It is often said that you have to beat the best to be the best.
Auburn celebrated a win over Vanderbilt, 2021’s national runners up, last weekend, but it aims a step higher and looks to knock off the defending National Champions when the team hits the road to battle Mississippi State this weekend.
“We just played the national runner-up last week, now we get the national champion this week,” said Auburn head coach Butch Thompson. “The same requirements to have success will be the same. Can we take the sting out of their swing? Can we continue to play good defense? Can we get some timely hitting?”
Here are some things to note going into the three-game series in Starkville.
Mid-week madness?
Although both squads were victorious in their respective mid-week matchups on Tuesday, the wins were not per-sé “pick-me-ups.” Both schools needed to battle to the end to get wins in their home parks versus smaller Alabama opponents.
Auburn handled Samford 4-1, but Samford jumped out to an early 1-0 lead, and Auburn didn’t lead until the 5th inning. It was a good win, but Samford didn’t make it easy.
In Mississippi State’s Tuesday matchup with UAB, the Bulldogs required 10 innings to earn the 6-5 win. They utilized six pitchers in the effort and needed a two-run homer in the ninth to avoid the loss before a sacrifice fly walked it off in the 10th.
An underachiever and an overachiever
Sitting at the bottom of the SEC West standings, this season has not yielded the same results that led to Mississippi State’s first ever National Championship in 2021. It is safe to call the Bulldogs an underachiever up to this point. It is clear that Auburn, who moved up eight spots in the latest eight rankings, is trending upward, while Mississippi State is trying to put itself back together.
The Bulldogs (19-15, 4-8 SEC) were projected to finish second to only Arkansas by d1baseball.com in the preseason SEC West projections.
On the other hand, No. 17 Auburn (23-10, 7-5 SEC) is easily in the overachiever category up to this point in the season. The Tigers were projected to finish next-to-last in the SEC West this season by d1baseball.com. They currently sit half a game behind second-place LSU for third place to only Arkansas and have won their last three conference series’.
Common Opponents
Auburn and Mississippi State have played a few common opponents this season.
First, the teams both faced Texas Tech, who is now ranked No. 4 nationally. Auburn defeated the Red Raiders on opening weekend in Arlington 2-1, and Mississippi State split a pair of games with them in Biloxi, Mississippi with a 11-5 win and 7-2 loss.
Another common opponent is LSU, who marched into Starkville last weekend and swept the Bulldogs in three games. Auburn went to LSU a week prior to that and took two out of three games from them.
Lastly, both teams have had mid-week clashes with UAB. Auburn has beaten them twice. The first game was a 16-1 blowout and the latest was a 6-4 win in Birmingham last week. The Blazers posed as Mississippi State’s latest challenge and gave the Bulldogs all they could handle in a 6-5 extra-inning ballgame.
Road Warriors
Stretching back to the final two series of last season, Auburn has taken four straight SEC series for the first time since 1996-97. A series victory in Starkville represents Auburn’s fifth league series win in a row, the most since 1994-95.
The Tigers have been consistently good away from home this year. They are currently 5-2 on the road and 4-1 in neutral site games, and their last two SEC series on the road (at Texas A&M and at LSU) have resulted in wins for Auburn with a combined 4-2 record.
The Bulldogs have a 14-7 record on their home field, but their most recent action there includes scraping by in an extra innings against UAB, and a three-game sweep at the hands of LSU last weekend.
Hot hitters
Last week’s Co-SEC Player of the week, Sonny DiChiara leads Auburn into the series. Coming into the week, he led the NCAA in batting average (.452), OBP (.595) and slugging percentage (.946). He also leads his team in home runs (11), RBIs (32), total bases (88) and doubles (13).
No. 17 made it look too easy last weekend versus Vandy. He went 5-for-12 with three homers and six RBIs. Facing his former team, he was held to a hitless 0-3 against Samford on Tuesday, but he reached base once on a walk.
Leading the Bulldog offense is leadoff hitter RJ Yeager. The grad transfer leads his club in two major categories, batting for an average of .314 with a .619 slugging percentage. He has nine homers and 29 RBIs and hit a leadoff bomb against LSU on Sunday en route to a 3-for-4 game.
Strikeout machines
Auburn will try to build on the staff’s 17 strikeouts versus Samford on Tuesday and a complete-game masterpiece by Jake Gonzalez in game three versus Vandy. The pitching was also on point in game one versus the Commodores, as Mullins led the team with nine strikeouts in his start before the bullpen got six more to total 15.
Game two versus Vanderbilt was the occasion where Auburn’s pitching fell apart, as starter Trace Bright was chased from the game after three innings, and the Commodores proceeded to score 19 runs on 23 hits.
Opposingly, Mississippi State has turned in a 5.23 ERA as a unit and are second in the conference in strikeouts with 377. The Bulldogs surrendered 22 runs in the three-game series with LSU, but 13 of those came in game three.
Matchups
Game one will feature Auburn lefty Mullins (2-1, 3.04) versus Mississippi State’s Brandon Smith (2-2, 4.22).
On Friday, Auburn will hand the ball to Trace Bright (2-3, 3.83), who looks to rebound from his rough outing against Vandy last weekend against Mississippi State’s Preston Johnson (2-2, 4.26).
The final game of the series will be in the hands of the Tigers’ Joseph Gonzalez (4-0, 1.95) and the Bulldogs’ Cade Smith (4-2, 3.89).
The series is scheduled to start on 7 p.m. CST on Thursday, followed by a 6 p.m. first pitch on Friday and a 1 p.m. start on Saturday at Dudy Noble Field. All games will be available to watch on the SEC Network and can be heard locally on 93.9 FM.
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