The relevance of Sunday's 7-4 win at top-ranked LSU's Alex Box Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana may be lost on some in the wake of another weekend series loss for Dave Van Horn's No. 8 Arkansas Razorbacks. But after dropping the team's fourth SEC series in the last five tries with a 5-4 extra-innings, late-night dog fight on Friday and falling 13-3 on Saturday, Van Horn made a move in his lineup that helped keep his team within striking distance of a Southeastern Conference regular season title going into this weekend's regular season final series against No. 17-ranked Tennessee.
That move was elevating sophomore catcher Ryder Helfrick from eighth in the batting order to fifth, and Helfrick — as he had done all weekend — delivered at the plate with another multiple-hit outing to earn his second Razorbacker of the week award this season.
Ryder Helfrick earns second Razorbacker of the week honor
"I was thinking about it just watching him at bat. This weekend I just thought he was on it — laying off borderline pitches and hitting balls hard," Van Horn said of the Discovery Bay California native. "I usually write the line up down on a separate piece of paper. I’ll look at it a little bit and then I changed it before I transferred it over to the big lineup sheet.
"It ended up working out. I moved him up (three) spots from eight to five and he got couple of big hits for us. He drove in a couple of runs. He got a couple of doubles and a couple of walks and he’s swinging it good."
Helfrick finished the weekend going six-of-10 at the plate with a pair of walks and one run batted in. That one RBI was a clutch double in Sunday's game-three series finale which drove in shortstop Wehiwa Aloy to tie the game and set up Cam Kozeal's two-RBI single that put Arkansas ahead 4-2.
Helfrick was also solid on the plate on Saturday — going two for three with a double. In the rain-delayed opener, he finished two of four with a pair of walks.
On the season, Helfrick is batting .314 with 10 doubles, eight home runs and 23 RBI's. He also has a .993 fielding percentage behind the plate.
Helfrick and the Hogs will next take the field to close out the 2025 regular season when they host the Volunteers at Baum Walker Stadium beginning Thursday at 7 p.m. cst. First-place Texas will close out the regular season against arch-rival Oklahoma at 6:30 p.m. in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
"The standings are what they are. We can only control what we do," Van Horn said. "(Sunday) all we could do is win one game. Trying to catch Texas and finish in the top four and trying to win SEC games on the road against a top 10 team helps your RPI. I’m sure our strength of schedule moved up as well, so it was a really big game here."