The Alabama State University baseball team will travel to Auburn for a two-game series against the Tigers Tuesday and Wednesday at Plainsman Park. First pitch for both games is 5 p.m.
Hornets Baseball Gameday Central has links to get live stats and watch both games through the Auburn website for $9.95 (Auburn only offers the monthly rate to watch games live).
The Hornets (1-7) posted their first victory of the season this past weekend defeating host Nicholls State 6-4 in the Colonel Round Robin Tournament. And while ASU lost a pair of games over the weekend to defending America East Conference champion Stony Brook, head coach
Mervyl Melendez saw improved play from his young team.
“I believe that our players are starting to understand what to expect out of playing Division I baseball,” Melendez said. “We have a lot of inexperienced players that, although they have the ability, have never played the game on this level. I thought this weekend was a better performance overall from our team. We need to continue to improve. We have a lot of things we are doing well, but there are a lot of things we still need to improve on.”
In several key categories, this past weekend's numbers show the Hornets' improvement over the first five games of the season. Alabama State hit nearly 50 points higher at the plate (.217 up from .168), improved its on-base percentage by 42 points (.284 up from .242), made one less error per game defensively (2.0 per game compared to 3.2), lowered the opponents' batting average by 27 points (.226 down from to .253), and nearly cut in half the earned run average allowed (2.77 down from 5.48).
“That's impressive and it shows our guys are getting more comfortable,” Melendez said. “As I stated before, they know what to expect. It's just a matter of being patient. We know we have a good group of guys and we have worked hard to get them to understand the system. I think little by little, game by game, we're going to continue to see improvement.”
The Hornets will face Auburn (4-4), which is coming off winning the final game of a three-game series at then-No. 8 ranked Arizona.
“Regardless of who we play, we need to concentrate on the things we need to do better and improve on,” Melendez said. “We know we'll be facing a good opponent in Auburn. However, from here on out, it's going to come down to us, not the opponent. Everyone that we play is going to be able to do a good job, and that will be the case tomorrow and Wednesday. We just need to concentrate on our game and play well.”
