WholeHog Sports’ Matt Jones on what happened to Razorbacks’ season

When effects of long season finally got to Hagen Smith against Kansas State, Hogs couldn’t overcome it Saturday night.

this podcast is powered by the pros at Pascal a plumbing and electric Arkansas owned Arkansas operated go pascal.or and we have Matt Jones with us he of course is in studio and then Matt Jones from the Democrat Gazette with us on the McClary Daniel hotline right now the day after Arkansas’s I was going to say the baseball season ends Matt but no we still have some regionals to finish today we’ve got super regionals got the college World SE got like a month left but it’s not involving Arkansas how you doing today I’m good hey were you playing double vision because you had two Matt Joneses on the show was that why you chose that song Matt double vision yes that must have been the exact reason why that’s actually per that’s a that’s a perfect choice for this moment yes that’s why it happened yes I’ve had a few times where I’ve gone on different C still and I can tell that the uh the song has been picked because of the name you know it might be uh you know Mr me and Mr or Mr Jones like cting crows or yeah it’s just kind of funny me and Mr Jones by Amy wi housee is that what you were going to go with no actually I’ll tell you in mind there was an old song Me and Mrs Jones it sure was not that one but I picked it for me all we need is for me to be doing the show at the ksr studios in Lexington owned by Matt Jones the uh the radio guy there then we would really have reality’s colliding into each other um I can tell you a great story about him and me and radio but we’ll save that one for another day oh I heard about about that one too yeah so some people don’t realize there are there are a lot of Matt Joneses out there um all right Matt the day after Arkansas season comes to an end it’s a step back from the year before so I have I look at last year and I think of a team that was that was injury that was injury riddled kind of beaten up didn’t really have a lot of depth of pitching because of injuries and ran into a buzs saww in TCU um now there might have been a couple pitching injuries that left them I’m not going to say thin because they weren’t thin as far as pitching was concerned they were healthy when it came to the hitters and position players I I just I don’t view Kansas State the same way that I do TCU nor do I view Simo so that’s what makes this this last these last two games really tough yeah I think you’re right and I don’t think they finished the regular season this year maybe as strong as they did last year I know it was kind of similar in how the last two weeks played out you last year of South Carolina and Vanderbilt and this year was Mississippi State and Texas A&M uh you know but they won the SEC last year they only won the West this year uh yeah I mean I think it was a good year with a bad finish um I I do wonder how much the just the the totality of everything that’s happened with pitching kind of caught up with them at the end of the year you know I thought what made this team so good early in the season was that nobody was having to to schedule but a lot of it had to do with the fact that you know they were getting quality starts out of you know three starters for the most part every week weekend uh they weren’t playing five games in a week until into April and then about that time is when Colin fiser goes down and and Hunter Deets can’t pitch anymore and then your top two starters you know they’re not going as deep into games and anytime that something like that happens I you know this there’s a trickle down effect and you know arms are going to get tired at the end of the year and uh you know the you know I just kind of think maybe the Innings and everything kind of caught up for this team but you know it really comes down though to he Smith just wasn’t Hagen Smith you know at the end of the Kansas State game who I mean they had that Regional set up perfectly for them up on Kansas State mid Innings you got Hagen Smith on the mound and you know plenty of your your better arms to go on the bullpen and uh you know it’s unfortunate that this is two years in a row now where he’s given up a a big inning in his Regional start and uh you know as great of a pitcher as he’s been unfortunately you know a lot of people are going to remember that about him so when it happened last year there was something in the back of my head that said it’s not that I expected him to to struggle as badly as he did against TCU it’s just there was a level of inconsistency that Hagen had shown as a sophomore that’s that’s why they took him out of the rotation put him in the bullpen and then put him back in the rotation again once he had kind of you know gotten through things a little bit more this year it was a consistent Hagen Smith every single weekend every single Thursday or Friday six Innings more than 10 strikeouts two or less runs usually one run or no runs and utter dominance and I thought they were being brilliant with the way that they were handling and meeting the coaches and saying look you know you could go seven Innings we’re going to hold you to six because we’re going to keep that inning and and save your bullet so to speak for June and they did it all season long there were probably five or six starts where even in the postgame David said haen could have gone another inning he didn’t look like he lost anything in the sixth in those games I thought it was a brilliant strategy and you’re right they had it perfect ly set up that’s where it doesn’t make any sense and I’m I if I look back on anything from this last season it really is the clutch hitting and all of that I get that that was an issue but they still were set up the way they wanted to be in the winterers bracket game on the on the Saturday in the regional and that’s what I’ll take from this season right now I hate it too because what I want to take Matt is I want to remember everything about Hagen Smith before Hoover which was amazing to watch but we’ll remember we’ll remember the fifth inning against k yeah I think you’re right and it’s so weird how that works out because you know if if they do get benen Smith on Saturday night you know for one more inning and and you know he’s pretty good for four Innings but if he can get him through the fifth sixth inning by pitch really well probably the best I’ve seen him pitch this year and we’re probably having a much different conversation today Arkansas maybe in a Super Regional at home I think they’re they’re built for a Super Regional a little bit better than maybe they’re built for a regional uh but that’s baseball for you it it’s uh there’s a there’s a real fine line between winning and losing and and they teetered it the other night and you know unfortunately need to perform the way it did um are are you in a mode right now of looking back or are you in a mode of looking looking ahead you know because there’s a i you are replacing a lot and maybe that’s that’s just the case every year now I know David mentioned that postgame they’ve replaced almost the entire team a couple years in a row got to do again but are you still in postmortem mode or are you in looking ahead mode well I think I don’t know that I’m in either but I think if you’re coaches you’re probably somewhere right between I think that there’s a you know any good coach is going to analyze what went wrong and you know try to try to you know make sure that doesn’t happen again are you heard da been asking a question in the the post game yesterday uh you know it was it was was like you know maybe maybe they were tired maybe in the future we get a 1:00 game in this situation and you just show up at noon and go play like summer week baseball you kind of see the wheels turning his head as he was analyzing you know what what he had just seen less than an hour beforehand on the field so I think there’s some of that but you can’t dwell on it for too long because I mean I don’t know if you paid attention today but you know transfer portal is Hing this morning oh yeah and you got you got to get in there and and and you got to you’re going to have to have your team built you know over the next six weeks or so you know I would think that we’re going to know most of the players who are going to be on next year’s team of course you got to get to the draft and that can change things but uh with as many roster spots they have open I don’t think you can dwell on this the to long it’s like so people would be like so you know what do they need what do they need going into this next season I think the answer is yes they kind of need a little of everything too I mean I don’t think they’re going to I think they’ll go out and look for starting pitching I think they’ll go out and look for relievers even though you’ve got a lot of good young Talent that’s coming back on the mound as far as position players are concerned you’re replacing like everybody outside of viiva alloy you’re replacing everybody yeah probably so you know and Ryder HFI he may be their catcher that we’ve heard a lot of that talk this year that he’s going to be the catcher of the future at Arkansas I think they really like his upside uh Nolan Souza I think he’s going to fit in somewhere yeah and we we talked about all this assuming that these players are coming back and I don’t have any reason to believe that they’re not going to be back but it’s a different time I mean you can’t just assume that players going to be back because they were on the roster this year you know but but those are players who I think kind of fit into their longterm plans but past that I mean they’ve got to have entirely new Outfield they’ve got to have a new first baseman uh you know they’ve got to have a new third baseman maybe soon as a fits in at third I don’t know if he’s a third baseman or a second baseman I don’t know where he fits in the field uh but yeah it’s uh it’s like kind of a blank canvas I think they do have a lot of pitching Parts um for next year I thought gagewood was looking really good toward the end of the season and that probably boats well for him to you know have a a prominent spot pitching next year when that’s start or whatever it is with him Gabe GLE be back Hunter de we didn’t get to see a whole lot of him this year but but there’s there’s a lot of uh excitement about him you got Fouts we mention BBY you know if all of those pieces are back I think you like the the pieces that are there in your Bullpen you know potentially with some some pieces that you can get out of this High School recruiting class or out the transfer portal but yeah position player wise I just think that’s how it’s going to be for a while because it seems to me Phil like it’s it’s as weird as it sounds it has been harder in the last few years to get the the big position players through the draft than it has been for the pitchers I mean think about the pitchers you have shown up you’ve had Hagen Smith you’ve had Gabe GLE Hunter de uh those were all big time draft prospects to a lesser extent Brady tiger Adam hatchman was a big big draft prospect before he got hurt and he didn’t pitch this year what position player could you put in that same class pton stoval maybe Jason Jones to a little bit lesser extent U so you know I think that we’re going to see this quite a bit in the future of you know you’re just you’re you’re recycling or maybe not recycling but you know you’re you’re rebuilding your position roster uh quite a bit every offseason probably through transfer portal and and players who are older in those positions than they were five or six years ago so to wrap up here one of the things that just is crazy about these last two years of of a lack of success in the postseason is they’ve been not undefeated but they’ve won every single Series played at home two years in a row at B Walker and then lost in the regional um it’s like you try to jib these things together and it just doesn’t it just doesn’t jive they’ve lost the last three uh postseason tournaments or series at home and I wonder if there’s something to that do you well I mean it’s certainly something that I think you know you you’ve got to think about um the the feeling I got from people around the program was that they were they were almost relieved when they didn’t have to play at bomb in 22 they had played Vanderbilt uh lost to them at the regular season um you know I think that there was kind of a feeling of uh I don’t know what the word would be but it was like when they got on the road and they went to Hoover I guess that that road trip actually started uh you know the end of the regular season then they go to Hoover and then they get to go on the road to stillw water something about being on the road just brought them together and they they played their best baseball at the end of that season so uh you know that’s not to say they can’t win at bomb because they certainly can for all the you know the times that we’ve mentioned here the last few years they won like five in a row before that super regionals and regionals between 18 and 21 season uh but yeah it is interesting because they’ve been so good at home and you figured in addition to pitching the the one real strength this team had going into the postseason was that they had been so good at home and that 33 and three record that they had included a lot of comebacks against a lot of good teams and the fact they weren’t able to take care of home advantage or take advantage of home build Advantage I think that was a a big big shock we’ll leave it there Matt appreciate you coming on thank you very much and uh we’ll do it again we’ll do it again sometime soon okay okay sounds good guys thank you bet online is your number one source for all your betting needs get the latest odds lines and matchup reports for baseball boxing Golf and More bet online continues to be the fastest and easiest way to place your Wagers including bu betting and your favorite casino and card games available to play right from your 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