Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Hogs plan to clean up mistakes from western trip
FAYETTEVILLE — The No. 6 Arkansas Razorbacks host Dayton today at Baum Stadium on the heels of a 2-2 trip to San Diego that didn’t go as planned.
“We wanted to go 4-0, should have gone 4-0, and went 2-2, so that’s our wakeup call,” Razorbacks shortstop Jax Biggers said.
The University of Arkansas, Fayetteville (5-2) fell victim to multiple fielding mistakes at the Tony Gwynn Legacy tournament, particularly in one-run losses to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo 4-3 and the University of San Diego 7-6. Cleaning up the defense is a key focus for the Hogs against Dayton (1-5) today at 3 p.m.
“We just need to play a little bit cleaner baseball and limit the mistakes … and we’ll be good,” Arkansas center fielder Dominic Fletcher said.
“Just limit damage,” said junior right-hander Blaine Knight, who has allowed one earned run — on a routine fly ball lost in the sun — in his 11 innings. “Some errors hurt us pretty bad while we were out there, so we’re going to try to limit those and just play ball.”
The Razorbacks are scheduled to play five games over the next five days, with Southern Cal headed to Baum for a three-game series starting Friday after a two-game set against Dayton. Coach Dave Van Horn said one positive coming from the western swing was winning games against Arizona 1-0 and San Diego State 5-2 when the Razorbacks didn’t hit very well.
“I would grade it about a C-plus,” Van Horn said. “The good thing was we beat a couple of pretty good teams.”
The Razorbacks’ ERA ticked up slightly in California, up less than half a run to 2.03, but their batting average dropped from .398 to .285.
“We didn’t hit very well at all out there,” Van Horn said. “A couple, three guys did real well. We need to get a couple of those older guys rolling.”
The Flyers have not played at home yet and do not have games this weekend, so they’re coming at the Razorbacks with a full pitching staff at first-year Coach Jayson King’s disposal.
Dayton’s 6-2 right-hander R.J. Wagner (0-0), who has allowed no runs, 2 hits and 4 walks in 62/3 innings over 3 games, will start today against 6-2 freshman Caleb Bolden (0-0), a right-hander who allowed two hits and a walk in a three-inning appearance on opening weekend.
“I would really like to see him kind of pick up where he left off opening weekend, and just come out and pitch with confidence and get us some innings,” Van Horn said. “It’d be great if he could go four or five innings.”
The Flyers of the Atlantic 10 have a .284 team batting average with five regulars hitting .316 or better, led by Takahiro Yamada (.450, 3 RBI), Pat Meehan (.423, 3 HR, 6 RBI),
Riley Tirotta (.421, 2 2B) and Mitchell Garrity (.348, 6 RBI).
Dayton, which has a 6.98 team ERA, is expected to start right-hander Austin Cline (02, 15.00) in Thursday’s 3 p.m. game.
Van Horn said he would leave Thursday’s starting pitcher open until he sees how today’s game plays out, and he announced left-hander Kacey Murphy (1-0, 0.00) would move to the Sunday spot in the weekend rotation.
Junior right-hander Keaton McKinney (0-0, 4.50) has experienced soreness in his pitching arm since his two-inning stint Feb. 18 and likely will be held until the weekend or even next week, Van Horn said.
Knight, who will start the series opener against USC on Friday at 3 p.m., admitted he
was frustrated with the umpiring in his last start against Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
“I mean he had an unusually tight zone,” Knight said. “I mean, there’s nothing you can do about it. Yeah, I was frustrated about it because I was making really good pitches and he was blowing me off like they weren’t even there.
“Then I had some stuff with the field umpires. There was two balks called and one of them was because Coach Van Horn was still on the field and I was waiting for him to get off, and they thought I was trying to delay the game. The other one was just, it was a ridiculous call in my opinion. It is what it is. I was able to limit the damage when it happened. So because of that, I just kind of moved on from it.”