Wells pays dearly for couple of mistakes

BY CHRIS COCOLES

Posted on Friday, May 16, 2008

URL: http://www.wholehogsports.com/adg/225875/

STARKVILLE, Miss. — Justin Wells doesn’t get too caught up in his statistics.

“I look at whether we won or lost. That’s all I care about,” Wells said. “If I give up 10 runs and we win 11-10, I’m happy. If we lost 1-0, I’ll be pretty upset by my performance.”

We l l s gave the Razorbacks 1 7 / 3 innings with only 7 hits and 6 earned runs alllowed Thursday night at Dudy Noble Field. He struck out nine Mississippi State batters and walked only two.

But a few bad pitches he desperately wished he could have back wrecked it for the junior right-hander in a 6-5 loss to the Bulldogs.

Wells, who emerged from a seldom-used reliever to one of the Razorbacks’ most mentally tough starting pitchers, kept his team close but threw two firstpitch fastballs for home runs, the most damaging the one that Bulldogs catcher Ryan Duffy crushed over the fence in center field in the bottom of the seventh that won the game.

“I noticed in the stats that Wells has given up some home runs [14 entering the game ],” Bulldogs Coach Ron Polk said. “The whole thing with Wells is you have to jump on the fastball early. If he gets ahead, he has a weapon in that [split-fingered fastball ].”

Wells also was spotted a 3-0 lead in the top of the second but was again taken over the wall in center by Russ Sneed on the first pitch in the bottom of the inning.

“It was a fastball low and away and he was sitting on it,” Wells said of Duffy’s home run, a pitch he concluded was far better than the fastball down the middle Sneed hit out. “He made a good swing.”

In this case, Wells called it bad timing since Duffy’s home run came at such a critical moment in a critical game for Arkansas.

“It was just [about ] keeping the ball down. It’s not that I didn’t have my best stuff. I just didn’t execute a couple of times,” Wells said. “When I got hit is when I was up in the in the zone.”

Arkansas Coach Dave Van Horn also noticed Wells not finishing off hitters when he was ahead in the count. Tyler Moore smoked a 1-2 pitch for a two-run double in the Bulldogs’ three-run fourth.

“Take away a couple pitches and it’s a different game, but that’s the way the game works,” Van Horn said. “He battled good. He just made some mistakes and, when he did, they took advantage.”

Still, Wells, now 3-2 with a 6. 07 ERA, continued his trend of throwing deep into games. In his past nine SEC outings, he’s gotten through at least five innings and pitched into the seventh five times.

That durability meant little for Wells given the ultimate result Thursday night.

“That about sums it up,” he said. “I’m pretty disappointed we lost and in my performance, but we still have two [games ] left.”