Although he won’t be ready for Opening Day, highly-touted freshman pitcher Hunter Dietz is firmly in the plans for Arkansas Head Coach Dave Van Horn this spring.
The 6-6, 230-pound left-hander from Clearwater (Fla.) Calvary Christian High School, came to Fayetteville in the fall with a chronic elbow issue. After discussion with Van Horn and his family, Dietz decided to have a minor procedure to repair a stress fracture in his throwing arm, following the fall season.
With an already deep pitching staff in place, Van Horn is not rushing the pitcher’s recovery, but is targeting an April return.
“You won’t see him pitch until probably early April,” Van Horn said at a Swatter’s Club meeting last week. “But when you do see him pitch, you’re really going to like watching him pitch. That’s all I’m going to say.”
Perfect Game ranked Dietz as the No. 57 overall prospect, nationally, and the No. 7 lefty in the Class of 2023. He finished his senior season with a perfect 9-0 record, a 1.47 ERA, while recording 102 strikeouts in 57 innings, and led the Warriors to the Class 3A Florida state championship.
He is the highest ranked pitcher Arkansas has landed since Keaton McKinney in the Class of 2014 and the highest ranked left-hander the Razorbacks have ever had, since Perfect Game began its rankings in 2002.
Reaching upward of 95 miles per hour, Dietz pitched eight innings for the Diamond Hogs during the fall scrimmages, allowing a team-low two hits, while striking out 13 of the 25 batters he faced.
Van Horn confirmed that Dietz has already returned to practice and going through drills.
“He’s not throwing to hitters or anything yet,” he added. “They just went in there and took care of a problem that he brought with him,”
Dietz is one of the cornerstones to Arkansas’ freshman class than ranks No. 1 in the country. He would likely have been a prized selection in the 2023 MLB Draft, but had a desire to first play Division I baseball, and signed with the Razorbacks.
Arkansas will begin the season on Feb. 16, facing James Madison at Baum-Walker Stadium, in the first of a four-game series with the Dukes.