AUBURN, Ala. – No. 25 Auburn turned in its second straight run-rule of Wright State, claiming the series with an 11-1 win in seven innings Saturday afternoon at Plainsman Park.
The Tigers pitching staff turned in another strong performance, allowing just one run on five hits with one walk and eight strikeouts. Alex Petrovic, Jackson Sanders and Dylan Watts threw 74 percent strikes with the relievers issued just eight balls in 46 pitches.
“We threw 72 percent strikes yesterday. That was our watermark. We threw 74 percent strikes today,” head coach Butch Thompson said. “Petrovic stepped in and did a nice job. Sanders had the little flair to start off with and he didn’t blink. I think he threw one ball. Then Dylan Watts was phenomenal today.”
Sanders (1-1) earned his first career win with 2.1 scoreless innings. Twenty of the 21 pitches he delivered were for strikes. On Sanders’ heels, Watts turned in 2.0 clean innings with the lone baserunner reaching on an error.
“It builds a huge amount of confidence because we know this dude’s coming in the game and he’s about to shove the ball in the zone and get outs and arguably win us a ballgame,” Sanders said of the pitchers’ mentality. “Like I said about the hitters, producing so many runs right now is really big to us. Obviously, there’s going to come a game where they don’t score 11 runs. It’s going to be tight, so that gives us confidence that we have the stuff to shut them down.”
Auburn (6-1) tallied 13 hits at the plate, 12 of which were singles, and drew seven walks. Four players collected multiple hits, led by three apiece from Ike Irish and Chase Fralick.
“It’s just one of the many ways we can win, death by a thousand cuts today,” Irish said. “Another day it might be the longball and the extra-base hits that help us win. Today it was just singles and walks. We did our job.”
Wright State (2-2) started the scoring in the top of the third. Auburn pitching issued its only walk to start the inning, and the runner eventually came around on a two-out RBI single. Petrovic made his first career start and struck out a career-high five batters in 2.2 innings.
From there, it was all Auburn as the Tigers scored 11 unanswered runs in the third through sixth innings. The three runs in the third scored on a throwing error from the outfield and back-to-back RBI singles from Cooper McMurray and Deric Fabian, the other two Tigers who collected multiple hits in the game.
Auburn added two runs in the fourth, taking advantage of another error and wild pitch and five in the fifth. Fabian started the five-run fifth with his second home run of the season before Fralick extended the lead to 8-1 with a two-run single. A wild pitch and bases-loaded walk made it a nine-run game.
Coming back around in the sixth inning, Fralick drove in fellow freshman Chris Rembert with a single, marking his third RBI of the game and extending the lead to 11-1.
The series finale between The Tigers and Raiders is scheduled for Sunday at 1 p.m. CT.