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Gibler hoping leap forward heading into sophmore season for Arkansas

Originally posted on Arkansas Razorbacks on SI
By Daniel Shi | Last updated Jul 30, 2025 1:35 PM ET

Arkansas is looking for new faces to carry them through the 2026 season in the rotation.

The Razorbacks had 67% of its rotation selected in the first round of the MLB Draft. Gage Wood and Zach Root are both gone, the first time that two pitchers were selected in the first round of the same year for the Razorbacks.

Landon Beidelschies was also selected in the sixth round by the Atlanta Braves.

That opens up three massive voids for coach Dave Van Horn to fill in the weekend rotation. One figures to be filled by Gabe Gaeckle, who hopes that his second attempt at transitioning to the rotation goes better than in 2025. Gaeckle pitched to a 6.69 ERA in the rotation before being removed midway through the season.

Behind Gaeckle, there is a great deal of uncertainty on how the rest of the rotation shakes out. The preliminary plan seems to be to give now sophomore lefty Cole Gibler every chance to become a weekend starter.

Gibler's lofty goal when committing to Arkansas was to be better than Hagen Smith. In order to do that, he's going to have to transition to being a dominant wieekend starter.

In his freshman season, Gibler put up Smith-esque numbers striking out 57 in 29 1/3 innings for a K/9 of 17.48, which beats Smith's NCAA record 17.25 in his historic 2024 season in which he struck out a program record 161 in 84 innings.

Even though Gibler fell well short of the 50 minimum innings required to officially take the title away from Smith, he used his fastball and slider to great effect, pitching to a 3.99 ERA. He entered the final game of the season hving not allowed a run in 10 innings (five appearances) before poor defense behind Gibler ended the Hogs' season.

Over the 2025 summer circuit, Gibler has continued to turn heads and make massive strides. Gibler was just one of 26 players selected to play for the 2025 Collegiate National Team, which traveled to Japan for a five-game series against the best Japanese college baseball players.

"Gibler went out and just continued to get better this summer," Van Horn said. "[He] really impressed a lot of people. He was supposed to play on the JV so-to-speak of the USA Baseball team and got to play on the varsity and travel to Japan. That was a great experience for him and his confidence. Right after the trip, he came back and he’s been training here."

Gibler was once again used in a relief role in Japan on a crowded Team USA roster. For Gibler to make the jump in to starter, he'll have to mix in a changeup to go with his fastball and slider.

"We’re trying to really develop a third pitch," Van Horn said. "He had a great slider and outstanding fastball. Now just work on the changeup. That’s what’s been going on a little bit. If you have three pitches, it’s a lot easier to be a starter if you have three than two. If you’re a starter with two, you must be incredibly good."

Van Horn was open with the fact that the Hogs struck out on the very top tier of available transfer pitchers. The likes of Joey Volchko opted to go to SEC rivals such as Georgia. Gerogia's head coach is former Arkansas pitching coach Wes Johnson. That puts more pressure on internal options like Gibler to pan out.

"There's some really good players out there," Van Horn said. "Maybe not as many of those superstar guys that had really good numbers where they were pitching-wise. We didn't get some of those guys. Other teams did, but we feel good about the guys we got."

The Hogs will tentatively to start official fall ball on on September 3, just over a month away.