Carson Skipper’s night began with an early deficit, but it ended with a career milestone.
Four pitchers combined for 17 strikeouts, with Skipper accounting for eight, as Auburn cruised past Alabama A&M 10-1 inside Plainsman Park on Tuesday night.
After a hit-by-pitch and back-to-back errors in the top of the first inning, Alabama A&M took an early 1-0 lead over Skipper in his first career start. The freshman from Trussville, Alabama then responded with eight strikeouts, including five in a row, with no walks in four innings to earn his first career win.
“I think one of the highlights for me was definitely Carson Skipper shoving the ball in the strike zone,” said Auburn head coach Butch Thompson. “He was running about seven seconds in between pitches, and on a day like today, man, if he wants his shortstop and center fielder and everybody to want him on the mound, that’s a good way to go about your business.”
Skipper (1-0) held the Bulldogs to one unearned run on two hits and threw 67 pitches, with 49 of them going for strikes after earning a save on Friday. Elliott Anderson threw two scoreless innings in relief, allowing one hit and striking out two, before Will Morrison and Blake Schilleci combined to strike out five and close the game.
“Staying away and going soft late in the count,” said Skipper of his approach Tuesday night. “Their hitters are very aggressive so they’re always swinging hard and fast. You just got to try and stay away from their bats as best as you can.”
The Tigers scored four in the third and three in the fifth to pull away from the Bulldogs down the stretch as 14 batters combined for 13 hits. Rankin Woley led Auburn, going 3-for-3, with a double and two RBIs while freshman Ryan Bliss also batted two runs of his own.
“Woley had a big double to start out the 13th inning against Georgia Southern and came right out today and went backside right in the first inning,” Thompson said. “He had three big hits for us tonight and was kind of the catalyst there.”
Auburn will play the second game of the series against Alabama A&M (0-5) tomorrow at 2 p.m. CST inside Plainsman Park.
Despite Auburn's 3-1 start, the season has not been without adversity.
The Tigers dropped one against Georgia Southern in the opening series this weekend, after two out of three going for extra innings, and players who were expected to be leaders, like Steven Williams and Will Holland, have had slow starts.
Thompson, however, just explained that it’s just a part of the process.
“I’m kind of redefining my expectations as we go, and right now the expectation is to dominate a routine play,” Thompson said. “We’ve got 60 ball games left in our season and we’ll figure out expectations later on. This ball club’s expectation needs to be holding each other accountable to the routine facets of the game of the baseball.”
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