Keep Same Energy When Razorbacks Switch Roles

With only a small sample size, Arkansas baseball's hitting problems overblown, pitching will regress to normality

Daniel Shi | Feb 26, 2024

Keep Same Energy When Razorbacks Switch Roles /

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Arkansas Razorbacks

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — I've called a radio talk show once in my life. I was probably 12, and I called the Astros postgame radio show. I got into a pretty heated argument with the host about how many at-bats are enough at-bats to judge a player. He vehemently told me that until a player gets 150 plate appearances, statistics are more or less useless.

Arkansas plays 55 regular season games plus the postseason. Judging them after 150 at-bats would be far too late.

Jace Bohrofen led the Razorbacks last year with 267 plate appearances while the MLB leader in 2023 was Marcus Semien with 762. Kendall Diggs leads the current Razorbacks with just 35 plate appearances, and that's with a 14-inning game thrown into the mix. Simple math should do the trick.

150/762 ≈ 19.7% of plate appearances
19.7% of 267 ≈ 53 plate appearances

The Razorbacks are still about a full weekend's worth of games before coming anywhere near being able to pass judgment on how good (or bad) the line-up is. Concern yes, panic no.

"On the offensive side, my biggest takeaway is we got to get better,” Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn said. “This was really disappointing.”

Caleb Cali started the 2023 season in Arlington going 0-for-8 with seven strikeouts before going 32-for-94 with the highest batting average and slugging percentage in 26 SEC regular season games. His slugging percentage of .596 was 86 points better than the second in SEC play (Ben McLaughlin, .510).

It's human nature to freak out. The Razorbacks could be at least 6-1 and coming off a 3-0 weekend in one of the marquee tournaments if they had just managed more than one run in 14 innings.

Conversely, the shoe is going to be on the other foot. This pitching staff is going to have a week where everything just implodes in on itself. No matter how good the pitching staff is, the baseball season is too long for it not to happen.

The strikeout numbers will regress back to non-video game-like numbers. Fifty-nine strikeouts is history because it's never been done before. Both Hagen Smith and Mason Molina have had command issues in the past. Both have been well documented. It doesn't just miraculously disappear after just one sensational start.

The Razorbacks started last season 5-2 after seven games and were put in far more hairy situations early, mainly because of the pitching staff. Arkansas allowed 42 runs across the first seven games last year.

The Razorbacks lost 18-6 to TCU in Arlington before coming back home and losing 12-3 to Eastern Illinois. The Hogs also entered the game against Grambling (coincidentally Arkansas' next opponent) tied 7-7 entering the bottom of the eighth before scoring two late runs to win 9-7.

Oh, and for the cherry on top, the Razorbacks needed 11 innings to beat Illinois State in the very next game. The very same team that went on to go 20-10 in SEC play and win a share of the SEC title.

Take a deep breath, enjoy the better weather than the Hellish 30-degree icebox that was Baum-Walker Stadium against James Madison. First pitch against Grambling is scheduled for 3 p.m. Tuesday under heavy clouds blown by a strong warm wind and will be streamed on SEC Network+.

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