AU’s bullpen struggles early, often in midweek loss

In the third inning of Tuesday’s game against Samford, Auburn head coach Tom Slater went to his bullpen.

An inning later, he turned to another reliever. And then another. And then another.

Auburn’s bullpen got a workout Tuesday. And the results weren’t pretty for the Tigers, as Samford bashed its way to a 12-11 win at Plainsman Park.

“It was pretty bad tonight,” Slater said.

Eight Auburn pitchers combined to allow 12 runs on 16 hits. The Tigers (23-19) also walked four batters and hit four more.

That was ugly enough to hand Samford the victory despite a lackluster day for the Bulldogs’ pitching. Samford pitchers issued eight walks, hit a whopping six batters and allowed seven hits.

“Bottom line, you score 11 runs, you ought to win in the middle of the week, period,” Slater said. “And we didn’t.”

Auburn scored four runs in the seventh inning to take an 11-10 lead. But the Bulldogs (24-14) scored two against AU reliever Luke Greinke
(3-3) in the eighth.

Paul Burnside pitched 2 1/3 innings for AU in his first start of the season. The junior, who is recovering from a broken collarbone, gave up three hits, but didn’t allow a run.

“He dodged some danger early,” Slater said.

Auburn travels to Tuscaloosa this weekend for a three-game Southeastern Conference series against Alabama. The Tigers are currently in fourth place in the SEC’s Western Division and 10th place overall.

“With 12 SEC games to play, we’re right in the thick of things,” Slater said. “Now, we’ve got to play better — we’ve got to play a lot better than we did tonight if we expect to do well in these next 12 SEC games.

“These midweek games, we schedule them, we want to win them.”

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