BRUH: Auburn Baseball's Offense GETS BLANKED vs Cincinnati as Home

0:00Wow, Auburn baseball got shall act on Tuesday night. You are locked on Auburn, your daily podcast on the Auburn Tigers, part of the locked on podcast network, your team every day. Yes, welcome on into locked on Auburn, your daily Auburn Tigers podcast. I'm your host, Zach Blackerby. Thank you so much for making locked on Auburn, your first list. And every single day, Lindsey Crosby, baseball, Lindsey Crosby, joining us as we recap Auburn's eight to nothing loss. Yeah. And you know what's funny is they just ruled that final ground ball was, he was safe. So technically, technically two hours at a runner's home for Auburn, there's hope we can go ahead and get started though. Games not. Yeah, let's go ahead and start having the conversation about the offense. Yeah. And look, the eight run situation, not ideal, right?

1:02Eight were like, the pitching was not good. I do think there's a few caveats that will sprinkle in like, I'm not as concerned about that. I think most Auburn fans are going to be of the mindset of, okay, the lack of offense is starting to be concerned. It's so early like we're not going to overreact to this. But let's see at what point can you ask the question and say, okay, like, where is this offense coming like, what, what, when do you start to get concerned about this? So this is the third game and four of the season that you've had a low offense about, but I'm not worried right now, right? I am, I am slightly concerned. We were all kind of told that this was going to be the strength of our team. Right. And instead, the pitching's been much better than we expected. Tonight, they did a lot of contact. I think it was only, I think it was a, it was three extra bass hits from the main pitchers. And then it got a little out of control later with Chancellor and cool,

2:04Lincoln, Cormier and all that. But offensively, we've seen some good at bats, like individual at bats. Bum to rail has two doubles. Ryan Farber has what felt like a 27 pitch at bat before he finally flew out the center field. And we're not seeing a ton of strikeouts. And I think that's the big thing for me is we're not seeing these guys just go up there and swing and miss. We did see a couple of strikeouts looking, which I really kind of hate. If you go through the weekend in Arlington, and it's another series of low scoring games, even if you go like two and one, but you know, as far as record, but it's a lot of like you had five hits tonight. If it's a lot of four or five hit games that you have to squeak out something close, I'm going to go from slightly worried to full on concern simply because we were told this was the strength. And I know that there's a lot of moving parts here. They got to

3:07figure out, you know, who the shortstop is. They're replacing somebody at second base, the best one of the best players in the country, shuffling the outfield around still. But you got to be better than what we've seen in four of the five games. I think that's the big problem here. Yeah. And we knew going into this. We talked about a little bit on our reaction to the Youngstown State series. It is fine. Oh, now thank you for letting us know. And we got to pull it up here. But we're going to learn a lot at all. We are going to learn a lot about Auburn this week. You know, Cincinnati, you know, funny enough, we like highlighted their catcher being like, they kind of held him in check. He really wasn't the problem. It was, it was the bats. And I know that eight to nothing looks awful. But somebody else in the chat pointed this out, it was too nothing. And then it kind of looked like when they made the decision to go to a freshman pitcher in that scenario, it's like, okay, like, are they male in this end? Like, what's going on? Which obviously would have been enough. It didn't score anything. So yeah, to me, the big question is, when are the bats coming? That, that to me is the biggest question mark. And it felt

4:11like this is the first time I've really seen Eric Guevara move to lead off when you lost Chris Rimmer over the weekend. And this, this really was the first time when I've seen him go up to the plate. And it kind of felt like he didn't really have a play in. He pops out twice. I'm sorry, to put he puts a ball in play, only has one strikeout, but just not really great at bats. And I think what's frustrating is of your five hits, Bob had to chase Frailick had to those guys are batting back to back in the lineup. And just nobody else around them was able to get anything done. Lucas teal draws a walk, right in the crane draws a walk, think Bristol Carter as a pinch hitter had a hit late. But for the most part, just not able to get good at bats at the plate. And at this point, it's not a matter of having not seen pitching. Like credit to Cincinnati, they did everything they had to win the game.

5:12They didn't do anything, especially unusual on the mound. You know, there was a little bit of like the umpire was given a lot of high strikes and things like that. There were kind of annoying. But Cincinnati didn't do anything where like at the baseball guy set back and went like, holy cow, like they're just, they're just dominating here. They did. We were texting. They kind of pulled their star like we got into their bullpen kind of early. Yeah. This was the so the guy started the night is one of their go to weekend guys. And they they they pulled them out kind of early. I think you went three innings because a sensible every door he went to an ins because he's going to come back this weekend. Like they're going to use him against Oregon this weekend. This was just an essence and extended bullpen for him. He threw like 47 pitches. Auburn made him work. You know, he strikes out four. You get walk in a hit. Um, you know, it's facing 10 batters across two innings, but Auburn just can't do anything with it. And each one of their pitchers gave up exactly one hit. And that's it.

6:13Auburn draws two walks in the game. Uh, I feel like after the game, that's going to be butchers takeaway is like we just weren't competitive enough at the plate. Yeah. And a lot of it was swinging at pitches out of the zone and then taking called strikes. And that's just not really the combination that you want. So my final takeaway for this before we kind of look and say, okay, how does this impact this weekend is, you know, ain't no, it looks terrible. Um, not concerned about the pitching. They got the strikeouts, all of that. It's all right. When are the bats coming? And there's plenty of time for them to come on. But at some point, like I would like to see them. I would like to see them soon. And obviously this team would as well. Um, yeah. Now as far as this, the pitching is concerned, we've probably should discuss that a little bit. And if we have to wait for the break to do that, um, I do think you're on this pitching. Is that what you said? A little bit.

7:15Well, let's do it after the break, do you mind? We'll talk about, um, pitching tonight as well as, um, what to expect in Arlington this weekend, right here, unlocked on Auburn. Today's show brought to you by our friends at Mazda. This is Mazda's moving the game forward for those who show there's more to the score than what's on the screen. I'll go with Bob Terrell for our player who is moving the game forward. The night when he had two hits, he had two doubles. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, and two doubles. They always try to double the Auburn had. And then of course two of Auburn's five hits tonight were by a Bob Terrell. So, um, we put the same passion to every model. Highlights make the real what it takes to get there is what makes it count. There's more to a Mazda because there's more to you. Today's show also brought to you by our friends at alumni hall. I can't imagine buying Auburn gear anywhere other than with our friends at alumni hall. If you need basketball gear for the final push, if you need baseball or softball gear or any spring sport that you follow closely,

8:19alumni halls got you covered. If you weren't wearing Auburn baseball gear tonight, you're the reason that they lost. Maybe that's why we go to alumni hall and get some Auburn baseball gear. And that's like, I'm wearing the Atlanta brave shirt. That's probably what happened right here. I sort of got a little in my hall and got my stuff. Yep. That's right. That's right. And of course, if you don't live in Auburn or Opalika to see any of their physical locations, you go to alumni hall.com. They will take care of you there. All right, recapping Auburn's eight to nothing lost against Cincinnati. Okay, we talked about the offense. What's specifically about the pitching stood out to you tonight, Lindsey? I think the big issue for Auburn pitching and it comes back to something we talked about when we previewed the season. It comes back to something that you heard a little bit from Gabe Gross, when you talked to him and when I talked to Butch, they weren't doing enough strikes, right? We talked on this show. 70% strikes is kind of the goal. Like Butch wants you to be in and around the zone. And if you look at Andreate's Alvarez, 81 pitches, like 40 something

9:23strikes, Christian Chatter 10 52 pitches, like 30 something strikes, LJ Cormiye's at under 50% strike percentage. And that was your problem right there. They weren't throwing enough strikes. So they were walking some guys. We walked five guys tonight. And then when you, when you did come into the zone because you were behind in the count, they were able to get good swings on the ball. And that's just kind of the issue that you've seen here. I think over the weekend, you kind of saw the blueprint of how this works. Auburn's pitchers get ahead in the count early. And you are statistically much more likely to get to the at bat without allowing a hit or run home run whatever when you're ahead in the count. I, I will say there was a couple extra bass hits. All of them were really well placed down the line. It wasn't like a lot of incredibly hard hit balls. So Auburn did do a good job at taking the sting out of the swing. As Butch calls it, that's a hard

10:26thing. It's so hard to say. They can nailed it though. Sting out of the swing. Thank you. Thank you. But just not enough competitiveness in the zone. I expected more out of Alvarez. Honestly, he's one of those guys that he was pretty affected for us last year when we used him Christian. And it kind of seemed like he was hanging on. And then he almost got out of an inning. And then Frey look let that ball get past them. And then it led to scoring. There was, there was a past ball and there was a wild pitch. And I do think it was a little, I'm never going to say that Auburn was looking past the opponent. But Auburn did play a little sloppily tonight. And I do think that was part of it. The run in the first inning, they walked the catcher Natilli, who we've talked about as one of their best players. Right. And then past ball on the guy on, I think the guy behind him allows the run to score later. You do have the wild pitch. You have an error on a pickoff attempt. Just a little bit of a,

11:30of an ugly, sloppy outing. I will say to the, there's a question here in the chat about this too. I will say that the strike zone was not consistent from inning to inning and from Auburn to Cincinnati and back, not enough to like, like to completely go office about, but just a little bit inconsistent zone. And you could tell some of the guys were not comfortable with what they were being asked to do and like throwing things they thought were going to be strikes that were not strikes. So little frustrating there. But this was on Auburn. This wasn't the umpires fall. This wasn't, this was Cincinnati doing their job and Auburn not doing theirs. Yep. Yep. All right. Let's look ahead to this weekend. We labeled this week as kind of the most important week of the non-conference, not off to a good start. So Auburn will play Kansas State Friday night in Arlington. And then on Saturday, they'll play Florida State.

12:31And then Sunday morning, they will play Louisville three, uh, three games against better opponents. Here he is to see what the approach is, the starting pitching. If it's based off of what we saw last week should be pretty solid. But to me, the big question is going to be the bats. Lindsey, let's see those bats come to life. Yeah. And I think the two things to know about this is one, though all three of those schools are very good. Kansas State's undefeated. And not only are they undefeated, they're undefeated after one of those neutral site tournaments. This week, they were in, um, in Arizona, it's the, it's the MLB invitational. It's hosted by originally based, well, a lot of games at, um, minor league, like not minor league spring training ball parks and things like that. And, um, they, they beat, I'm trying to pull up the exact list. I know they beat one of the service academies. I want to say like air force. Yeah, they beat Air Force like good teams. So they've, they've faced

13:33more Iowa, Yukon Penn State and Air Force. So they've beat some good teams here. Um, Louisville is always a good team in baseball. They always have really good catchers, which is just kind of a thing that I tend to notice. Because I'm, I'm just, I'm big into catchers. They're just really important to baseball. Um, they, they, now the thing is though, they are two and two, they struggled against Michigan State. They dropped the series to Michigan State last weekend. Um, four to three, 13 to four. And then they won the, the, the now and nine to one, and then they destroyed Xavier, like 23 to something. Um, but they, and then, and then Florida State, you know, seems like we always play Florida State in the postseason. So yeah, and four to states always been a good team. Like four to states, just, um, the last time we faced them, we got their head coach fired. We got meat fired after they came to town for regional, but they, um, they took two games against James Madison. They run rule them in one of them. And then they run rule Jacksonville today. So, so good teams. We're playing

14:38good teams. Yeah. Good match up. And I'm not worried about the pitching this weekend. I think to your point, the difference in the weekend, the one game where Auburn had a lot of runs, was the game where they got the leadoff runner on in six of the first, I think it's five of the first six settings or six of the first seven innings. They got the leadoff runner on. And we've seen in college especially, when you can get the leadoff runner on, you're expected to score close to two runs in any, right? College pitchers on average are not as good pitching from the stretch. A lot of them pair their arsenals down and they're trying to come to the plate quicker. They're just not very good. And without Chris Rimmer, can whoever is leading off, if it's Eric Gavare again, if it's somebody else, can they get on to start the game? And then can Auburn keep that momentum up from any to any? Because again, all three games you played last weekend, you did it exactly one time. I'm sorry, like you had one game where you

15:42did good at this. And it's the game you blew them out in a run rule. Tonight, you didn't do well at it and you lost. So that's what going to be what I'm looking for. I do think they win at least one game. I want to say two, but with the offense, we've seen it's hard for me to have the confidence in that. I think they have the pieces. Who in one would be a great weekend though? Who in one would be a great weekend given what we've seen in the first four games? I give you a hot take. Go ahead. Three in a, we sweep. Okay. That's my prediction. That is your prediction is we sweep in Arlington. I love that comes to life. The pitching picks up where it left off from this past weekend. And we say, okay, good. Yeah. It's an as a wake up call. There you go. It's focused on Auburn baseball. That's right. As you were the guy that hired the Locked on Kansas State host, I really hope that if Auburn wins like at least one game, that's the one that we win. I don't want you to get a lot of crap from Christian there. If if, if, if,

16:42I hired a state host too. Okay. Well, there you go. I don't know him though. I can't make a joke. But yeah, it would. Yes, you do. You do know him. I do. You're right. I do. I do. You're right. Yeah. Two in one, I think. Two in one is probably what I'm going to go with. If I had to pick one of these, I think I'm picking Florida State as the one that Auburn ends up dropping. But interesting. Okay. Yeah. Simply just, I mean, Florida State's pitching, I feel like it's the best of the three. And if your weak place, if your weak spot right now is offense, the team with the best pitchings, not the team you want to face. I said, we always do well at these type of events. We usually do. Auburn does well with it. They go to Jacksonville, where they go to Arlington. They do well at these in that ballpark. And I do think going to the, I talked to Sunny about this too over on the Barn baseball show. Doing these events early in the season has a positive effect on the roster going forward. The guys bond a little bit. You know, it's the travel. It's away from the campus. All

17:46that kind of stuff. They bond a little bit. They do well. After these trips, I feel like they do well on these trips. I just don't have the confidence to say three, you know, given what we've seen offensively reckless for games, reckless hope coming from this guy right here. I love the book. I love the book. And listen, they absolutely, they have the tools, the physical tools to go why they're ranked where they are. It's like the tools are there. They just got to do it. Exactly. They'll drop a little bit next week. Even if they go three, no, they're probably who cares. But who cares? As long as they're in the top eight by the time the post season rolls around, that's all we care about. Yeah. Yeah. Or top 16. I think do you want baseball? How does it nine? Yeah. Well, the reason I say top eight is so you're in national seed. And if you make the supers, you could to host that too. Right. You're Gary. I get it. No, I totally get it. I totally get it. That's my goal. Butch's goal is to go to Omaha and win some games. That's his goal. He said just, you know, post season's not good enough,

18:50supers is not good enough, just making it to Omaha's not good enough. We need to be in the mix for a national championship. That's his goal. But he's getting after them boys right now, though. Look at what time it is. What time the game ended? There's, there's some, there's some butch who would go in on right now. Yeah. No, he's got to do his post game presser and all that. But at some point, I would not like to be on the other end of a conversation with budget officer right now. Can I play to think? I see. Yeah. If it's one of the ones that are okay to play. Yeah. You know, I would love to see us play better baseball. Baseball. That is the choice coach from Troy. That's a choice coach. Yeah. Yeah. Just all right. Um, cool. Thank you guys for hanging out with us for a little bit after a brutal loss on a midweek. So there you go. Let's see how people check out everything you've got going on. I'm on social media at Kronsby Baseball. All the other baseball stuff, the bar and Auburn dot com. If you're a brave span, brave today dot com and the brave today podcast where we get your podcasts. Please like the video. Please subscribe. We'll

19:54see you next time. This has been locked on Auburn.