Friday night has suddenly become fright night for Tennessee’s baseball team.
The No. 4 Volunteers had a second straight undesirable outing from starting pitcher AJ Causey and fell to Auburn 9-5 in the series opener before a crowd of 5,119 inside Plainsman Park. The transfer from Jacksonville State allowed eight runs on eight hits against the Tigers while only recording four outs.
Causey took a 5-0 record and a 1.91 earned run average into last weekend’s series opener against Georgia at Lindsey Nelson Stadium, which wound up being a 16-2 Bulldogs romp in seven innings, but he is now 5-2 with an ERA of 5.35.
The Vols dropped to 24-6 overall and to 5-5 in Southeastern Conference play with their sixth consecutive loss at Auburn, while the Tigers improved to 18-11 and 2-8. Auburn’s four SEC series so far have come against No. 7 Vanderbilt, No. 1 Arkansas, No. 3 Texas A&M and the No. 4 Vols.
Tennessee opened the game with doubles by Christian Moore and Blake Burke to take a 1-0 lead, and a Kavares Tears one-out home run made it 3-0. Causey struck out the first two batters he faced, but the Tigers then produced five runs on five hits, getting homers from Ike Irish and Cade Belyeu.