Van Horn hoping new fall ball format can set Razorbacks up for success

Originally posted on Arkansas Razorbacks on SI
By Daniel Shi | Last updated Sep 2, 2025 5:30 PM ET

Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn altered the way his team ran fall practice in 2024, they started a week early and ended early compared to 2023.

The team also had shorter scrimmages and played less intrasquad games. The result was the team's first run to the College World Series in three seasons and a trip to the national semifinal.

The Razorbacks will do the same again in 2025, starting practice this week, before finishing the fall schedule with two exhibition games against Arkansas-Little Rock and Dallas Baptist Oct. 10-11.

Van Horn will prioritize skill work and keeping his players fresh for the season. There will be a new wrinkle in 2025. In previous years, Arkansas played one continuous scrimmage, ranging between 5-7 innings, depending on how many pitchers needed to throw that day.

Zach Root, Gage Wood and Landon Beidelschies, all stalwarts of the 2024 rotation, graduated to pro ball, leaving Arkansas looking for at least three new weekend starters and more options for midweek games.

Van Horn hinted that the team might play a three-inning scrimmage before a short intermission and starting a second scrimmage to artificially more starting opportunities for all his new pitchers.

"We want kids to start," Van Horn said. "We want them to feel like they're starting, instead of just running them in."

Arkansas brought in three new pitchers from the transfer portal, Ethan McElvain from Vanderbilt, Jackson Kircher from Oklahoma and James DeCremer from Oregon State. Van Horn listed most of the pitchers on his roster as a potential starting option at least to begin fall camp.

"We're trying to build kids up," Van Horn said. "They might only throw one inning a piece, so the scrimmages are going to be shorter, and we might even design them where we have a three-inning scrimmage, we take a 10-minute break, and then we start another one, whether it's three innings, two innings, at least for the first couple of weekends."

The only returner, Gabe Gaeckle, who started the season as the Friday starter before finishing the year in the bullpen will not pitch in the fall for Arkansas.

Gaeckle pitched for Team USA in Japan over the summer. Similar to how Arkansas handled former ace Hagen Smith after also pitched for the national team in 2023, Van Horn wants to avoid as many potential arms getting sore in games that don't matter for the scoreboard.

Smith threw just one inning in the fall of 2023 and struck out all three hitters he faced.

"This fall we’re going to do the same with Gaeckle [as Smith]," Van Horn said. "{We're] just let him not even throw. Not even throw to our team. We just feel like we’ve got a lot of decisions to make. We’ve got to try to develop some guys and maybe starters, let them come out of the blocks like they are starting the game and get the feel for that."

The first schedule is scheduled for Friday and is free and open to the public.