re: *2024 ARKANSAS RAZORBACK SEC BASEBALL SEASON DONE* FIRE SOMEONE*

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ARLINGTON, Texas — Very rarely does an early-season college baseball game deliver the kind of compelling theater we witnessed Friday night at Globe Life Field.

The matchup between No. 2 Arkansas and No. 7 Oregon State was the most highly anticipated game on the entire preconference calendar in 2024, a rematch of the 2018 CWS Finals featuring two hugely talented starting pitchers in Arkansas lefty Hagen Smith and OSU righty Aiden May. The Beavers have a premier offense led by perhaps the most talented pure hitter in the nation in Travis Bazzana, and the college baseball world was eager to see how Smith — a first-team preseason All-American with top-of-the-draft talent — would bounce back from a rough one-inning start last week and match up against Bazzana and the dangerous Beaver lineup. On top of all those storylines, the action would unfold at a big league stadium in a highly charged atmosphere in front of more than 15,000 fans.

The stage was set for something special — but what we saw transcended special. It was pure magic.

The box score will show that Arkansas prevailed 5-4 and that Smith received a no-decision — and watching these two clubs trade blows and walk the tightrope in the late innings was plenty compelling on its own. But the biggest source of magic Friday night was Smith, who turned in one of the most dominant, jaw-dropping pitching performances you will ever see. In fact, Arkansas pitching coach Matt Hobbs said after the game that he had never seen anything like it in his 20-year coaching career.

Smith tied an Arkansas record with 17 strikeouts over six innings of three-hit, shutout ball, walking just one. Remarkably, despite that high strikeout total, he threw just 78 pitches (59 for strikes). Each of the first 15 outs he recorded through five innings came via strikeouts, until Oregon State finally grounded out to open the sixth. Smith then proceeded to strike out the next two batters to end his outing, handing his bullpen a 4-0 lead.

Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn said he has repeatedly lamented playing last Friday’s season opener in 36 degree weather, with a wind chill in the low 20s — and Smith was simply not sharp in those conditions, exiting after laboring through a 42-pitch first inning, allowing three runs to James Madison. But it would have been foolhardy to place any stock in that outing, given the circumstances, and the Hogs were confident he would rebound with a vengeance in Week Two.

“Obviously it didn’t go good last week. We knew he was going to pitch good tonight,” Van Horn said. “We didn’t know if we were going to win the game or what, but he’s really good. That’s the way he pitched in the fall, his bullpens look like that, he holds his stuff. We play with a lot of confidence when he’s on the mound. Everything was working. He even started flashing two changeups there late. I don’t know, we’ll see how he does next week, but it’d be hard to ever top that one.”

Hobbs said before the game that Smith’s fastball spin rate was way down in the cold weather last week, but his heater had its typical giddy-up in the first inning, when he pumped 97-99 gas with high spin rates in the 2400 rpm range. After freezing Bazzana on a nasty 87 mph slider for strike three to lead off the game (the first of three Smith strikeouts of Bazzana), Smith used his heater to record his next two strikeouts in the first. From that point on, he used his ridiculous 84-87 mph slider as the putaway pitch on every one of his other 14 strikeouts. It reminded me of a vintage Carlos Rodon performance during his days at NC State; when Rodon was at his peak, his fastball might be 94-97, but everyone knew the slider was his out pitch, and they still couldn’t hit it. That was Smith on Friday night — as good as the fastball velocity and command were, the slider was simply unhittable. Even against a lineup stuffed with good righthanded hitters, Smith could locate that slider wherever he wanted, in or out of the zone, and he repeatedly got those righties to chase it down out of the zone, or froze the lefties by painting the outside corner with the slider.

“His fastball was good, but his slider was like, he could go to it at any time, behind in the count. He had them thinking they were going to get a fastball and it was a slider again,” Van Horn said. “They had the perfect bunt, and the ground ball up the middle — they really didn’t get the ball to the outfield on him. Whenever he felt like he was in a little bit of trouble, he threw a couple of those secondary pitches to get them out front and got them out.”

Smith said the only other time in his career he had such good feel for his slider was his freshman year in Omaha, but he has worked hard on his strength and conditioning to also improve his fastball velocity, which he held deep into this outing, still sitting at 94-96 in his final inning of work. He also has worked hard on fine-tuning his command, and Friday he showed a combination of elite stuff and elite command that we’ve seen from only a handful of college pitchers over the last two decades — from guys with last names like Strasburg and Skenes. Like those two college baseball legends, Smith looked like a No. 1 overall draft pick on Friday night. There’s a long way to go before draft day, but this outing provided serious validation that all the hype Smith generated during his tour de force fall was warranted. And the hordes of scouts assembled at Globe Life surely took notice.

So did the rowdy Arkansas faithful, who recognized that they were watching greatness. For his part, Smith relished the experience.

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