Errors Continue to Doom Alabama Baseball as Tennnessee Sweeps Doubleheader

Alabama entered Friday with the opportunity to make a statement.

The No. 13 Crimson Tide appeared primed to win a series over Tennessee, bringing an end to its recent slump and likely jumping back into the top 10 of the national polls. Instead, it dropped two embarrassing games to the Volunteers, getting outscored a combined 21-4 while committing five errors to lose the series.

"This has been about as nightmarish of an outing, really two outings, as you can imagine," play-by-play broadcaster Cruz Martin said on-air, reflecting on Alabama's day.

Game One — Tennessee 10, Alabama 0

The Crimson Tide appeared lifeless in the afternoon's opener. The story of the game was Tennessee starter Tegan Kuhns, who threw an eight-inning shutout, allowing just three hits. Kuhns struck out nine batters, and Alabama went 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position.

Zane Adams was shaky for the Crimson Tide on the mound, giving up five earned runs over 5.1 innings. Trent Grindlinger hit a solo home run in the second to start the scoring, and the Volunteers added three runs in a four-hit third inning.

The Crimson Tide got just one runner on over the final four innings, courtesy of a Brady Neal single. Kuhns got better as the game progressed, and was simply undeniable in what was the best start of his career.

While it had no impact on the game's result, Alabama committed two errors. The first, a throwing error from the usually sound Brennan Holt, brought in an unearned run in the sixth. The second came an inning later on an errant throw from Andrew Purdy, which led to two more unearned runs.

The errors were far from over.

Game Two — Tennessee 11, Alabama 4

Tennessee's pitching handed Thursday's series-opener to Alabama on a silver platter. With 16 free passes allowed, it was going to be extremely difficult for the Crimson Tide to lose that game. The first game on Friday fell on the other end of the spectrum — it would have been extremely difficult for Alabama to overcome Kuhns' superb performance and win, regardless of errors.

Pitching was not the story of the rubber match. Both staffs were relatively even, with no real dominance or poor play on either side.

The game was knotted at one after three innings. Blaine Brown drove in Tennessee's run with an RBI single before Peyton Steele tied it up with his second home run of the season. Team captain Will Plattner put the Crimson Tide ahead in the fourth, and the Volunteers immediately answered with another Grindlinger solo home run.

Alabama took another lead in the fifth, as Jason Torres hit his second home run of SEC play, and the Crimson Tide finally kept Tennessee off the board as freshman Myles Upchurch settled in on the mound. Upchurch was solid through the first five innings, but the sixth is where the entire game flipped.

Alabama took the field for the bottom of the sixth with a 3-2 lead.

It would leave in a 9-3 hole.

Stone Lawless led off the frame with what should have been a routine 5-3 groundout, but Torres missed the throw to first. Lawless moved to second on the play. The next batter, Reese Chapman, then laid down a sac bunt. It was not a good one, going directly to Upchurch, who had the opportunity to throw to Torres to put out Lawless.

Instead, he missed too. The ball got away, allowing Lawless to come home to tie the game. That marked the end of the freshman's day, as Ashton Crowther was brought in looking to continue his dominant stretch of play on Sundays.

The streak came to an end, as Crowther would not make it out of the inning. He picked up the first out on a sacrifice bunt, but then gave up a two-run homer to Brown to give Tennessee a lead it would not relinquish. Purdy then muffed a throw at first that would have been the second out for the third error of the inning, which led to four more unearned runs scoring.

"The thing that we talked about before this week is, when the mistake happens, can you minimize it? Can you hold it down to one?" head coach Rob Vaughn said. "You get that leadoff there, and you go get the next guy that's trying to give us an out on a bunt. You take the out on a bunt. If you go do some of that stuff, they might tie the game there, maybe they go up one, but it doesn't get messy. And instead we go error, error, sac, homer, error, and it just opened up a shot for a big inning."

Brown hit another home run in the seventh for some unneeded insurance. Alabama and Tennessee each put up one run in the eighth, before the Crimson Tide was put down 1-2-3 in the ninth to end the series.

Alabama has now committed 67 errors on the season, and 23 over the last 11 games. After committing five in an ugly Tuesday night loss to UAB, there was simply no sign of urgency or improvement, and the result was the loss of a series the Crimson Tide should have won.

"I know it's easy to look and say, 'Hey, we kick the ball around. We don't work on it,'" Vaughn said of the errors. "But we work on it a whole, whole lot. We've got to get a lot better at it, so we're going to put a heavy emphasis on that as well this week."

Alabama has a whole week off with the series concluded on Friday and no midweek game coming up. The team will be back at home next weekend for its third-to-last series of the season against Vanderbilt.

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