Welcome back to Fayette Villains. We may have launched during basketball season, but we don’t only cover basketball. It’s time for our first baseball post.
Mike Martin is one of the greatest college baseball coaches of all time, maybe the greatest. He coached Florida State from 1980 to 2019, and his 2,029 wins are the most ever by a Division I baseball coach. He led the Seminoles to the College World Series an astounding 17 times, but despite all of these accolades, he is best known for one unfortunate fact: in those 17 CWS appearances, Florida State did not win a national championship under Martin. FSU was runners-up in 1986 and 1999, but all 17 appearances ultimately ended in losses.
Dave Van Horn is, obviously, not anywhere near Mike Martin status, in a good or bad way. He only has a little more than half as many wins (1,167) and a little more than half as many CWS appearances (9, including seven at Arkansas). But as another season that reached Omaha ends in a loss — and another SEC West team is positioned to win the national title that has eluded Arkansas — it’s fair to ask the question, is Arkansas actually going to win one under Dave Van Horn?
Not actually winning a title wouldn’t cause anyone to view Van Horn as anything other than a great coach, and the purpose of this post isn’t to debate DVH’s legacy. We’ll write that book after he’s retired, and as strong as the Razorback program is, I’ll be surprised if they aren’t in position once again to win a national title in the next few years. The point of this post is to consider the implications of another Omaha run that ends short of a national championship.
Losing the same way
The initial reaction to Thursday’s loss is to simply “tip your cap” to Ole Miss ace Dylan DeLucia, who threw a complete-game, four-hit shutout to end Arkansas’ season.
It’s some version of this:
This sentiment isn’t wrong: you do have to tip your cap to DeLucia, who was magnificent. The problem for Arkansas is that Dylan DeLucia is just the latest in a long list of pitchers Arkansas has had to tip its cap to in Omaha.
That last cited tweet — calling DeLucia’s performance “the best I’ve even in a CWS elimination game” — should sound familiar. That phrase was also used to describe the performance of another pitcher the Hogs had to tip their cap to: Kevin Abel. Like DeLucia, Abel recorded a complete-game shutout in a winner-take-all game against Arkansas. Abel — pitching on three days’ rest and having pitched the ninth inning of Game 2 — allowed just two hits and recorded 10 strikeouts in 129 pitches of a 5-0 Oregon State victory that delivered the Beavers a national title.
So Arkansas’ last two winner-take-all games in Omaha ended in complete-game shutout losses. Over the last four College World Series’ (2018, 2019, 2021, 2022), there have only been three complete-game shutouts, and two of them were against Arkansas. Over those four seasons, Arkansas has played more than 250 non-CWS games and only been a victim of a complete-game shutout once.
Maybe that’s a coincidence, or maybe not.
Abel wasn’t the first opposing pitcher the Hogs had to tip their cap to. Before 2018, Arkansas’ furthest advance in Omaha came in the 2012 season, when the Hogs actually started 2-0 and were in the driver’s seat until South Carolina’s Jordan Montgomery recorded an 8-inning, 3-hit shutout in a 2-0 Gamecocks win. South Carolina then won the winner-take-all game the next day, 3-2, allowing just six hits to an ensemble of Gamecock pitchers.
A year after the Oregon State loss, the Hogs ended up tipping their cap to Florida State’s Drew Parrish, who provided the last win of Mike Martin’s storied career. Parrish — who entered the game with a 4.67 ERA — pitched an 8-inning, 5-hit, 9-strikeout masterpiece in a 1-0 Seminoles win. Florida State’s next game? A 2-0 loss to Michigan that was — you guessed it! — a complete-game shutout, the only one in Omaha over the last four seasons that wasn’t against Arkansas.
In 2021, the Hogs didn’t make it Omaha, but the season ended in a similar fashion to many Omaha games. After a 21-2 win to open the Super Regionals, the Hogs lost Game 2. In Game 3, despite a heroic effort by Kevin Kopps, the Razorbacks were held to a season-low four hits in a 3-2 loss. In that game, three different NC State pitchers combined to strike out nine Hogs.
So what gives? Four of Arkansas’ last ten losses at the College World Series have been shutouts, and the Hogs scored 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, and 5 in the other six.
Perhaps the problem isn’t Arkansas’ approach at the plate. Perhaps Dave Van Horn is the anti-Houston Nutt: Nutt’s infectious energy motivated the Hogs to win big games, but his excitability and flair for the dramatic prevented him from building a sustainable program. Maybe Van Horn’s stoicism and attention to detail have allowed him to build a strong program, but left him vulnerable in big moments, when the coachspeak “it’s just another game to us” line doesn’t work as a motivational tactic. In that sense, maybe Van Horn really is like Mike Martin, who was well-known for his stoic demeanor. That’s just a theory, though, and it has holes: plenty of “stoic” coaches have won national titles, and Van Horn’s ability to run a strong program is why Arkansas keeps getting close.
Arkansas’ approach at the plate
Is Arkansas’ batting approach making it hard to score in big games? This is more of an inquiry than a definitive claim.
Let’s look at some of the numbers behind Arkansas’ hitting this year. It’s worth noting that the overarching numbers you see here have been the same for Arkansas for several years. This is how they bat.
There are basically two plate approaches: the LSU strategy, which is to swing at everything and try and get big hits, or the Texas A&M strategy, which is to take as many pitches as possible and swing only when necessary or when the perfect pitch arrives. Arkansas is definitely in the latter group. Here’s every SEC team by number of pitches taken per at-bat:
- Texas A&M 2.37
- Vanderbilt 2.23
- ARKANSAS 2.20
- Auburn 2.15
- Mizzou 2.14
- Tennessee 2.14
- Miss State 2.11
- South Carolina 2.10
- Florida 2.07
- Alabama 2.03
- Ole Miss 2.03
- Kentucky 2.01
- LSU 1.95
- Georgia 1.92
Taking pitches can do a lot for a team. It runs up the opponents’ pitch count, plus it can lead to more walks. The Hogs saw the 4th-most pitches per at-bat this season (3.85) and ranked 4th in the SEC in walk percentage (12%).
Of course, taking pitches can get you into trouble. About 52% of Arkansas’ at-bats this season went to two strikes, that’s also 4th-most in the SEC. You’d think that would lead to more strikeouts — the 2019 team struck out on 23% of at-bats, one of the highest rates in the SEC — but this year’s Hogs didn’t actually strike out very often: despite frequent two-strike counts, only 19% of at-bats ended in strikeouts, 3rd-best in the conference. That’s because when Hog batters swung, they didn’t whiff very much (23% swing-and-miss percentage, 6th-best). The Hogs were 4th in percentage of swings that put the ball in play (40%).
So contact wasn’t an issue, but hits were. Only 14% of swings created a base hit (9th) and the Hogs’ actual batting average was .271 (10th). Basically, Hog hitters did a good job of getting the bat on the ball, but way too much contact was weak contact.
So what’s the postseason issue here? Let’s go back to the that two-strike thing. Again, 52% of Arkansas’ at-bats went to two strikes. While the Hogs didn’t strike out much on these counts, were they forced to swing at bad pitches, leading to poor contact? The evidence says yes. Here’s every SEC team’s batting average on at-bats that reached two strikes:
- Texas A&M .216
- Kentucky .198
- Tennessee .196
- Auburn .196
- Mizzou .194
- Vanderbilt .189
- Alabama .187
- LSU .185
- Miss State .185
- Florida .183
- ARKANSAS .179
- Ole Miss .176
- Georgia .175
- South Carolina .160
DeLucia faced 32 Hog hitters and managed to get 17 of them (53%, roughly Arkansas’ season average) into two-strike counts. The Hogs finished 2 for 17 (.118) in those at-bats. The Hogs were also 2 for 17 on at-bats that included at least one called strike. The Hogs were 0 for 7 when the at-bat began with a called strike. If that stat sounds familiar, consider this, from the 2018 CWS Finals against Oregon State:
Oregon State basically figured out that the Razorback hitters were happy to start every at-bat down 0-2 despite the fact that they were really not very good at hitting their way out of it.
For DeLucia, the magic count was 1-2. He managed to get 14 of his 32 at-bats into a 1-2 count, and Arkansas was 1 for 14 on those at-bats. Sixteen more at-bats ended before the fourth pitch, so only two at-bats went longer than three pitches without starting 1-2: both were by Zach Gregory, and he ended up striking out both times. DeLucia destroyed Arkansas’ pitch-taking strategy by simply throwing strikes.
DeLucia was definitely hitting his spots, but he wasn’t blowing past Arkansas hitters. Quick: how many of his 113 pitches did Arkansas swing and miss at? The answer is nine. Nine swings and misses in the entire game. Arkansas made contact on 40 of its 49 swings, so that swing-and-miss percentage of 18% is actually better than the Hogs’ season average.
I don’t know if there actually is a major weakness to taking so many pitches or not. It sure seems that Arkansas’ hitting approach might be a hindrance in high-stakes NCAA Tournament games, but I don’t have enough data to be sure. Here’s what I do think: if you let too many strikes go by in Omaha, you’re gonna end up tipping your cap.