduced over the PA system, he threw the ball and it bounced just beyond the plate before getting to catcher Andrew Stanley.