FAYETTEVILLE — The No. 1 Arkansas baseball team capped off a dominant first weekend of SEC play with another pitching gem against Missouri on Sunday.
The Razorbacks vanquished the Tigers 9-1 at Baum-Walker Stadium to complete a three-game sweep by a combined score of 23-1.
Arkansas baseball (17-2, 3-0 SEC) won its 13th straight game and ended a 12-game homestand unbeaten. The Razorbacks are charted to open a three-game series at Auburn on Thursday.
“It was a really excellent weekend for us,” Arkansas baseball coach Dave Van Horn say that they are pitche very well, obviously They had one run all weekend. We pitched out a couple of jams. We also fielded the ball. We didn’t make any wrongs all weekend.
Arkansas baseball beat Missouri 9-1
Missouri (9-11, 0-3) avoided its third straight shutout when Thomas Curry led off the seventh inning with a solo home run off Arkansas freshman reliever Colin Fisher. It snapped a 25 1/3-inning scoreless streak by Razorback pitching that dated to Tuesday’s 4-2 win over Oral Roberts.
Arkansas baseball beat Missouri 10-3 on Sunday and held the Tigers to eight hits over the weekend.
“I think they played the game the way they were supposed to play,” Missouri coach Kerrick Jackson said of Arkansas. “The pitchers finished and they played good resistance and had quality at-bats. When you look at it from that perspective, I think they did what they were supposed to do.
“If we had played pure baseball – if we had multiplication at bats, if we had been throwing strikes consistently, if we had played good defense – I don’t think the outcome would have been the same. It doesn’t necessarily mean we would have won, but I don’t think the result was on the scoreboard. We just have to play good baseball and that’s what we’re challenging these guys to do.”
He didn’t allow a hit until Jerick Curtis singled to lead off the sixth inning. Curtis was Molina’s teammate at Texas Tech previous season.
“He’s hard to hit,” Van Horn said of Molina. “He throws that high carry fastball and he’s got a good changing. He’s somewhat functionally wild, sort of balancing them out.
“It was nice to see him to play 5 innings. Obviously if he was a little more skilled with the pitches he might have scored seven runs, but they fouled him on a lot of pitches because the fastball is hard to play. above.”
Coty Frank replaced Molina after he walked and hit a batter in the sixth inning, striking out the Tigers’ two- and three-hole hitters, Trevor Austin and Jackson Lovich, to make it 5-0.
Arkansas baseball took a two-run lead in the fifth inning. Peyton Stovall’s double down the right-field line registered 111 mph exit velocity and scored Ty Wilmsmeier (infield single), and Stovall came home on Wehiwa Aloe’s sac fly to put the Razorbacks up 5-0.
Arkansas tacked on three more runs in the sixth on an error by Justin Colon at third base that allowed Jared Sprague-Lott (infield single) to score. Aloy had a two-run single with two outs to outstretched the lead to 8-0.
Curry’s homer cut the lead to 8-1, but Arkansas got the runs back in the bottom of the seventh when Ross Lovich led off with a walk and scored on Hudson White’s two-out RBI double.
“I like big innings, but I also like to put a little bit of arc in every inning — two here, one there, three there,” Van Horn said. “That’s how you got away with it.”
Gage Wood pitched the eighth inning. Drew Culbertson led off with a walk against Wood, but Thomas Moore hit a shortstop-to-second base-to-first base double play and Wood struck out Austin to end the inning.
Freshman closer Gabe Gaeckle pitched a perfect ninth in his only appearance of the weekend.
The Razorbacks got off to a hot start against Missouri right-hander Carter Rustad in the first inning. Stovall singled on Rustad’s first pitch and scored from first base on Kendall Diggs’ RBI double in the next at-bat. Later in the inning, Diggs scored on a sacrifice fly by Ben McLaughlin to give Arkansas a 2-0 lead.
Rustad, who is statistically Missouri’s best pitcher, allowed 5 runs, 5 hits and 2 walks in 5 innings. Rustad threw 2 wild pitches, hit 1 batter and struck out 1, with 47 strikeouts in a 75-pitch start.
“Rustad, this is probably the worst start of the year,” Jackson said. “The command was just loose. He competed but when he made mistakes, they didn’t miss.”(More information about Baseball)