re: **OFFICIAL 2022 ARKANSAS RAZORBACK BASEBALL SEASON THREAD - 3rd Place CWS**

Does Zimmerman truly believe that he, himself is hated? Not sure why he would think that, but I might have missed something. I'm sure that Vitello is hated by many though.

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Our ace went down before the season

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Also, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't we lose our Ace at the beginning of last season and then our #1 right at postseason?

The pitching hasn't really been the problem.

People can piss on Tony all they want but truth is he took a cellar dweller with a park smaller than our softball field and built them into a title contender. Nobody respected Tennessee and he took on that us against the world mentality, maybe a little to much at time.

But we’d all admit we’d take that smash baseball that blows everybody out over this uninspired crap we’ve seen this year, and if you don’t I’ll straight up call you a liar.

Which end of day, is the name of the game now.

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But we’d all admit we’d take that smash baseball that blows everybody out over this uninspired crap we’ve seen this year, and if you don’t I’ll straight up call you a liar.

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I agree. With Pallette we win the west by likely 2-4 games but still missing that "it factor" like Tennessee has.

This year? Or under Thompson?

I have a lot more faith in Nate than anyone else on staff. But he's earned that.

We just found ways to win last year. This year, if we are down, you can just about put a mark in the L column. We found ways to get it done last year. This year, we are just a soft team.

Interesting thread on Thompson...LINK

-Despite Arkansas' immense success in 2021, not a single full time player had a BA over .300.
-In both 2021 and 2022, not a single full time player has an OPS over 1.000

Considering our talent and the slash lines of other elite programs, these are very unimpressive numbers.

-Preseason, Bob Moore/Cayden Wallace were All-Americans and projected 1st round picks.
-Brady Slavens was All-SEC.
-Peyton Stovall was a freshman All-American.
-None appeared on these lists after the season
-Moore's OPS dropped from .942 in 2021 to just .806 this year

The same trend can be seen in previous years.

-Casey Martin hit .345 as a freshman. As a sophomore that dropped to .286 with an increased K rate
-Matt Goodheart hit .345 as a freshman with a .961 OPS. As a senior those had dropped to .264 and .867, respectively.

-In 2017, Grant Koch hit .310 and was named to the All-SEC first team. After Thompson's arrival in 2018, that number dropped to .245

These are pretty damning examples over a sample size of just four full seasons.

Much of this likely stems from Thompson's new-age focus on exit velocity and launch angle, a "three true outcome" strategy that chases home runs to try and maximize run output.

As a consequence of this, Razorback hitters have a higher K rate and hit for a lower average.

With RISP, Arkansas has struggled with strikeouts swinging for the fences when a simple base hit will do the job.

This results in long dry spells for the offense, as seen in the 2021 Super Regional and at many points throughout this season.

There is a false dichotomy being drawn between hitting for average and hitting for power. Plenty of other ball clubs (Tennessee, for example) do both of these well.

We rank 169th in the country in team BA, and for what? Despite the focus on power, we rank just 62nd in slugging %

With the immense amount of talent Arkansas brings in every year, there's no excuse for the Hogs to be in the bottom half of the conference in most offensive statistics.

This team was preseason #2 nationally, and might not even host a regional. That is an underperformance.

The consequences of HR-chasing can also be seen in Arkansas' performances in Omaha. TD Ameritrade is notoriously a pitchers' park where HRs are hard to come by. This is a big issue for a program chasing a national championship.

This can be seen in Game 3 of the 2018 CWS Finals, where Arkansas' offense was held to just 2 hits and struck out 10 times in a complete game shutout by OSU pitcher Kevin Abel.

The Hogs were also shutout in their first game of the 2019 CWS, where they went 0-2.

In conclusion, the underperformance of Arkansas' offense as well as the lack of development and even regression of talented hitters is an indictment of our hitting coach and cause for a change. There are plenty of other coaches out there who can get better results for us.

Yeah that 2021 team was the definition of new age power ball. We won't see that 109 record broke for a long time.


That being said if you lose your power then obviously going to struggle when you're built for the long ball and new age baseball. No one cares about BA or K's just hit for power and decent enough elsewhere.

Compared to the 2021 team there is a .007 OBP difference, negligible that we're still getting on base at the same rate.

The 2021 team struck out 567 times versus this years team with 421. That is a massive reduction in K's.

Maybe it's just a weird year and guys aren't clutch. Always a scapegoat though.

I know.