Auburn baseball sees two starting pitchers excel in Friday's scrimmage

The Auburn Tigers baseball team faced off against each other last night, and Auburn Daily was in attendance. Let's talk about what you need to know from the squad game. 

Starting pitchers dominated

Your two starters were Chase Allsup (2nd team, Orange) vs Joseph Gonzalez (1st team, Blue) in what pitching coach Everett Teaford told us on Friday was their last tune up prior to Opening Day. The goal was five innings and/or seventy pitches, and both guys hit it. 

Both pitchers started off with clean sheets, not allowing hits until the third. Gonzalez ended up getting charged for three runs thanks to a tough sequence against the heart of the Auburn lineup. Catcher Ike Irish hit a first pitch single, advanced to third on a hit and run on a first pitch Bobby Pierce base hit, and then Cooper McMurray went down and golfed a two-strike changeup for a homer to right. 

But outside of that sequence - which, like head coach Butch Thompson constantly talks about, came back to timely hitting in bunches - Gonzalez mostly dominated with his sinker/slider combo. Gonzo sat right around 89-90 with the two-seam fastball, showing two different version of the pitch - a mostly lateral-moving version, getting almost a foot and a half of horizontal movement, and a version that traded some horizontal movement for more vertical drop. Think of these as more of a true two-seam fastball versus a sinker, but he mixed and matched these on his own, with the pitch calling just asking for "two-seam fastball" and him deciding which version he wanted to throw based on situation and batter. 

(Note: Teaford, who was operating the PitchCom device from the dugout for both pitchers, occasionally called for a four-seam fastball from Gonzalez and in retrospect, this may have been a cue to throw a sinker versus Gonzo's traditional two-seam. Gotta check on that.) 

Gonzo mixed in a low-to-mid 80s slider with late movement and a low-80s changeup that's a nice change of pace, but one in which he also shook off more than I expected, indicating he may not fully trust the pitch. 

Allsup flashed his usual premium velocity, sitting around 95 mph for the first few innings, but with better command and control than last season. The four-seam fastball showed good carry up in the zone, with location-adjusted Trackman numbers that should put it right around MLB average amounts of induced vertical break (the ability to resist gravity on the way to the plate). His slider has adjusted to more of a gyro slider, meaning that the spin of the ball mimics that of a bullet and subsequently doesn't impact the movement of the ball, allowing gravity to do the work. He threw a firm changeup in the upper-80s that's useful as a change of pace, as well as a high-70s curveball. My biggest takeaways from the secondaries was Allsup's improved ability to land the curveball low in the zone for a strike - last season it was more of a chase pitch, but consistently being able to bring it into the zone will allow the entire arsenal to play up, since opposing batters can't sit fastball if the slider and curveball can both be thrown for a strike. 

Allsup, who went five scoreless innings to be awarded the "Player of the Game" title belt, showed some signs of fatigue as we got to the fifth. His fastball velocity dropped to 92-93 and he started missing more outside with the pitch, but he maintained the competitiveness and got out of the fifth unscathed. It feels like his effective limit's going to be 60-70 pitches as we enter the season, with Friday night's effort finishing around 76 or so. 

The defense has versatility, but some decisions to still be made 

There's some defensive positions that are seemingly locked - Chris Stanfield in centerfield, Bobby Peirce in right, and Miami of Ohio transfer Cooper Weiss at shortstop.