Friday, April 13, 2007

Break up the Tigers!

The Auburn baseball team is looking awfully good all of a sudden. Winning two games at LSU was one thing…after all, LSU is waaaaay down from its glory days, in its first season under a new head coach and pretty short of SEC-level talent. But South Carolina is none of those things.

Auburn’s absolutely crazy 16-1 win at No. 4 USC served notice that AU is an totally credible SEC contender. Are the Tigers the best team in the league? Of course not, despite wins in four of their five conference games and Paul Burnside looking like one of the SEC’s best pitchers. But they’re hot, and they’re talented, and everything seems to be coming together.

The offense was downright ugly in the first two weeks of the SEC season, but lately, Auburn’s hitters seemingly can’t miss. Scoring eight runs against USC starter Harris Honeycutt (who entered the series 7-1 with a 1.43 ERA) is huge. According to Auburn media relations ace Dan Froehlich, Honeycutt had given up more than three earned runs just TWICE in his career before Friday night. That’s pretty incredible.

Left fielder Mike Bianucci came back from his 10-day absence (he separated his shoulder April 3 against South Alabama) in a big way: He went 2-for-4 and hit his ninth home run of the season. Josh Donaldson also hit dinger No. 9. Not bad.

And Bruce Edwards—who I’ll admit I wasn’t sold on as a leadoff hitter—was the catalyst. Bruce went 4-for-5, scored four runs and had four RBI. Tough to top that.

Of course, the real story was Paul Burnside. He’s had three consecutive very good starts…here are his pitching lines from the last three weeks (forgive me if they don’t line up on your computer screen):

March 30 against Ole Miss
                          IP H R ER BB SO AB BF NP
————————————————————————————
Paul Burnside…....  7.0 3 3 2 2   9 23 28 106

April 6 against LSU      
                            IP   H R ER BB SO AB BF NP
—————————————————————————
Paul Burnside…....  9.0 3 1 1 2   5   28 31 112

April 13 against South Carolina
                            IP   H R ER BB SO AB BF NP
————————————————————————————
Paul Burnside…....  7.0 5 1 1 3   5 25 29 107

That’s ace material. Not bad for a guy who spent last year in the bullpen and wasn’t in the weekend rotation when the season started.