Full wrap from Clemson 13, Auburn 7—Auburn exits season with its head held high
There was frustration, sure. A late-innings ejection from the pitching coach, of all people, summed that up Monday night at Plainsman Park.
Yet there was still satisfaction, albeit tempered, after Auburn’s 13-7 season-ending loss to Clemson before the third capacity crowd in four days.
Minutes after Clemson first baseman Richie Shaffer pumped his fist, recorded the game’s final out and joined his teammates at the pitcher’s mound for a dog pile, Auburn’s players streamed out of the dugout and looked out toward the fans wearing Auburn orange.
They were sent off with a standing ovation.
“It means a lot,” shortstop Casey McElroy said, “to have fans believe in Auburn baseball again.”
Forty-three wins, the best offensive season in program history and oodles of hope for the future from a team that previously hadn’t even made the SEC tournament since 2003 will do that.
“I thought they worked so hard this year to come so far,” coach John Pawlowski said. “Look at where we were … I’m just really proud of this team.”
With pride, though, came the definite frustration that is mandatory for a team that ends its season with a loss. It certainly didn’t make things easier after Alabama won the Georgia Tech regional Monday night, a win that would have set up an Auburn-Alabama Super Regional at Plainsman Park this weekend.
Instead, it’s Clemson that will advance to its ninth Super Regional in the past 12 years and face the Crimson Tide.
“There’s probably going to be just one team happy with their season,” Pawlowski said. “That’s the team that won the National Championship.”
Pitching, as was displayed in the early innings, wasn’t going to win Monday night’s game – a winner-take-all matchup spawned by Creede Simpson’s improbable ninth-inning, three-run home run Sunday night. It was hits like Simpson’s—minus the drama, of course—that were going to thrive in a game between teams with two battered bullpens.
Auburn didn’t have enough of them. Clemson had plenty.
Auburn left the bases loaded twice and a total of 12 runners stranded. It had a hit in every inning on its way to 18, the most it rapped all throughout the Regional, yet it finished with just seven runs.
Clemson, meanwhile, used its 14 hits efficiently, seemingly jumping on every opportunity one of Auburn’s six pitchers presented.
“It hurt us,” McElroy said, “but I never thought we were out of the game.”
Clemson did some severe damage early against right-hander Jon Luke Jacobs, who hadn’t started a game in nearly two months. Kyle Parker, who was drafted 26th overall by the Colorado Rockies during the seventh inning, ripped a three-run home run in the first and Clemson put its first two runners on base to chase Jacobs in the second.
Three ended up scoring, and Auburn was down 6-0.
“We just never really got off to a good start,” said Pawlowski, whose team surrendered eight first-inning runs over the five regional games. “Against good teams, it’s tough to come back.”
Even Auburn’s biggest inning ended bitterly, when three runs in the second could have easily been more.
With the bases loaded following RBI singles from Justin Bryant and Justin Fradejas and a run-scoring walk by Dan Gamache, Brian Fletcher and Hunter Morris, the three-four hitters who combined for 151 RBI heading into Monday’s game, both went down on bad outs.
Morris, the SEC player of the Year who is all but assured to be selected today in the MLB Draft, went 0-for-5 in his final game at Auburn.
“Clemson did a good job,” Pawlowski said. “They made some great pitches.”
There was a rally-in-the-making in nearly every inning thereafter, but unconventional double plays in the sixth, seventh and eighth killed any momentum Auburn was trying to muster.
Frustration bubbled over heading into the ninth inning, shortly after a controversial call in right field kick-started another blown opportunity.
With Gamache on second after a leadoff double, Fletcher hit a drive to right field that sailed over Parker’s head and appeared to land in fair territory. First base umpire Randy Bruns ruled the ball foul and Fletcher ultimately struck out. Morris followed by lining into a double play.
In between innings, home plate umpire Kelly Gonzales ejected pitching coach Scott Foxhall. Foxhall reacted by sprinting out toward first base and chewing out Bruns before he was corralled by Pawlowski minutes later.
“I don’t think it was anything other than the frustration of the game,” Pawlowski said. “He’s competitive like we all are.”
The competitiveness didn’t go away when Auburn trailed heading into its final at-bat, off the heels of Clemson’s sixth run-scoring inning of the game. Auburn loaded the bases with one out on reliever Kevin Brady, only to squander its final rally with a Tony Caldwell strikeout and a Trent Mummey groundout to Shaffer.
The game was lost, but optimism was not.
“This year gave all of us young guys some hope,” said McElroy, who capped his sophomore season with a solo home run in the seventh. “We know that everyone will have to come together and everyone’s going to have to step up.”
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