Auburn (16-9, 1-6) opened their series at Texas A&M (23-3, 4-3) with a high-scoring, back-and-forth affair. The action-packed game would take all nine innings to decide. Auburn’s first crack at an upset in the weekend series fell just short however, but by no means a bad performance from the Tiger who will head into their next matchup with the bats hot and primed for another high-scoring matchup.
The standout player in this game not only for the Tigers but in the entire game was Ike Irish who single-handedly refused to let Auburn fall out of striking distance in this one. The Tiger’s catcher had three hits in four at-bats coming around to score after all three hits. He also had a solo home run in the seventh that cut the A&M lead to two.
It was a bit of a pitch-by-committee Thursday evening in College Station after McBride left when he faced just 17 batters over his three innings of work where he six runs all earned on six hits. He walked two and struck out three in the uncharacteristic outing. Carlson, Bauman, and Watts picked up the remaining five innings of work between the three of them and would do a good job containing the tough-to-navigate Aggies lineup allowing just three more runs.
Winning a shootout against Texas A&M was never going to be an easy task; they rank near the top in the SEC in almost every offensive category behind the astounding performance from transfer right fielder Braden Montgomery, who leads the SEC in RBIs. Montgomery added two to his total Thursday with a first-inning two-run home run that gave the Aggies a lead they would not relinquish.
Chris Stanfield supplemented the Auburn offense with a two-of-four night tallying a double in the match, he also reached on a fielder's choice that led to an Auburn score in the sixth. Mason Maners had a three-run home run in the third that at the time tied the game before a three-run frame in the bottom half of the fourth.
Texas A&M had five opportunities at the plate with a runner on third and less than two outs and they converted in all five at bats. Auburn by comparison was one of three tries in that scenario but had four two-out RBIs indicating a lot of their production came late in innings and not leaving margin for error to keep the line moving starting these scoring spurts with two outs, a major disadvantage in the long run.
Evan Ashwenback, who threw the final four frames for the Aggies got the win and moved to 4-0 on the year he allowed just two hits and one run striking out five against an Auburn Offense that was hot when he took the mound.
The Tigers will be back in action Friday night 3/29 for another 6 PM first pitch in College Station. The game will be streaming on the SECN+ in conjunction with the Auburn Sports Network.
