Van Horn notes the Arkansas baseball roster revamp will be a busy one with specific intent

BY DUDLEY E. DAWSON

FAYETTEVILLE – As seems to be a yearly occurrence with the majority of elite college baseball programs, Arkansas is likely to put a vastly different-looking team on the field next season.

How different? Razorback head coach Dave Van Horn said that maybe only of one of Arkansas offensive starters in Sunday’s season-ending 7-x loss to Southeastern Missouri State will be back in shortstop Wehiwa Aloy.

That’s due to players likely to be taken in the Major League Baseball draft June 12-14 or not having any college eligibility remaining.

The vaunted Arkansas weekend pitching rotation of Hagen Smith, Brady Tygart and Mason Molina could also be out the door per Van Horn, whose Razorbacks (44-16 20-10) won the SEC Western Division title, but lost 8 of its last 12 games after starting the season 40-8.

“Well, I don’t think there’s a lot of decisions we have to make this offseason,” Van Horn said. “We’re going to lose almost all our players again for the third year in a row.”

Van Horn noted the starting outfield of Peyton Holt, Ty Wilmsmeyer and Kendall Diggs, plus first baseman Ben McLaughlin, second baseman Peyton Stovall, third baseman Jared Sprauge-Lott ands catcher Hudson White will all likely be playing professionally next season.

“Really, since 2021, we’ve had to almost start over,” Van Horn said. “ You have a couple of freshmen and maybe one or two sophomores that have shown some stuff, but we’ve lost our complete outfield again. They’ll all be gone.

“Going to lose your second baseman. I don’t think the first baseman will be back. Starting catcher’s gone. Starting third baseman graduates.

“Your whole rotation will probably go if they get an opportunity. I could go on and on. I think about it every day. It’s just the way it is. It’s the way it is these days.”

“We’ve got some good young guys in the program that are going to get better and gain some experience,” Van Horn said. “But we’ve got to get more. We’ve got to have more. So we’ll be working hard.”

Van Horn is hoping that his team doesn’t get hit as hard in the 2024 MLB draft as it did last season round when signees Aidan Miller, outfielder Kendall George and shortstops Nazzan Zanetello and Walker Martin were all were drafted in the first 52 picks of the event.

Arkansas’ 2024 recruiting class is ranked 18th nationally by Prefect Game and it certain to be bolstered bt by transfer portal addition and includes three signees in MLB.com’s Top 200 prospects in shortstop Tyson Lewis (46th) and a pair of pitchers in right hander Carson Wiggins (76) and lefty Cole Gibler (130).

“We’ve got kids coming in,” Van Horn said. “We’re going to get hit in the draft. Last year the draft killed us, absolutely killed us. We lost four freshmen last year that would’ve been freshmen on this team. They got $11 million total for all four of them.

“You’re just hoping to get a couple of them or just get one of them, and we didn’t get any of them. That’s our battle. We know it.”

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Van Horn was asked about his team’s lack of offense this season and his support of hitting coach Nate Thompson.

“He’s ate up with the offense and analytics,” Van Horn said. “He really tries to train a swing. He does a great job. Nobody works harder than him at it. You can always make adjustments, and a lot of times I think what you’re talking about is maybe a little bit more of an approach.

“Really in my opinion, that’s always important to do that. But we’ve got to get a little better athlete. We can’t just have eight guys that hit homers. I like guys that hit doubles and I like guys that hit homers, but you’ve got to have some guys that can run, too.

“You’ve got to be able to create some offense the days the winds blowing in or they’re really good on the mound and you can you’re having trouble making contact.

“That’s something that that we want to do, and we’re trying to get the right players. The four guys that we lost last year that were high school kids, those kids could all really run and they could hit and play. It kind of devastated us a little bit. It threw us back. So yeah, always looking to get better and make adjustments.”

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Van Horn admitted that the excellence Smith (9-2, 2.04 ERA) on the mound during the season overshadowed his team’s weaknesses.

He fanned a school-record 161 batters the season and only allowed 22 runs the whole season with 8 of those coming in his last two of 16 starts.

“My thought on him is that he’s one of the best pitchers I’ve ever had,” Van Horn said. “He’s such a difference-maker for our team. Without him pretty much taking us 5, 6, 7 innings in Game 1 of every SEC series and giving us an opportunity to save our bullpen. Most of time we end up winning that game and we’d find a way to win another game. Swept a few series here. 

“You take him off our team and we’re just really average. That’s the way it is. One guy can make a difference.

Arkansas got by on its great pitching and defense, both of which faltered down the stretch.

“We fielded the ball really good this year,” Van Horn said. “I think we probably fielded .982, which is probably in the top three or four in the country. We didn’t make very many mistakes.

“For three quarters of the season we didn’t walk anybody and that’s why we won a lot of games. We just played really solid baseball. We weren’t real exciting to watch, so to speak, all the time, unless you like pitching and defense. But that’s what we had.”

Anybody hoping Smith might return should hove up that hope as he is projected to be a top 5 or top 10 pick in the draft, which will be held in Fort Worth, Texas.

“Hagen Smith, I have talked with him and he’s going to be high first round pick,” Van Horn said. “ So to speak I think the hay was in the barn, even though his last couple outings weren’t great.

“If he had two great outings, that might’ve messed up some people but I think he’ll be one of the top 10 picks. Could be second, third, will probably be fifth or sixth will be my guess. I honestly just think he ran out of gas even though we rested him a lot this year. We kept an inning back from him, we were hoping to get it last night. Didn’t happen.”

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Van Horn hopes to have a more balanced, older team next season.

“You’ve got kids that are jumping around in the portal and teams are paying these kids — somebody is — and you snag a guy and he pitches you to the World Series or he hits you to the World Series. It happened last year,” Van Horn said. “There’s some of that going on. It’s about who can get a break now and get an older kid to come in here and fill in.”

That proved to help SEMO, who lost 7-2 to Regional winner Kansas State – who plays at Virginia this weekend in the Super Regionals.

“I look at SEMO’s team, that’s one of the oldest teams we’ve played all year by a lot. Right fielder’s 24-years-old. Couple, three 23-year-olds, 22-year-olds. They have a freshman playing second base that hit a home run today. That’s rare these days, especially in the mid-majors. They’ve been really old, and that’s what you get.”

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Van Horn was able to send out the same starting outfield in most of 2023’s games with Jared Wegner, Tavian Josenberger and Jace Bohrofen.

“We had a left, right, switch (batters) and they could all hit it over your head and they can all play defense,”  Van Horn said. “The outfield this year, they all hit seven, eight, nine in the order a lot of them, very rare. Usually those guys are going to be in the middle of the order, we’ve got to get that right. So, we’re working on it.

“I could go on and on about personnel and what we’ve got to do for the future because my mind is already hitting there and it really never leaves there. It leaves every time you practice, play a game but you got to look down the road a year or two.”

Photo by John D. James