FAYETTEVILLE — The Arkansas baseball team finished its 2023 Fall World Series, and overall fall season, on a sunny Tuesday afternoon at Baum-Walker Stadium with the Cardinal team securing a 9-8 win over the White team in an 8-inning intrasquad scrimmage.
For the second day in a row, the score was tied up after seven innings courtesy of a game-tying three-run homer from White squad's Parker Rowland in the bottom of the seventh. Unlike Game 1's 9-9 tie result, an outright winner had to be determined Tuesday.
Both squads went to an eighth inning and added a runner on second with no outs, and the Cardinal team prevailed over the White squad via Missouri transfer Ty Wilmsmeyer scoring on an RBI sacrifice bunt from freshman Kade Smith.
If Cardinal wasn't able to score, the Hogs might've had to end in a tie due to a lack of arms that could throw.
"We were to the point now that we had one inning left maybe," head coach Dave Van Horn said. "It worked out. The guys have watched some games. The MLB does it pretty much all the time and I don’t watch a lot of MLB except maybe now, just like everybody else. Just too busy. It’s fairly exciting.
"My philosophy on it is don’t bunt, you better score two because they’re going to score one. We had a guy stealing third who had the base stolen and we had a guy bunt. We had a guy score on that play, so how lucky can you be? That’s exactly what happened there."
Overall, Van Horn said he was pleased with his team's performance over the past two days.
"All fall has been competitive," Van Horn said. "The scrimmages have been really tight. It's been good, and there's a lot of competition. If we started tomorrow, I could put you a lineup on the field, but I'm sure there would be guys right there to play that aren't on the field, and then there's a fall off.
"You've got, as far as offensively, you've got about 12 guys that look like they're ready to go, and then there are some other guys who are not quite there yet, at least day in and day out. It was real competitive today."
Junior outfielder Kendall Diggs opened the scoring up with a 412-foot nuke that hit off the Hunter Family Development Center in right field to give the White squad a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the first.
Tarleton State transfer Jack Wagner hit a 394-foot solo home run to left-center in the next half frame for the Cardinal squad to make the deficit one run. That marked Wagner's second homer in as many days.
"He's got a chance to be our starting first baseman, starting left fielder, starting DH," Van Horn said of Wagner. "That's what I see. We brought him here to help solidify our lineup a little bit with some offense. He brings some attitude, and you got to see that a little bit the last couple of days."
A one-out double from Hunter Grimes was followed up by an RBI single from Ty Wilmsmeyer that scored Grimes to tie things at 2-2.
The White squad tagged freshman righty Tate McGuire with a pair of runs on back-to-back RBI singles from JUCO transfer Will Edmunson and senior Ben McLaughlin, who is a former JUCO transfer himself. Those hits put White ahead 4-2 after two innings.
Freshman designated hitter Kade Smith, who was hitting in the nine-hole for Cardinal, crushed a 430-foot two-run homer to left-center in the top of the fourth to tie the game back up at 4-4.
After redshirt freshman Jordan Huskey threw a scoreless bottom of the fourth for Cardinal, sophomore Reese Robinett gave Cardinal a 5-4 lead with a 347-foot solo homer to right field in the top half of the fifth. Huskey then provided a 1-2-3 bottom of the fifth with a pair of strikeouts.
Husky faced one more than the minimum in the bottom of the sixth to complete his third scoreless frame on the mound for Cardinal.
Freshman lefty Tucker Holland came on for White in the top of the seventh and he gave up a two-run double to Robinett with the bases loaded to let Cardinal's lead grow to 7-4. After a Hunter Grimes RBI groundout, Cardinal held a four-run lead going into the final half inning.
Junior righty Jake Faherty surrendered White's fifth run on a wild pitch in the bottom of the seventh and two batters later, Parker Rowland smashed a three-run game-tying homer off the building in right field. He turned to the dugout, let out a roaring scream and then trotted the bases to send it to extras.
"(Faherty) had a rough day today, obviously," Van Horn said. "He’s had a pretty good fall. It’s just the little things. Like he had a guy down 1-2, left-handed hitter, he hits him with a glove-side breaking ball in the elbow. I mean, bury the thing.
"It’s just frustrating because they don’t really hit him a whole lot. The pitch that was hit out of the park, to be honest with you, it was a back-pick to third and if he had thrown it over to the left side of the plate, he would have picked his butt off third and the game’s over. It’s the little things. The little things all add up."
While the scrimmage was supposed to just be seven innings, a winner had to be determined, so they put a runner on second with no outs to start the top of the eighth. Freshman Kade Smith dropped a sacrifice bunt that Holland fielded and threw to first to allow Ty Wilmsmeyer to score from second and give Cardinal a 9-8 lead going into the bottom of the eighth.
Freshman righty Jaewoo Cho took the mound for Cardinal in the bottom of the eighth and he earned a pair of strikeouts while facing one more than the minimum in a scoreless frame to secure the 9-8 win for Cardinal.
"You just saw a lot of clutch things happen, whether it's Jaewoo finishing up the game throwing a bunch of sliders that start out knee-high and end up about ankle-high," Van Horn said. "Guys didn't make an adjustment, and he did what he needed to do. He got 'em out."
Up next for Arkansas will be a team meeting Thursday and then skill work starts next week with the squad going from two lift days per week to four.
"A lot of hitting in groups starting inside, just working on things, working on bunting, working on base running," Van Horn said. "And then a lot of defense with the infielders. Outfielders will be out here a little bit. That’s what we do from now until Thanksgiving. After Thanksgiving, we get them for another week max and then they’re out of here for a long time.
"Believe me, they’re ready to get off the field. You think about a guy like Kendall Diggs, who won the Cape Cod League championship and played all the way to almost mid-August. Jayson Jones won the league up there in Wisconsin and they were the last team to finish. He went home for one day and he came here. He had an okay fall, but he’s better than what he showed. Get him strong, get him ready to go and find out what he can do."
