Injuries have beset the Arkansas baseball team as bad in 2023 as they have any season in recent memory.
Coach Dave Van Horn is having to be more clever than usual when it comes to making adjustments because of it. That includes returning the team’s best and most consistent pitcher back to the rotation.
Hagen Smith is set to start Friday’s opener against Mississippi State with first pitch scheduled for 6 p.m. in Starkville. The start will be Smith’s seventh this season, but he also has six relief appearances. He has a 6-1 record, the team’s best, and a 2.64 earned-run average – also best among qualifiers – in 47 2/3 innings.
In other words, Van Horn wants to maximize the innings total for the best pitcher on his roster.
The move will hurt a bullpen that is already stretched thing and hasn’t pitched well more often than not. Among the five players with the most outings in relief this season, their invidivual ERAs are 3.00, 6.58, 5.06, 8.18 and 9.74 in order of most relief appearances to fewest. For the record, that’s Gage Wood, Austin Ledbetter, Cody Adcock, Christian Foutch and Zack Morris.
Arkansas enters its eighth SEC series of the weekend in second in the Western Division, two games in the loss column behind LSU, but four games in front of Alabama for third in the division.