Auburn combined power bats with lights-out pitching to beat No. 12 Vanderbilt and give head coach Butch Thompson his 200th win as the Tiger’s ball coach.
“It’s just been special,” Thompson said. “Every year I’ve been able to be here has been special. I was a 23-year assistant coach. This hasn’t been about me building hundreds of wins. This has been about whatever time that I’m allowed to be a steward of this program. I want to see these boys have success. I think winning a game at home against Vanderbilt on a Friday night, that one win, is bigger than the 200.”
The Auburn pitching staff, which featured the trio of Hayden Mullins, Carson Skipper and Blake Burkhalter allowed just two hits, and their 15 strikeouts were the most in an SEC game for Auburn since May 4, 2018.
Paving the way on the mound for the Tigers was Mullins, and the southpaw looked dominant from the start. He began by striking out two batters in the first inning, and after hitting a batter to start the second, he set down three in a row on strikes to set up the Auburn bats to go to work.
The second and third innings is when Auburn did most of its offensive damage.
Cole Foster started the second inning by taking Vandy starter Chris McElvain 405 feet into right field for his fourth homer of the year. The switch hitter’s solo bomb from the left side gave Auburn a 1-0 lead.
Neither Mullins nor the Auburn bats went silent in the third inning.
After a pair of walks and strikeouts from Mullins, the Commodores’ leading hitter, Dominic Keegan, hit one on the nose to the right of shortstop Brody Moore. Diving to his right, he made a diving grab before leaping to his feet and gunning the ball to first to get the third out.
As if Foster’s solo shot wasn’t far enough, DH Brooks Carlson stepped up to the plate in the home half of the third and demolished a McElvain fastball 429 feet over the green monster in left field to add three more runs. With his dinger, the Tigers captured a comfortable 4-0 lead entering the fourth inning.
For the next three innings, offense was at a minimum. The teams combined for three consecutive scoreless, hitless innings, but that did not come without a threat from the Commodores.
Following a three-up-three-down fourth inning with two more strikeouts, Mullins took the mound in the fifth having already matched his career high in strikeouts with nine. He ran out of gas in the fifth, walking three and getting a fielder’s choice out before handing the ball over to Skipper.
Inheriting the bases loaded with just one out, Skipper only needed one pitch to get escape the fire. He induced a ground ball to Burkhalter at third base, and he stepped on the bag and threw it across to first for an inning-ending double play.
“The game of baseball is always about gaining momentum and keeping it,” Skipper said. “They started gaining a little bit there with their inning starting off the way it did. Coming in, to get that double play on the first pitch just by chance is a huge momentum swing for us… just a huge boost.”
Skipper went on to pitch the next two innings, and it wasn’t until the seventh that Vandy got on the board.
After a leadoff double and a groundout moved the runner to third, a sacrifice fly drove home the Commodore’s only run of the night.
Burkhalter, Auburn’s closer, then took the mound in the eighth inning and shut down Vandy’s hopes of continuing a rally.
In addition to Burkhalter’s dominance, Bobby Pierce padded Auburn’s lead in the home part of the eighth inning with a triple to right-center field to score Moore. With that, Auburn carried a 5-1 lead to the ninth for Burkhalter to seal the deal.
Sparing fans of any nail-biting, Burkhalter struck out two of the three batters that came to the plate to close the door on the Commodores.
With his two-inning outing with four Ks, Burkhalter earned his seventh save of the season. The junior continues to be versatile out of the bullpen in his closer role. He manned the eighth and ninth innings for Auburn instead of coming in to record the final three outs like a typical closer might do.
Skipper also went multiple frames to lock up his third win of the season. Working 2.2 innings, he allowed just one hit and one run, and escaping the bases-loaded jam in the fifth inning was as clutch as it comes.
“That was about as sharp as I have seen Carson Skipper,” Thompson added. “I thought he was awesome.”
At the plate, Auburn tallied seven hits, and six of them were in the first three innings. With the dominant pitching performance, that was all Auburn needed to outhit Vandy 7-to-2 and defeat the defeat last season’s runners up.
The seven hits came from seven different hitters, but three of the five runs were driven in by Carlson on his second home run of the year.
“Something I’ll never forget,” Carlson said. “I’m just glad that I was able to help the team… our pitching tonight, they deserve the crown.”
With the win, Auburn improves to 21-9 and 6-4 in the SEC. The Tigers will go for their third straight series win tomorrow at 4 p.m. in game two with Vanderbilt. The game will be streamed on SEC Network+ and can be heard on 93.9 FM.
“It was just a solid game tonight,” Thompson said. “Almost every phase of the game was good. We were led by our pitching staff, and we got a couple of big swings off."
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