The No. 5 Arkansas Razorbacks (43-12, 20-10 SEC) enter the SEC Baseball Tournament as SEC West champions thanks to one of the top pitching staffs in the country, but the Hogs may opt for a different pitching approach during their stay in Hoover, Alabama.
Head coach Dave Van Horn spoke to the media on Tuesday about his plan for the pitching staff as they prepare for the upcoming week.
"You don’t want to try and stress guys out to try to win a tournament," Van Horn said. "If it happens for you and things go your way, then try to win it but you don’t want to recycle guys, pitching two or three times on a weekend, even if they are relievers. Then they have five days to recover before you open up next weekend. It gets a little difficult."
Expected to start Game 1 for Arkansas is sophomore right-hander Ben Bybee, who pitched in the final regular game of the season on Sunday against Texas A&M. Against the Aggies, the 6-foot-6 Kansas native tossed 2.1 innings of three-run ball with three strikeouts.
For the season, Bybee has accumulated a 6.00 ERA with 31 punchouts, nine walks and 26 hits in 24.0 innings.
"Coach (Matt) Hobbs and I just decided to start him," Van Horn said. "Ben threw the other day and threw the ball over the plate, threw pretty well. He’ll be on a pitch count, or we’ll just kind of monitor how it’s going. Shorter or longer. We’re not going to leave him in because we have available arms.
"It’s not like we’re getting to the end and we’re trying to get another inning out of somebody or a few more outs. If it’s going great, we’ll leave him in until a certain count. If it’s not going great, we’ll get him out sooner than later. He’s throwing the ball well, throwing it over the plate, makes you earn it a little bit and that’s what you want."
Ace lefty Hagen Smith — who was named the SEC Pitcher of the Year on Monday — will pitch at some point during the SEC Tournament, but it may not be his normal role according to Van Horn.
"Yeah, he should pitch in this, in the next couple of days," Van Horn said. "We’re not sure yet on how we’re going to use him but he’ll get out there."
Van Horn also gave updates on right-handers Brady Tygart and Cooper Dossett, as the former took the weekend off against the Aggies and the latter suffered an injury in Game 3 of the series.
"You’ll probably see Brady this week," Van Horn said. "Hopefully we win some games and get into it a little bit and get to use them all.
"So far everything has come back where (Dossett's injury) is not — it's a non-surgical injury. But we’re going to have it re-looked at again, maybe have a dye test on everything but so far so good."
Junior left-hander Mason Molina may be on the verge of securing his starting role back if he can continue performing at a high level out of the bullpen. The former Texas Tech transfer delivered three strong innings without allowing a hit to close out a Game 2 victory against Texas A&M last weekend.
"I thought (Molina) did a great job," Van Horn said. "We probably wouldn’t have won that game without him. You know, the crazy thing is he comes in there and gives us a good inning or two, and then (Hudson) White hits a three-run homer. It was just a lot of good mojo going on in the dugout.
"Baseball, it’s a funny game. You just never know when it’s going to flip, so hopefully next time he gets on the mound he goes out and pitches really well and we can make the decision to leave him in the pen, start him, whatever we need to do coming up here in a regional or whatever."
Arkansas will play the winner of Alabama and South Carolina in the second game on Wednesday, which will start approximately 30 minutes after the first, which starts at 9:30 a.m. CT. The matchup will be broadcast on the SEC Network.
