baseball clinch series win over Alabama

[aubiefifty 17,100]

al.com

Auburn baseball survies near meltdown to clinch series win over Alabama

Published: May. 18, 2024, 6:40 a.m.

5–7 minutes

AUBURN, AL - MAY 17 - Auburn Infielder Ty Mauldin (51) during the game between the Auburn Tigers and the Alabama Crimson Tide at Plainsman Park in Auburn, AL on Friday, May 17, 2024. Photo by David Gray/Auburn TigersDavid Gray/Auburn Tigers

Auburn scored 12 runs, had its manager ejected in the third inning and got a fourth straight strong start from Chase Allsup, and that all sharply faded to irrelevancy when a 7th inning double from Alabama’s William Hamiter fell into right field.

Auburn led by 10 then. It was one strike away from sealing a run-rule, series-clinching victory over its archrival. What followed was a near complete meltdown which nearly doomed Auburn to a devastating and embarrassing loss.

Until relief pitcher Hayden Murphy, at Auburn’s last gasp, saved the close call with calamity.

The scoreboard will show Auburn winning 12-11 over Alabama on Friday night. The schedule will show Auburn clinched a series win over Alabama, taking the first two of a three-game set — and a second straight SEC series win. The record books will show a fifth series win over Alabama in the last six years, excluding the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. The season will show Auburn clinching a winning record and a perfect 4-0 stretch after it was mathematically eliminated last week.

Auburn is now 27-25 overall and 8-21 in SEC play — ensuring Auburn can do no worse than tie its program record for conference losses.

But Friday’s box score and videos instead tell a story of nerves, anxiety and the verge of heartbreak.

That box score shows Auburn scoring six runs in the fourth inning and six more in the fifth. Auburn had 20 plate appearances across the two innings, seven extra-base hits, two home runs and five different hitters with RBIs. Head coach Butch Thompson watched part of the rally with fans from the top of the parking deck overlooking Plainsman Park after he was ejected for arguing balls and strikes in the third inning.

Cade Belyeu hit a solo home run in the fifth inning that put up Auburn up 12-2. Asked after the game, Belyeu certainly did not think that blast was going to end up as Auburn’s most crucial swing of the game.

Associate head coach Karl Nonemaker — who served in charge after Thompson’s ejection — gave Allsup the chance to finish a seven-inning complete game. It backfired.

Allsup got two quick outs in the seventh, then allowed Alabama’s Ian Petrutz to reach base as an otherwise routine groundball bounced off Cooper Weiss’ glove. He’d shifted to the other side of the infield from his normal shortstop spot in Auburn’s defensive alignment.

The next batter hit a single. Hamiter, the following batter who got down to his last strike, ripped a two-out, two-run double to right eliminating the mercy rule chance. Auburn then took out Allsup for relief pitcher John Armstrong. The first batter Armstrong faced hit a two-run home run. Armstrong hit the next batter with a pitch and then walked the following batter before he was taken out of the game.

A 12-2 lead and a chance for an emphatic win was gone. An unreliable bullpen just had six extra and unnecessary outs thrust upon itself.

Nonemaker said the momentum massively shifted. He was right. It became Auburn needing to hang on.

An Auburn bullpen that has struggled mightily throughout the SEC season was doing it again. Alabama added four more runs in the eighth inning and scored another in the ninth. Alabama got as close as the tying run on third base in the ninth and the go-ahead run on second base.

It was then that finally, mercifully, Auburn ended its own self-imposed implosion. Murphy struck out Crimson Tide catcher Mac Guscette to seal the win.

“It didn’t go great,” Nonemaker said. “But he was able to make a big pitch and finish it.”

Auburn’s bullpen hit five batters with a pitch in the seventh inning or later. One of those hit-by-pitch situations drove in a run with the bases loaded. Alabama also scored one of its runs in the comeback via a wild pitch.

Auburn was clearly thankful to get a win it may not have deserved. A win so encapsulating of the way this disappointing season has gone save for the fact that Auburn ended up with more runs than its opponent in this case.

Auburn’s season will be over after Saturday’s final game of the series against Alabama. It will miss the postseason entirely for the first time since 2016, Thompson’s first year at Auburn. Thompson has said Auburn has played its best baseball now with nothing to play for, the weight of a season turned desperate lifted off the team. But this night brought all that anxiety back.

It was much simpler for Auburn coaches and players to laugh about this after the game. It will live at Auburn is a story to recall a crazy game, and not the embarrassment it nearly was.

Alabama is now 32-20 and needs to avoid being swept by the SEC’s last-place team as its postseason hopes possibly tickle near the bubble.

The first pitch for Saturday is set for 5 p.m.

Matt Cohen covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @Matt_Cohen_ or email him at mcohen@al.com

[aubiefifty 17,100]

al.com

Cade Belyeu wasn’t meant to play this much. But Auburn found its next star.

Published: May. 17, 2024, 6:31 a.m.

5–6 minutes

AUBURN, AL - MAY 16 - The Auburn Baseball Team during the game between the Auburn Tigers and the Alabama Crimson Tide at Plainsman Park in Auburn, AL on Thursday, May 16, 2024. Photo by David Gray/Auburn TigersDavid Gray/Auburn Tigers

The freshman who wasn’t supposed to be in the lineup at all this late, let alone a spot like this for his hometown college, was being mobbed by his more experienced teammates who thrust a celebratory fire rescue helmet on his head. He’d just clobbered a low pitch 437 feet over the student section in right-center field. It was the bottom of the 8th inning, a solo home run that gave Auburn a crucial and clutch insurance run in a soon-to-be 4-2 win over Alabama on Thursday night.

But why he was there — in the final week of the SEC season in the late innings of a close, series-opening game — is twofold. It’s part a vastly disappointing Auburn season. And it’s part that as the year got its most desperate, Cade Belyeu may give Auburn its best chance to win.

A little more than 24 hours before the first pitch in the season finale series against Alabama, Auburn head coach Butch Thompson stood in Plainsman Park’s Hall of Fame Club and said he wanted to balance a desire to beat the school’s archrival, but find time to get young players on the field for an already mathematically eliminated Auburn.

Or maybe he could do both at the same time, he said.

“That’s what a head coach should do,” Thompson said Wednesday. “These guys should be in this moment. But I want to make it clear, I just answered a question about the rivalry, we’re doing everything we can to have success and win this series. But I do believe that some of our younger players have earned the right and give us the chance to be successful in this series as well.”

He was talking about Auburn native Cade Belyeu.

Thompson has answered questions throughout this year on a season gone awry. Auburn is now 26-25 overall and 7-21 in the SEC after Thursday’s win over Alabama. Thompson has tried to find answers. So Belyeu established himself as a crucial part of the lineup in this largely and mostly otherwise forgettable year.

Belyeu has now started 24 games. He’s playing in Auburn’s last 17 consecutive games including Thursday and in 36 games total. His 87 at-bats are eighth-most on the team and by far the most among freshmen.

It’s part out of necessity due to injuries. Part because he earned it. And now he’s an everyday mainstay.

“He looks more comfortable in the box to me,” Auburn junior infielder Deric Fabian said after Thursday’s game. “That’s kind of what hitting is, is being comfortable in the box. So, extremely proud of him and excited for his future.”

He’s hit a home run in four of the last five games including the three in a row. Of those four home runs, two have been in the 8th or 9th inning in games with a two-or-fewer run margin at the time of his swing. Not just home runs, but important ones, too.

He now has seven home runs total out of 24 total hits. That’s just under 30% of his swings turning into a home run.

He also had five doubles and a triple. Of his 24 hits, more than half are extra base hits. His .598 slugging percentage is third on the team this season. His on-base percentage is second-best on the team among those with more than 40 at-bats.

“Good for him,” Thompson said. “I think it’s good for Auburn. I think it’s good for the future. Didn’t think he’d get this many opportunities in a normal world. But he has. And I have to keep mentioning his name cause his home runs and are coming on the weekends. His home runs are coming in big moments.”

Belyeu doesn’t need to be the star. Sophomore catcher/outfielder Ike Irish serves that role for now.

But if Thompson described the end of this season as about finding momentum to take into the offseason where changes are sure to come, then Belyeu is a foundational piece among the young group on this team to build around.

There are several pitching questions on this roster going forward. But with a freshman emergence from a player like Belyeu, Thompson has one less long-term concern. As Thompson said, Belyeu isn’t playing because Auburn wants him to see early at-bats in games with nothing to play for. He’s playing because Auburn needs him now.

“Cade Belyeu has really come to the forefront as the best example that I probably have today of doing that,” Thompson said Wednesday. “But we are still trying to win. And now I believe that Cade Belyeu — with the lineup that we’ve settled from all the challenges and injuries, etc. — he is in the lineup because I think it gives us the best chance to win.”

Matt Cohen covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @Matt_Cohen_ or email him at mcohen@al.com

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