In what could be a program first, Arkansas baseball lost a member of its heralded transfer portal class Friday when Carson Hansen flipped his commitment to SEC foe Kentucky.
The rising junior is an outfielder who spent his first two collegiate seasons at Milwaukee, where he was a first-team All-Horizon League selection this past season.
Hansen slashed .315/.404/.601 with 11 home runs and 63 RBIs, plus tied for seventh nationally with 25 doubles. Those numbers led to him being ranked as the No. 295 overall player in the portal this cycle, according to 64Analytics.
He was the third transfer to publicly announce his commitment to the Razorbacks this offseason and, in an unpublished interview with Best of Arkansas Sports, sounded excited about the prospect of heading south to Fayetteville.
“The facilities are first class,” Hansen said. “I don’t know if you’re familiar with Milwaukee or not, but we practiced on a gym floor with drop-down cages and tennis shoes. So being open to better coaching, better facilities, I think I can take my game to the next level with some of that.”
Hansen also said his follower count on Twitter jumped up and that the support he had received from fans was “crazy,” so he was “pretty pumped” to play in front of them.
That raises an obvious question: What happened?
In this era of college athletics, it’s understandable if you immediately assume the Wildcats swooped in with a better NIL offer or something nefarious along those lines. It also isn’t a sign of Kentucky surpassing Arkansas baseball in the SEC’s pecking order.
What likely happened in this scenario is much more old-school and has been a thing in college baseball longer than the transfer portal has existed.
The Carson Hansen Situation
The reason Carson Hansen chose to decommit from the Arkansas baseball program boils down to playing time.
In all likelihood, it was a mutual decision. The Razorbacks – like many big-time programs – have been known to stock up on talent as a backup plan in case they get hit hard by the MLB Draft, which has happened quite a few times over the years.
The flip side of that is they can sometimes end up with too many players. It’s relatively common for teams to part with high school or JUCO signees the summer before they arrive on campus and even more common for some, particularly true freshmen, to leave the program after the fall semester.
Now that the transfer portal has increased the frequency of players going from one four-year school to the next, it’s not surprising that the trend is continuing with transfers, as that’s what seems to have happened with Hansen.
Going into the 2024 MLB Draft, Arkansas was unsure if Kendall Diggs would return for his senior year or if Logan Maxwell and Rocco Peppi – transfers from TCU and Fresno State, respectively – would make it to campus. JUCO signee Justin Thomas and high school signee Eli Lovich were also draft risks.
All five of those players are outfielders who would presumably compete for playing time in 2025. In a doomsday scenario, all five could have been drafted and the Razorbacks would have been left scrambling to find enough outfielders.
Alas, only one of those five – Lovich – was selected. Assuming he signs professionally, the Razorbacks would still have the other five outfielders, as well as transfers Carson Boles and Charles Davalan. That also doesn’t include guys like Kuhio Aloy and Maximus Martin, who could potentially play out there, if needed.
Simply put, Arkansas had too many outfielders for all of them to even play in intrasquad scrimmages this fall.
Even if the Razorbacks didn’t ask him to move on, this fact probably wasn’t lost on Hansen. He’s coming off a really good sophomore season in the Horizon League and would like to prove himself against better competition in his draft year – something that can’t happen if he’s on the bench.
Kentucky is a great landing spot for him, too. Not only does he still get to play in the SEC, but for a program coming off its first ever College World Series appearance. On top of that, the Wildcats had a pair of outfielders committed out of the transfer portal who were taken in the top 10 rounds of the MLB Draft, meaning they almost certainly won’t make it to campus.
This is a rare win-win situation for everyone involved.
Transfer Portal Additions for Arkansas Baseball
- DH/1B/OF Kuhio Aloy — BYU
- OF/INF Charles Davalan — Florida Gulf Coast
- SS Maximus Martin — Georgia State
- OF Logan Maxwell — TCU
- LHP Landon Beidelschies — Ohio State
- OF Rocco Peppi — Fresno State
- RHP Aiden Jimenez — Oregon State
- OF Carson Boles — Lincoln Memorial
- 1B Michael Anderson — Rhode Island
- LHP Zach Root — East Carolina
- INF Camden Kozeal — Vanderbilt
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Check out how the 2025 Arkansas baseball team is shaping up with our roster tracker, which has been updated with the loss of Carson Hansen:
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