AUBURN, Ala. – The Auburn baseball team scored runs in six of eight innings to pull away from Alabama State 12-4 Wednesday night in the second game of a two-game series at Plainsman Park.
For the second consecutive game, the Hornets scored in the first inning.
Einar Muniz extended his hitting streak to six games with a leadoff single.
Waldyvan Estrada hit a one-out single off the left field wall to set up
Richard Gonzalez, who's RBI single drove home Muniz to get the Hornets on the board.
Emmanuel Marrero's two-out, two-run single scored Estrada and Gonzalez to give ASU a 3-0 lead.
Auburn (6-4) chipped away at the deficit to take the lead, scoring one run in the first, three in the second, and two in the third to take a 6-3 lead.
In the fifth, Estrada, Gonzalez and
Marcus Swint put together three consecutive hits, as Estrada scored on Swint's infield hit to cut the lead to 6-4. The trio each had two hits for the Hornets.
“Offensively, we did a much better job than yesterday,” head coach
Mervyl Melendez said of his team which tied a season-high with nine hits. “The at-bats got better. We're going to talk about our philosophy and continue to get better. We understand the best baseball is ahead of us. Our guys are showing a lot of heart and we're battling. It's a matter of getting a couple of breaks. The guys are getting the hang of it and the guys are getting more comfortable. Today was a good sign.”
However, the Hornets (1-9) left the bases loaded in the inning, which proved critical as Auburn added a pair of runs in the home half of the inning to take a 8-4 lead. The Tigers went on to score one run in the seventh and three in the eighth.
Defensively, Alabama State allowed 12 hits and walked a season-high 15 batters.
“I hate to say this but it's almost a moral victory they only scored 12 runs,” Melendez said. “When you walk that many batters and then they got 12 hits – they must have left a million runners on base (15). We battled. We knew we were going to be short on pitching today. We knew it was going to be a long night, but the guys that pitched battled, even though they walked a lot of batters.”
The Hornets open Southwestern Athletic Conference play this Saturday at home against archrival Alabama A&M. First pitch for the doubleheader at the Wheeler-Watkins Baseball Complex is 1 p.m.
