A common image for Auburn baseball of the modern era. (Photo Credit OA News.)
It's April Fool's Day which I'm pretty sure isn't a real holiday or anything, I guess just made up to play awesome pranks on your stupid friends. But you can do that all year.
Auburn baseball is nearing the halfway point of the season, and guess what, it's been another up and down year for the Tigers. Currently their record sits at 17-8, 4-2 in the SEC. Last night they had a chance to boost that win total against a Trojan squad that entered with just a 12-11 record.
After a series loss to South Carolina last weekend and another big series looming at Alabama this weekend, this game actually may have been bigger than it seemed for John Pawlowski's team. And like Auburn baseball has done for the past 7 years, they underwhelmed. Big time.
An error by Dan Gamache allowed the last two runs to score and let Troy take a 5-4 lead that would hold up in the end. Troy's final three runs were all unearned. What is that???
Granted I haven't been to a ton of Auburn baseball games this year, but I just don't know if Gamache is going to get it done at 3rd base. In the first game of the USC series, I saw him boot a couple of key balls on plays that an infielder should be making.
Auburn had lowered it's ERA after a pretty decent pitching performance this past weekend, but still ranked 9th in the SEC heading into last night. They also rank 1st in batting average, HR's, and total bases.
This year's team appears to be shaping up very much like last year's. Decent start, hot hitting throughout, but suffers a late slide due to shaky defense and a terrible bullpen.
I don't know what they can do this year, besides try to continue to build depth and get a number of quality arms into the pitching rotation. For someone who's paid as much attention to this baseball program as I have since I started at Auburn in 2004, this is incredibly frustrating.
We'll see how things shake out this weekend in Tuscaloosa and returning home the next weekend to face LSU in Auburn. A series win in both of these matchups would be monumental for this team. Here's hoping.
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