It’s never been harder to pitch in college baseball than it is right now. In 2024, scoring and home run numbers even exceeded the height of the Gorilla Ball era in the 1990s, and pitching coaches around the country found themselves desperately trying to figure out how to cobble together 27 outs on a nightly basis.
So in this super-charged offensive era, Matt Hobbs stands out for the job he did constructing and guiding the pitching staff at Arkansas. Under Hobbs’ leadership, the Hogs ranked fifth in the nation with a 3.87 ERA and led and a 3.11 K:BB ratio, while leading Division I with 12.1 strikeouts per nine innings. In six years as the Hogs’ pitching coach, Hobbs has played a critical role in elevating the program’s recruiting and development efforts on the mound, turning Arkansas into one of college baseball’s premier destinations for top arms. As a result of his work, Hobbs is the 2024 D1Baseball Assistant Coach of the Year, presented by PitchCom.
“First off, he’s very, very good evaluator of talent and potential talent. I feel like his work ethic is just second to none,” Arkansas head coach Dave Van Horn said of Hobbs. “And he really cares about the players, the kids and their development. That was one thing we discussed when I was talking with him, trying to get him to come here, was talking about development. That, I think, is one reason he came is because I was all about it: kids need to get better. If you come in here, kids will get better and then more kids are gonna want to come. We’re trying to bring in good pitchers and make them better, and kids will want to come here if they see that pitchers that are here and in the program and gone through the program continue to develop and get better.
“He’s just really good when it comes to the job description: recruiting, development, work ethic. Then once the kids get here, being able to coach them up and not really change them but tweak them, show them how to get better — he’s just a good teacher. Just the way you talk to kids, it’s huge. And he talks to them the right way.”
If you spend an hour around Baum-Walker Stadium on a practice day, it’s obvious how much easy rapport Hobbs has with his pitchers. They share jokes together, but when it’s time to get down to business, they get after it. Hobbs is able to balance friendliness and discipline in a masterful way, like most great coaches.
“As far as clubhouse presence around the guys, the guys gravitate toward him,” Van Horn said. “We try to run our program almost professionally. The older guys, they show the younger guys how to do things. We’re not all about scaring people or threatening. We want it to be fun but we want it to be serious, and we’re trying to get guys ready to succeed in the minor leagues and the major leagues after that. But at the same time, we’re loose around our guys. I think our players really like being around Coach Hobbs. He’s a workout fanatic. He’s in his early 40s and physically he looks like he’s about 22. He works out a little in the morning, a little midday and a little at night, he works out three times a day, and I’m telling you, it’s like seven days a week. Players see that and I think are impressed with that. He’s a fun-loving guy, a joke or two, friendly, but he can get after you a little bit if he needs to. It’s a fine line there, you want players to like you, respect you, and I think he’s got that.”
Every Arkansas pitcher has his own unique individual practice and development plan, and Hobbs knows how to offer feedback in a way that comes across clearly. That’s not always easy in this age of information overload, and Arkansas has all of the latest and greatest technology available to players in its state of the art pitching lab. The key for Hobbs and his analytics team is to distill advanced concepts into digestible action items for pitchers. A couple years ago in the fall, I spent some time with Hobbs in his office, watching him whiz around his computer accessing mind-blowing data about biomechanics and pitch metrics for individual pitchers. It was a lot to take in — but I walked away from the session feeling like a had a better grasp on complex concepts that had been unfamiliar to me beforehand. And I’ve seen Hobbs explain advanced concepts to young pitchers in a very clear way.
“We’re so up to date and over the top with technology. That was another thing, when we brought him here to coach, we were just starting to design our indoor facility — you can call it our pitching lab, whatever. He liked the fact that we were going to have that and he would have the opportunity to have a hand in designing it, to bring in the technology to work with different guys. We told him we’ve got it in the budget for this process and it will be here for you to use. I’ve watched him design it, put the cameras in where he needs it, the force mound, he has all this technology but he knows how to use it. He knows how to stay on top of what’s coming down the road and the things that we need to continue what we’ve been doing.
“I think he has a good feel for it and he knows how to present it. The kids, they don’t seem to struggle with it, they know what they need to do, and they get what’s being evaluated, so to speak. And they’re told how they can improve it, whether it’s some things on their own or while they’re being coached or doing drill work. Then they’ve got to take it to the field. We don’t want a robot on the mound, still got to hold runners and field their position and all those things.”
Van Horn first became aware of Hobbs when DVH was coaching at Nebraska and Hobbs was pitching at Missouri. When longtime Arkansas pitching coach Dave Jorn was approaching retirement, Van Horn started asking around for names of potential replacements, and Hobbs’ name kept coming up. By that point, Hobbs had already built an impressive track record developing talent and building winning staffs at Wake Forest, Missouri, San Francisco and UC San Diego. The Hogs wound up hiring Wes Johnson to replace Jorn, but when Johnson left in 2017 to become the Minnesota Twins’ pitching coach, Van Horn asked Johnson about potential replacements.
“So long story short, I brought some more names up, and when I brought up Matt, he almost made it sound like that was the guy you should go after first, then go from there,” Van Horn said. “When I brought Matt in, I knew he was very intelligent, just wanted to get to know him.”
Now, after six years of building super-talented staffs that get results in the SEC, Hobbs is no longer a rising star in the coaching ranks; he’s a well-established shining star. And the Hogs know they are lucky to have him.
“Matt could be a head coach right now,” Van Horn said. “Matt’s had many opportunities to take head coaching jobs at the Division I level, and has also had the opportunity to go straight to the big leagues as a pitching coach, and I know that for a fact. We’ve kept him here, he loves Northwest Arkansas, he loves living here, and I hope he loves working for me.”
