After an offensive explosion in Saturday’s win overLouisville, the Crimson Tide returned to experiencing the same offensive woes it has all year long.Alabamarecorded five hits and struck out eight times in a 3-2 loss to Oral Roberts that fittingly ended with a strikeout.
“Offensively, we continue to struggle,” head coach Mitch Gaspard said. “To me, we’re not aggressive enough. We’re taking too many pitches and too many strikeouts. The offense creates energy and any time you’re not hitting, you leave yourself open for them to come back like that.”
The comeback came with two outs in the top of the ninth, asAlabamareliever Jake Hubbard allowed Oral Roberts designated hitter Chris Williams to hit a two-RBI single on a 0-2 count.
“I was trying to be too fine with my pitches sometimes,” Hubbard said. “They were calling outside a pretty good bit and we thought that was the go-to pitch, but he just got his bat out there at the end.
Hubbard continued, “We only needed one pitch. We beat him with the fastball two times and thought we would go back to it.”
Hubbard was in an unusual role in the save opportunity, a role normally taken by Ian Gardeck. Gaspard said Hubbard has been the most effective pitcher out of the bullpen, causing the change.
The blow dealt to the team after this loss was intensified after the progress that the team seemed to make in Saturday’s big win overLouisville.Alabamahad 11 hits against the Cardinals in scoring seven runs, all of which were earned.
“The whole point was to take the momentum from the win yesterday and take it today,” Gaspard said. “Give a lot of credit to [Oral Roberts starting pitcher Kurt Giller], he did a great job just like the rest of their guys. But, we’ve played enough of these quality teams to where we’ve got to start swinging the bat and create more to where you can put pressure on them.”
A veteran in theAlabamadugout is trying not to overreact to the continued offensive struggles.
“Every year I’ve been here, we’ve went through a skid at some point,” said Trey Pilkington, junior pitcher and starter of the game against Oral Roberts. “When we turn it around, it’s going to be great.”
Second baseman Kenny Roberts, in his first season atAlabama, was unable to hide his frustrations. Roberts said the team is not producing enough quality at-bats and is not hitting when good pitches come their way.
“It’s getting to the point where we don’t know what to do because we work so hard on our swings and mechanics and it’s just not there.”
Roberts also expressed frustration at the entire weekend.
“We should’ve went 3-0 this weekend,” Roberts said. “We should have beat EastCarolina, we did beatLouisvilleand we should have beat Oral Roberts.”
Roberts added, “If our offense [was] there like it was in the fall, we should have beat them 10-3.”
