Series Preview: No. 2 Texas A&M at Arkansas

Who: Arkansas Razorbacks (25-16, 6-12 SEC)

Where: Baum Stadium – Fayetteville, Ark.

When:  Friday 6:30 pm CT (SEC Network+)
             Saturday 2:00 pm CT (ESPN2)
             Sunday 1:00 pm CT (ESPNU)

Pitching matchups

• Friday: Brigham Hill (RHP, 5-0, 1.74) vs. Dominic Taccolini (RHP, 4-2, 4.50)
• Saturday: Jace Vines (RHP, 6-1, 4.05) vs. Zach Jackson (RHP, 3-4, 4.12)
• Sunday: Kyle Simonds (RHP, 6-1, 2.96) vs. TBA
  

Arkansas players to watch

Coach Dave Van Horn and his Razorbacks have struggled in SEC play, currently sitting in seventh place in the West division with a 6-12 record. The pitching staff has been the downfall of the Hogs, ranked last in the league with a team ERA of 4.58. However, after slogging through an eight-game SEC losing streak in mid-April, the team has rebounded to win three of its last four games — two at No. 12 Kentucky last weekend and one against No. 18 Oklahoma State on Tuesday.

Despite the major struggles on the mound, the starting pitching was superb against Kentucky.  Friday night starter Dominic Taccolini threw 10 innings of five-hit baseball to collect the rare extra-inning complete game shut-out. On Saturday, recently converted closer Zach Jackson blanked the Wildcats for seven strong innings in a 2-0 nailbiter. Aggie fans have to be wondering if they will get the rejuvenated Friday and Saturday starters, or the weekend pair with bloated season ERAs over 4.00.

The Razorbacks have no obvious answer for the Sunday starter on the mound. Van Horn has not announced a starter for the Sunday finale.

The bullpen has been a struggle, especially now that Jackson has moved into the starting rotation. If the Aggies can do some damage in the early innings and force Van Horn to go to his bullpen quickly, that bodes very well for A&M this weekend.  

The Razorbacks do have some dangerous hitters. Yet, overall, Arkansas' offense ranks ninth in the SEC with a .281 team batting average. In fact, the Hogs fall near the middle of the league in most offensive categories with one exception: they're tied with the Aggies for the most home runs in the SEC at 40.

Individually, four hitters have launched five or more long balls, led by Michael Bernal with eight and Luke Bonfield with seven. Bonfield is also second on the team with a .336 batting average but is tops on the squad with a .582 slugging percentage. Carson Shaddy is the leading hitter with a .344 batting average. The Razorback lineup has four batters hitting over .300, so the offense is dangerous near the top of the order, but the depth in the lineup doesn't quite match conference offensive leaders like Mississippi State, Auburn and Texas A&M.      

Texas A&M players to watch

It's business as usual for the most part for an experienced, veteran team that has been consistently in the top five of most national polls over the last two months.

Boomer White continues to show he's one of the best, if not the best, pure hitters in the SEC, hitting a remarkable .437 for the season and over .500 in conference play. Hunter Melton in he four-hole still leads the league in slugging percentage (.642) and RBI (54) while ranking fourth in batting average (.377). Melton has had a nice career at Texas A&M, but nobody saw this elite offensive firepower heading into the 2016 season.

The top four in the batting order has been a given all season, but what made the Aggie offense so potent during the run against Georgia and Mississippi State was the emergence of guys like Joel Davis and Austin Homan in the bottom half of the order.

Davis has cooled off since the MSU sweep and has seen his average drop approximately 40 points over the last five games. Against a hit-and-miss Arkansas starting rotation and a piecemeal bullpen, Davis and scuffling Ryne Birk have the opportunity to break out of their mini-slumps and add much-needed production from the lower half of the order.

On the mound, Brigham Hill has quietly moved to the top of the SEC in ERA at 1.74. He's not an imposing physical figure on the mound and he doesn't have jaw-dropping velocity or a nasty curveball, but he works both sides of the plate and has enough zip on the ball to keep hitters honest and on their heals. He's become the most consistent pitcher on the Texas A&M staff.

Jace Vines seems to do just enough to win ball games, but does give up his share of runs with a 4.05 ERA. Rarely do you see a starting pitcher allow more hits than innings pitched and sport a sparking 6-1 record, but Vines has managed to do it this season. He seems to do just enough to keep his team in the game.

With the up-and-down performance of opposing Saturday starter Zach Jackson, what it could take for Vines to earn his seventh win of the season is anyone's guess.

For this pitching staff to be effective throughout a weekend series, two of Mark Ecker, Andrew Vinson and Ryan Hendrix must be effective. In recent weeks Ecker and Vinson have been near perfect. Ecker has been more comfortable throwing breaking pitches and off-speed, and that has made his mid-90's fastball look that much faster to hitters. He has allowed just one earned run in 20-plus innings of work in 2016 for a stingy 0.44 ERA.

Vinson looked as sharp as I've ever seen him in an Aggie uniform in a couple of high-pressure outings against Alabama last weekend. Despite a couple of shaky outings earlier in the year while he was battling a nagging injury, Vinson leads the staff in opposing bating average (.169).

What's at stake this weekend...

The purpose for the Texas A&M baseball team is two-fold this weekend in Fayetteville.

First, the Aggies are defending their first place position in the West division and looking to win a road series against the sixth-place Razorbacks that, until this past week, had been struggling mightily. The Aggies would like to maintain their two-game lead against a lower-division opponent, especially with tough series on the horizon against Vanderbilt and league-leading South Carolina on the road. 

Secondly, the Aggies are clearly a national top-eight seed and are looking at home field advantage throughout regionals, but that could all change this weekend with a poor showing and a series loss against a Razorback team with an RPI in the 80s. A national seed simply can't afford to have a series loss to a low-RPI team on its resume.

Thus, the pressure is definitely on the Aggies this weekend. Either sweep or win two games to claim the series, and Texas A&M is still on-course for that coveted home field advantage throughout the postseason that has eluded this program since 1999. Lose the series and the Aggies will be forced to rebound with series wins over two top teams in the SEC and the nation.  Certainly not an impossible task, but a difficult one.

By far the easiest path is to take care of business against a struggling Arkansas squad and leave yourself a little breathing room against two top teams the following two weekends.

Bottom line, the Aggies have done well so far in the SEC meat grinder, sitting at a 12-6 conference record. As a result, the team has been rewarded with a No. 2 ranking and a No. 4 RPI rating. This is just another weekend in the best baseball conference in the country.

Take care of business and the business will take care of itself. It's that simple.