DVH plays the field in Omaha

This year’s Arkansas Razorbacks baseball team is unlike any team Hog fans have seen before, but that is no accident.

Arkansas has a program-record 97 home runs this season with a .303 team batting average and 470 runs scored. The Razorbacks hit .288 as a team with 53 home runs and 387 runs the last time they made it to the College World Series in 2015. They hit just .271 with 39 home runs and

351 total runs in 2012, when they also made it to Omaha, Neb.

The numbers reflect a deliberate shift in player development and team strategy by coach Dave Van Horn. He has built a program and a roster perfectly suited for its era and the final stage of the season in Omaha.

It is not the first time he has done so either.

Offensive numbers declined at the start of the decade. The trend moved the NCAA to switch to a new baseball in 2015.

The NCAA ended its use of high-seamed balls with seams raised off of the baseball for a flat-seamed design. A study by Washington State and the Rawlings research lab reported the change resulted in the ball carrying about 20 feet farther.

College baseball games in

2012, 2013 and 2014 averaged only 0.48, 0.42 and 0.39 home runs, respectively. A record-low number of home runs were hit during the 2014 season.

Home runs increased in the following three seasons after the change to 0.56, 0.61 and 0.75 per game in 2015, 2016 and 2017 seasons, respectively.

More home runs, more runs. The change affected everyone, but the switch led to Van Horn taking a drastically different approach to how he built his teams.

Arkansas was built to play at Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium, the former home of the College World Series in Omaha. The stadium opened in 1948 and last hosted the College World Series in 2010. Renovations of about $7 million in 2001 increased capacity to more than 23,000.

Baum Stadium, which opened in 1996 in Fayetteville, has an official capacity of more than 11,000 and record attendance of more than 12,000. Its dimensions are 320 feet down the left field line, 375 feet to left-center field, 400 to center field, 365 to right-center field and 320 in right field.

Rosenblatt was 335 feet down the left field line, 375 to left-center, 408 to center, 375 to right-center and 335 down right field. TD Ameritrade Park Omaha opened in 2011 with the same dimensions.

Omaha wanted to keep college baseball’s annual finale and constructed the $131 million facility with capacity of more than

24,500. The NCAA has agreed to hold the College World Series in Omaha through 2035.

The game shifted after 2010. The Hogs hit .273 with 80 home runs and 412 runs on their way to Omaha in 2009 with a team ERA of 4.67. They gave up 64 home runs, but were able to make it to the final eight teams.

The team hit .306 with 92 home runs, scored 481 times and boasted an ERA of 3.93 in 2010, going 43-21. Arkansas lost in the super regionals to Arizona State in a common theme of some of Van Horn’s most talented teams falling just short of Omaha.

Van Horn leaned hard into the more deliberate, low-scoring game of the early 2010s. Arkansas’ ERA dropped to 3.20 in 2011,

2.83 in the next trip to Omaha and 1.89 to lead the nation in

2013.

Few balls were leaving the field in Omaha. Arkansas was built to win those low-scoring affairs.

It likely would have resulted in a chance at a national championship had umpire Perry Costello not thwarted the Razorbacks in their 2012 bracket final. D.J. Baxendale walked five batters in less than five innings and Arkansas issued nine walks in the game as the Gamecocks eked out a 3-2 win, only to lose to Arizona in the championship series.

The Razorbacks averaged a cumulative batting average of just .266 between 2011-14, but went 165-91 in those four seasons, winning 39 games or more each year. The 2012 team boasted just one full-time starter with an average of better than .300.

Arkansas still had the talent to return to Omaha in

2015. The Razorbacks hit .288 with 53 home runs and

387 runs. The team ERA was 4.08 as the Hogs lost their first two games at TD Ameritrade.

The change to the seams caught up to Van Horn’s program in 2016, his only losing season in 16 years in Fayetteville. The Hogs finished 26-29 after losing their final 13 games. They hit .275 and 49 home runs, but the team ERA jumped to 5.00.

But the shift was on, and Arkansas stormed back a year ago. The Razorbacks hit .286 with 83 home runs and scored 422 runs to go 45-19 overall.

The team ERA was 3.61 in 2017 and the staff threw

619 strikeouts. Arkansas averaged 473 strikeouts per season between 2011-14. The new name of the game is power.

The Hogs have a program-record home run count this season to go along with a 3.58 ERA and another 583 strikeouts. Ace Blaine Knight has given up 18 home runs during his junior campaign, and he leads the na- tion with a record of 13-0.

An average of 7.2 runs were scored per game during the 2011 College World Series. The average decreased to 7.1 in 2012 and 6.1 in 2013 before a bump to 6.3 in 2014.

The event saw an increase in 2015 to 8.4 runs per game and a seemingly random drop to 6.35 in 2016 before the average increased again to 7.9 in 2017.

Teams have combined to score an average of 12.5 runs per game in the first 11 games of this year’s College World Series. The high-powered Razorback offense fits right in.

It will be no fluke if Arkansas wins a national championship. It will be because the team performed exactly as Van Horn designed.