Auburn baseball faces it's first significant test of the 2022 season
Auburn head baseball coach Butch Thompson is happy about conference play kicking off with #1 Ole Miss tonight at Plainsman Park. “I’m a USA Today voter on the coaches poll, and really, as I look through everything and how things have moved week by week, it was easy to put Ole Miss #1. I was excited to do it with them coming to play our team.”
He sees this early conference test as a way to compare two teams with similar resumes and get a true evaluation of his 2022 squad. “In my heart of hearts, they’re 13 and 3 and we’re 13 and 4, and we’re pretty similar. Sometimes these rankings, especially to start a season, has more to do with what you’ve done in the past, or recently might be the best way to put it. if we were coming off of the 2019 seasons, where would we be ranked and how good would we be? I’m not sure we know all the answers to how good we are yet, but I’m interested in seeing how big a gap is between the Ole Miss Rebels and the Auburn Tigers, and we’re going to find out.”
One interesting wrinkle to conference play is the limited roster you get for a series – in-conference matchups are limited to 27 players, with rosters set before Game 1. Thompson admitted it’s been a struggle for this staff to navigate. “That’s been our biggest challenge with our coaching staff. We don’t have to play a different game – you play the same, there’s only one way to play and that’s the best baseball you know how to play. But that 27 man roster has been our biggest adjustment. You can’t play 37 guys in a weekend like we have – you have to walk up there and hand in your lineup to that home plate umpire before the first game with only 27 names on it. And those are the only 27 you can use over the course of that three game series."
One of the reasons for the roster decision struggles has been the health of starting pitcher Joseph Gonzalez, who left last Sunday’s start after the first inning with a blister under the thumb nail on his throwing hand. Thompson admitted to some unconventional tactics they’ve taken to find relief for Gonzalez and get him back to action. “He can play catch. We’ve been to one nail salon, and I think we’re going to another one, trying to alleviate some pressure and stuff. That’s a pretty painful deal if you’ve ever had that, and having to perform and throw a ball 90+ miles per hour. He feels like the fingernail is lifting. So, he can play catch, but we don’t know if he can get on it, and if he can’t get on it, we’re gonna give it time to heal.”
And with a Thursday-Saturday series being an additional challenge, given that it starts a day earlier than most and Auburn is coming off of a Sunday doubleheader, the schedule influenced some of the decisions. “With the short week, with us having to bounce back and go Thursday, we thought the pitcher that was best and most available and ready to go that’s the been throwing the ball good was Mason Barnett and then our second guy that we think has thrown the best has been Trace Bright. But every one of these conference games count the same. These 30 games are not weighted any differently. So instead of shorting him (Bright) two days after throwing 90 or more pitches, we’re gonna shorten him one day and throw him on Saturday.” Friday's Game 2 has multiple options for who might get the start. “It could be (lefty) Hayden Mullins, because he didn’t get to do that (Tuesday) start, that’s one I’m leaning to, and the right handed version is Jordan Armstrong.”
Jordan Armstrong was one of Auburn’s better starters earlier in the season, coming in as a reliever against Oklahoma and then dominating Yale on a Friday night before stumbling in consecutive outings against Rhode Island and Middle Tennessee, the 2nd of those being an outing where he gave up four earned runs and ultimately couldn’t make it out of the 1st inning. Getting Armstrong back into his early-season form has been a point of emphasis for the coaching staff this week.
"Jordan, we actually threw him to four hitters (Tuesday). I just wanted him, and myself, to feel good about that. He’s got his stuff reset and we did a couple of things physically – felt his slot lowered a little bit. And now he’s throwing on the same plane or up, or missing high and armside, so we got his feet underneath him and we got his slot back up. We reverted back to Chattahoochee Valley (film) to seeing that slot, which was a little bit higher. Now we think he can get back on top of the baseball and sink a little bit. He’s not a big, physical-type dude, so hopefully this adjustment helps him.”
Armstrong’s recent struggles not withstanding, Thompson’s still a believer in Armstrong’s stuff and his pitch mix being an effective weapon for this Auburn pitching staff. “Getting Jordan going is important because I think he’s a huge piece. These first four weeks of college baseball, I’ve never seen the changeup seem like such a powerful pitch and he possesses arguably one of our best. Sometimes it’s been the slider, it’s been the elevated fastball that you’ve seen really come into play, but the changeup has been huge (this season) and he possesses one of our best – I want him to get right back on the train.”
Whether Jordan Armstrong or Hayden Mullins joins Mason Barnett and Trace Bright in the rotation for this series, these pitchers have a tall task ahead of them. They’re facing an experienced Ole Miss team that knows how to work counts and get on base, sporting a team batting average of .318 and a team OBP of .440. “We will need to score and if we just come out and play pitching and defense where we score enough – man, that’s the old baseball adage that everybody sits there and thinks about. I think we’ll have to score because that’s absolutely the strength of their ballclub. They’ve got a bunch of 23 and 24 year-olds that play the game at a high-level. They walk as much as they strike out, so we’re going to have to be in the zone pitching. We’re going to make quality pitches, not be scared of anything, but we can’t just flip get-me-over stuff to a veteran lineup like this."
Junior RHP Trace Bright was aware of the challenge this lineup would pose: "It's obviously something that stands out for a pitcher. You don't want to try and pitch around them too much knowing that they're probably not going to swing. So, you want to make your best pitch but something that they're either going to chase or put into play, knowing that you have a great defense behind you." Thompson went on to explain that a lot of Auburn's recent losses have come down to the pitching allowing runs to score, not the defense. "I think our thing is that most extra-base hits are thrown, not hit - Can we really throw some quality pitches up there and do better with the count?"
Of particular interest will be that defensive alignment for the weekend. With Presbyterian transfer Jake Wyandt taking most of the starts at catcher, a change made for defensive reasons, Auburn’s used catcher Ryan Dyal in left field more to keep his bat in the lineup. Butch said those types of offense-over-defense decisions are still an evolving thing.
“So Brooks Carlson, you may see him in left field – I just don’t know if you’ll see him late, if you’ve got a lead. But I want to be able to do damage and I want the best hitters in there – I’ve put that forth to our coaches to make that happen for us. As a pitching guy historically, I want to dominate the routine play, that’s really important. So there’s been give and take, there’s actually a stretch (by me). I don’t want us to be scared of calculated risk this year. I want us to have as many threats in that lineup as we possibly can because we will have to score.”
Auburn has yet to field a lineup this season that has their two best hitters - Sonny DiChiara & Brooks Carlson - in the game at the same time given the timing of their respective injuries.
Sonny DiChiara - known affectionally to fans as the "Thicc King" - has been rehabbing from a bruised heel suffered against Rhode Island. "He reports feeling good, and I think: I wish we had a parachute, like the funny cars. I think his biggest challenge is trying to stop. I watched him run past the bag and he kept going, I thought he was going to run over the tarp and I’m like ‘Sonny, you okay?’ and he says ‘yes sir, it’s just hard to stop’. So he’s not 100%, but he’s above 80% and it’s just putting on the breaks. I think he can function and move, even wanting to put him back to 1st base instead of DH-ing him. We want to get him back to 1st base. I think every day it’s getting dramatically better." Cam Hill, who excels at left-on-left hitting matchups, has been getting the playing time at 1st base while Carlson DH's on his way back from a fractured thumb suffered in preseason camp. Getting those three hitters in the same lineup, along with Dyal, is a juggling act to watch going forward.
#1 Ole Miss comes to Plainsman Park for a three-game series. Thursday’s Game 1 features Jr. RHP Mason Barnett (1-0, 2.13) vs. Sr. LHP John Gaddis (2-0, 1.42), and will be televised on the SEC Network at 6PM. Friday’s Game 2 (TBA vs. Jr. RHP Derek Diamond (3-0, 3.86) and Saturday’s Game 3 (Jr. RHP Trace Bright (2-0, 1.17) vs. TBA) will both be available for streaming on SEC Network+.
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