When Gage Wood left the mound after his Arkansas baseball debut, Dave Van Horn could see the fear in his eyes and said his hand was shaking as he handed over the ball.
Less than two months later, the freshman from Batesville slammed the door in the Razorbacks’ 6-4 series-clinching win at Ole Miss on Saturday, further proving his emergence as a legitimate closer in the absence of Brady Tygart.
It’s the second weekend in a row that Wood has earned the save in a rubber match, helping Arkansas improve to an SEC West-leading 8-4 in conference play.
“I think he’s embraced that a little bit,” Van Horn said. “I think he loved being in the game there. He’s got a little different look in his face than he did the first few times we put him out there early in the season to get him some experience or put him in a leverage situation, a tough situation.”
Against the Rebels, Wood came out of the bullpen to start the seventh inning and finished the game. He gave up just one earned run on three hits and one walk in a career-high three innings. The right-hander threw 54 pitches on Saturday, which blew past his previous high of 36 in two innings of a midweek blowout win over Omaha.
That run nearly didn’t happen, too. Wood thought he had strike three to end the inning, but his pitch was called a ball and he ended up walking Peyton Chatagnier, setting up Jacob Gonzalez’s RBI bloop single. He limited the damage to just one run, though, and — after his teammates tacked on an insurance run in the eighth — allowed only one base runner over the final two innings.
“It’s something I’ve been working for a long time and my name got called and I was ready to step up and do my job,” Wood said. “I knew once we got those runs that I could keep them away and I could do my job and get us the win right there and not let them score. I knew I could do it.”
Despite SEC Network analyst Kyle Peterson insisting Wood would throw strictly fastballs, he used a three-pitch mix — fastball, curveball and slider — to mostly keep Ole Miss off-balance.
He told reporters afterward that he felt like he got sharper as his outing progressed and was particularly proud of getting the dangerous Kemp Alderman (.358/.429/.717) to swing through a slider for a strikeout.
“We were hoping that Gage could take us to the house so to speak and he did it,” Van Horn said. “Two great plays in the outfield in the ninth helped out, but Gage just kept getting after it and throwing strikes, and being able to throw that off-speed pitch, even behind in the count, was big.”
Needless to say, Wood has come a long way since his disastrous debut against TCU, when he entered in a tie game, gave up an RBI single on his first career pitch and then walked the next two batters on nine pitches — with the first walk coming on a pitch clock violation and the second walk coming with the bases loaded.
Things went much differently when he was called upon with two runners on and two outs in the eighth inning against Alabama on Sunday. The Razorbacks were clinging to a 5-4 lead and he got Drew Williamson, arguably the Crimson Tide’s most dangerous hitter, to line out to end the inning before cruising through the heart of their order in a perfect ninth inning to finish off the four-out save.
He wasn’t quite as dominant against Ole Miss less than a week later, but still got the job done to earn the three-inning save.
“It really just goes back to finding a switch in my head to where I turn it on and I have to know that I’m the guy and I can get the job done, instead of going out there wondering as a young freshman,” Wood said. “I really just have to know that I can do it and that I’m the man for the job and that I’m going to go out there and do it. Once I really figured that out, (I) developed almost like a killer instinct.”
One key to Wood’s recent success — and likely to his future success — has been that aforementioned slider. Adding a third pitch to his arsenal contributed to him notching a career-high four strikeouts Saturday, as well.
“There for a little bit, all I had was fastball-curveball and it was really hard to get a whole bunch of swings and misses after everyone had seen it and scouted it and what it was like,” Wood said. “We really talked about getting that slider working, and I can think of many times today where I used that slider and I got swings and misses.”
Leading the SEC West
As much attention as LSU gets for having Dave Van Horn’s number, Ole Miss has traditionally been just as tough for Arkansas to beat. Between 2004-19, the Rebels won 12 of 16 regular-season series between the two teams.
However, the Razorbacks have now won the last three — including two at Swayze Field. It’s the first time they’ve won consecutive series in Oxford.
“This is a tough place to play, tough place to win,” Van Horn said. “We’re super excited about it honestly. We get to fly home most of the time, but this was the only one — and rightly so — that’s a bus trip. It’s about five and a half hours, so it’s going to make the ride home a lot better for everybody.”
More importantly than that historical achievement, Arkansas moved into sole possession of first place with the win. It had been tied with LSU, which owns the head-to-head tiebreaker by winning two of three in Baton Rouge, but now has a half-game lead on the Tigers.
That is because LSU and South Carolina split the first two games of their series in Columbia, S.C., before rain forced the cancelation of Game 3. The Tigers are just 7-4, while the Razorbacks are 8-4.
“Obviously, it’s big for the momentum going into next weekend,” third baseman Caleb Cali said. “It’s good for the team morale. Everyone is good in this league, and we’ve kind of figured that out pretty quickly. It’s just good for us to win this series going into another big one next weekend.”
On the flip side, Ole Miss dropped to 2-10 in league play with the loss. It’s a disappointing record for a team that was ranked in the top five during non-conference play, but the Rebels also overcame a 7-14 start to SEC play last year to sneak into the NCAA Tournament before winning their first national championship.
“Baseball’s a funny game, man,” Van Horn said. “It’ll hurt you. It’ll humble you. It’ll make you happy. It’s just a lot of emotions. They’re struggling. We really just fought them. I’m sure they felt like over in their dugout that this was going to be their weekend to turn it all around and they probably will turn it around. I’m just glad we got our couple of wins at a minimum and we’re getting out of here.”
Will McEntire’s MJ Moment
He won’t be confused with Michael Jordan any time soon, but it would be a shame to undersell what Will McEntire did Saturday afternoon for Arkansas baseball.
The right-hander came down with the flu a day after struggling against Alabama last weekend, forcing the Razorbacks to adjust their weekend rotation. His status was up in the air, so they named Hunter Hollan their Game 1 starter and then went with “TBA” for the next two games.
After being the Game 2 starter all year, McEntire got the nod in the series finale at Ole Miss — a move tied strictly to his healthy and not his back-to-back starts in which he allowed 11 earned runs in 7 2/3 innings.
“We were just trying to give him as long as we could before we started him — another day of rest, another day of medicine, just to try to get a little bit stronger,” Van Horn said. “We didn’t know if we were going to pitch him until yesterday. We just felt like once we got through the day and he felt better, (and with) another night of sleep, that he’d be ready to pitch.”
Not only was he ready, but McEntire had arguably his best start since throwing a complete game against Louisiana Tech on March 11.
He kept his pitch count really low, throwing fewer than 10 pitches in his first three innings, and didn’t allow a run until giving up a two-out RBI double to Anthony Calarco in the fourth.
That was the only run that had scored when he left the game after 4 2/3 innings, but his two-out walk eventually scored on Jacob Gonzalez’s home run off Dylan Carter. That means he was officially charged with two runs on five hits and two walks while striking out two.
“Gave us four-plus innings and he was done,” Van Horn said. “I almost took him out a hitter or two earlier. He fought as long as he could. Really proud of him.”
Timely Hitting Returns
Even though it managed only one run — a leadoff home run by Caleb Cali in the third — over the first four innings of the game, Arkansas did an excellent job of driving up Ole Miss starter JT Quinn’s pitch count up by fouling off pitches and working deep into the count.
While Will McEntire had thrown only 44 pitches through four innings, Quinn was already at 75. Still, he should have gotten out of the fifth inning unscathed, but an error extended it and the Razorbacks made Ole Miss pay.
Peyton Stovall delivered a two-out RBI single to give Arkansas a 3-1 lead. The Razorbacks also scored a pair of runs with two outs in the seventh inning.
Overall, Arkansas went 5 for 15 (.333) with runners on base, including 3 for 9 with runners in scoring position — a significant improvement from the previous game’s 1-for-9 showing with runners on second and/or third.
“That’s what’s the game’s all about,” Van Horn said. “Don’t walk the leadoff man, timely two-out hits. If you do that, you’re going to win a lot of games.”
Defense Proves Decisive Again
The Razorbacks played excellent defense in Saturday’s win, starting with Peyton Stovall making a tremendous diving snag to rob Ole Miss of a line drive single in its first at bat of the day.
It turned a couple of double plays, but it was a heads-up play by Caleb Cali in the fourth inning that gave Arkansas its next web gem.
Ethan Groff went first to third on a single by Calvin Harris and when the throw initially went to third, Cali caught it and immediately fired to second, where Harris was trying to move up on the throw. His throw just beat him for a big out on the base paths, which limited the Rebels to only one point.
“Being at third, I have a decent visual of the rest of the field,” Cali said. “The ball was coming in from Josenberger and from the feeling that I got, just baseball timing, I knew he was going to be safe there. Then I saw a powder blue jersey running to second base. It was a key thing through my eye and I just tried to get it as quick as I can and let go of it and (Stovall) made a good tag.”
All three outfielders made an impact on the game, too.
Right fielder Jace Bohrofen tracked down a deep shot in the right-center gap to end the seventh-inning threat. The other two plays came in the ninth.
Will Furniss hit a line drive into left to start the inning, but Wegner robbed him with a spectacular diving catch.
“I think off the bat, Jared saw it hit a little bit farther because he kind of went sideways, but the ball was slicing, so it started to sink,” Van Horn said. “Obviously he turned it up and made a really good diving catch. I mean, that’s about as far as he could have gone. Great play for us. Big momentum.”
Two batters later, after a one-out single by Ethan Lege, pinch hitter John Kramer hit a ball deep to left-center, but Josenberger managed to track it down and make the running grab for the second out the inning.
“Josenberger’s ball, I felt like it was going to catch it, but it was also slicing away from him,” Van Horn said. “But he had a really good jump off the bat on that one.”
It was yet another stark contrast to how Arkansas played in Friday’s nightcap, when miscommunication allowed a shallow pop up in left to fall for a double and Brady Slavens dropped a pop up in foul territory — both of which directly led to runs scoring.
“We didn’t catch a couple pop ups last night…but other than that, we didn’t make an error,” Van Horn said. “I don’t think they counted either of those as errors, but that’s what it takes when you’re trying to win close games. You can’t give them extra outs.”
On the flip side, Ole Miss committed two errors that led to three unearned runs. The first of those came in the fifth, when shortstop Jacob Gonzalez dropped the ball after fielding a grounder. That extended the inning and set the stage for two runs crossing the plate.
The other one also required some good base running, as Josenberger scored on an error by right fielder TJ McCants. He was already going to end up on third after the single by Peyton Stovall because he was stealing on the play, but when McCants bobbled it and made a bad throw back in, Josenberger was able to go the extra 90 feet and score.
“The right fielder was not going to throw him out at third, and he just kicked the ball,” Van Horn said. “Then he tried to get it in too quick and made a bad throw. I thought Coach Thompson did a really good job of taking a shot and waiving him in.”
Up Next for Arkansas Baseball
Fans may already be looking forward to next weekend’s series against Tennessee and the return of Tony Vitello, but another team led by a former Arkansas assistant will visit Baum-Walker Stadium first.
The Razorbacks have a two-game midweek series against Little Rock, which is 17-11 overall and 6-3 in OVC play after sweeping UT-Martin over the weekend. The Trojans are led by Chris Curry, who was an assistant in Fayetteville from 2009-10.
The two games are scheduled for 6:30 p.m. CT Tuesday and 4 p.m. CT Wednesday. Both will be streamed on SEC Network-Plus.
Other Arkansas Baseball Tidbits
- This is the sixth straight year Arkansas has started SEC play at least 8-4. That’s the best stretch in the league since LSU did it eight straight years from 1991-98.
- With an RBI single in the eighth inning, Kendall Diggs extended his on-base streak to 22 games. He is now hitting .333 with 36 RBIs this season.
- Thanks to Caleb Cali’s leadoff home run in the third inning, Arkansas has homered in 27 straight games and in 29 of 31 games overall. It has 52 long balls on the season.
- Right-hander Dylan Carter was the bridge between Will McEntire and Gage Wood and recorded four outs, but did give up the game-tying home run to Jacob Gonzalez on his second pitch. “The pitch that left the yard was supposed to be a fastball on the outside corner out,” Van Horn said. “It ended up being in the middle in. He just missed his spot on the wrong side, and a good hitter will make you pay for it and that’s what he did.”
Arkansas vs Ole Miss Highlights
Arkansas vs Ole Miss Postgame Interviews
Arkansas vs Ole Miss Box Score (Game 3)
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