Day 2 of the CWS went mostly as expected (Williams / WBR)
After a pair of upsets on day one, chalk prevailed in dramatic fashion on day two of the 2019 College World Series. No. 2 overall seed Vanderbilt and No. 6 overall seed Mississippi State got some clutch, late-inning hits to advance to set up a rematch of their SEC Tournament pitchers’ three and half weeks ago.
Vanderbilt got a pair of home runs from sophomore third baseman Austin Martin, including a go-ahead two-run to break a 1-1 tie in the bottom of the seventh inning, to beat Louisville by a score of 3-1 on Sunday afternoon. Mississippi State had a harder road to the winner’s bracket as they fell into a 2-0 hole in the second inning and struggled to get anything going offensively against Auburn’s pitching staff until the bottom of the ninth when a costly two-out throwing error by the Tigers allowed the Bulldogs to tie the game and eventually win it on a walk-off RBI single by nine-hole hitter Marshall Gilbert.
All four teams will return to the field on Tuesday. Auburn and Louisville will play an elimination game at 1:00 p.m. followed by Mississippi State-Vanderbilt at 6:00 p.m.
Key Performances:
Vanderbilt sophomore third baseman Austin Martin: 2-4, 2 runs scored, 3 runs batted in, solo home run in the 1st, two-run home run in the 7th
The hero of game on Sunday. The front-runner to be the preseason player of the year in college baseball next spring wasted little time introducing himself to Omaha, Nebraska. The 6-foot-nothing, 170-pound sophomore infielder barrelled up the first pitch he saw and planted it in the cheap seats in left field to lead off the bottom of the first inning and give the Commodores a 1-0 lead.
A heck of a way to get over any College World Series nerves, eh?
“I definitely did have jitters,” Martin said about standing in for his first at-bat. “I mean, I feel like everybody would, coming into this amazing environment. I just tried to keep it simple and tried to see the ball as well as possible.
“Usually you’ll see pitchers try to just get that first strike away so they can get into their rhythm, so I’m always ready for that first pitch.”
Martin’s first inning blast held up until the fifth inning when Louisville touched up Vanderbilt’s starter Drake Fellows (more on that to follow) for four straight hits to tie the game. Fortunately for Vandy, their superstar lead-off man had one more herculean swing in his red barrel. In the bottom of the seventh inning, Martin followed a one-out double by first baseman Julian Infante a go-ahead two-run blast to give his team the lead for good this time. Martin turn on a 1-0 pitch from Louisville reliever Bryan Hoeing and got just enough of it to clear the ‘375’ sign in left-center field.
“It was an off-speed pitch, so I had a little bit of extra time,” Martin said. “Coming into that, I actually talked to [second baseman Harrison Ray] and he was telling me that [Hoeing] was attacking in … I took his advice, took a couple steps off the plate — a couple inches away from the plate — and gave myself a little bit more room. I saw the spin early off my front shoulder and just tried to put the best swing I could put on it.”
Drake Fellows, Vanderbilt junior starting pitcher: 7.0 innings, one earned run, one walk, six strikeouts
While Martin was terrorizing everyone in red and black, Vanderbilt junior right-hander Drake Fellows was keeping a potent Louisville lineup in check. Fellows faced 30 batters over seven innings. He only went to a 3-ball count three times — once in first, once in the fourth, and once in the seventh — and struck out six as he needed just 98 pitches to record 21 outs.
“I feel like the plan was just to go out there and attack the hitters and get all my pitches over for strikes,” Fellows said. “The fastball command wasn’t really there last week, and I think that was just the plan of attack. Keep the location down, attack the zone, and not get too wild.
“The offense gave me a little bit of a boost, as well, with A-Mart’s two home runs. That gave me a little bit more cushion and made me a little more comfortable to just go out there and attack the hitters.”
Fellows generated 18 swinging strikes on the afternoon and finished with a 32.7% called strike/whiff rate, but it was his execution of pitches that helped him escape a bases-loaded, one-out jam in the top of the fifth after Louisville had just tied the game that proved to be the highlight of his outing. After the Cardinals strung together four straight hits against the Vandy righty, a meeting on the mound helped him reset against the heart of the order. He proceeded to induce a bloop shot in foul territory along the first base side against Tyler Fitzgerald, then a chopper from Alex Binelas to the left side for a 3-2 flip to first to end the inning without sustaining any further damage. He needed just five pitches to erase two hitters that had combined for 21 home runs and 123 RBI on the season.
“That’s a very difficult group of hitters he was facing,” Vanderbilt head coach Tim Corbin said. “Fitzgerald is a very good player and a very good hitter, and Binelas, he’s not a freshman. He doesn’t look like a freshman.
“I think it was the placement of his fastball. He got in on Fitzgerald and that was a big pop-up. Then is was just about location. The location of the pitch was key for him, and he was able to do that in a very tough situation … his demeanor stayed the same. It stays the same all the time. He’s a pretty flat-lined kid.”
Mississippi State’s lineup, one through nine, rallying for four runs in the bottom of the ninth
Trailing 4-1 entering the ninth inning, the Bulldogs had the top of their lineup due up and senior center fielder got the rallied started on the right foot with a double to the base of the wall in right on the first pitch he saw. Auburn went to staff ace Tanner Burns for the first relief appearance of the two-year career, but by the time he walked off the mound he was surrounded by a wave off dudes in all black uniforms after Mississippi State batted around to complete the comeback.
Burns struck out Jordan Westburg for the first out, but then walked Tanner Allen and gave up an RBI double to Elijah MacNamee to put the tying run in scoring position. Burns traded a run for an out by inducing a ground ball to short off the bat of sophomore slugger Justin Foscue. That made it 4-3 with MacNamee still standing on second base.
Burns got catcher Dustin Skelton to pound another ball into the turf, right at sophomore third baseman Edouard Julien. The kid who gave the Tigers the lead they were now protecting with a two-run moon shot in the top of the second inning and an RBI single in the top of the fourth had to make one routine throw to cap off a storybook night in Omaha. Instead, his dream turned into a nightmare. Julien hesitated, shuffled his feet, double pumped, and airmailed the throw over his first baseman’s glove. MacNamee came around to the tie the game and Skelton advanced to second to represent the winning run.
Auburn elected to intentionally walk Rowdey Jordan, then pinch-hitter Josh Hatcher beat out an infield single — again hit to Julien, because sports are cruel and the agony of defeat is exceeded only by the dread of victory slipping through your hands. This time Julien made an accurate throw, but it was late to get the speedy Hatcher and the bases were now loaded with two outs, in the bottom of the ninth, with jubilation waiting 90 feet away. Senior third baseman Marshall Gilbert made it a reality by sending the first pitch he saw from Burns back up the middle. Second baseman Ryan Bliss managed to cut it off, but it was just out of his reach to snag and make a game-saving throw. Instead the ball hit his glove, rolled away, and everyone in a Mississippi State dugout poured onto the field and sprinted toward Gilbert, who launched his helmet about 50 feet in the air.
“I was in awe of everybody that was able to get the job done before me,” Gilbert said. “It was incredible the fact that we could get to that point to where I was coming up to the plate. All of the at-bats prior to that I had kind of been a little off. Missed some pitches, but I kept getting encouragement from my teammates saying, ‘keep going, keep going, don’t quit.’
“My last at-bat, going up there, I knew he was going to have a good fastball. I knew they were going to keep him in the game and save it for me because I struggled with velocity against [closer Cody Greenhill] before that. I was looking to get the job done. Got on top and stayed short, something I’ve been doing all year.”