Alabama Baseball Puts on a Clinic in 10-1 Victory

The Alabama Crimson Tide baseball team defeated the Samford Bulldogs 10-1 on Tuesday at Sewell Thomas Stadium. Freshman pitcher Ben Hess got the start and helped the Tide defense get off to a strong start while the bats struggled to get going.

Hess pitched until midway through the top of the fourth inning before being pulled in favor of fellow freshman Braylon Myers with just one-out and the bases loaded. His night ended with three strikeouts and four hits on 16 batters faced and a 5.56 ERA. Myers quickly got the Tide out of that jam and retired the Samford batters without giving up a run.

After three innings of going three up, three down, the Tide offense came to life in the bottom of the fourth inning. Bryce Eblin got on base with one out before advancing to second on a wild pitch after Zane Denton lined out for the second one. William Hamiter then proceeded to send a shot up centerfield for a single that brought Eblin home to get the scoring going.

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The Tide thrived in that two out scenario. Five more Alabama batters came out in the bottom of the fourth and they brought home three more runs. Two of those RBIs came from Drew Williamson, one from Andrew Pinckney.

In the top of the fifth, Myers was replaced on the mound by Junior Jake Leger after giving up Samford’s first run of the evening. Myers’s just over one inning of pitching was enough to get him credited with the win, his second in his career in Tuscaloosa.

The Tide blew the game wide open in the bottom of the fifth inning. The scoring got started with a Denton double that sent Eblin home. Then, Hamiter took the top off with a three-run homer to right centerfield to make the score 8-1.

“It’s good to have this guy here to my left back, that’s for sure,” assistant coach Jason Jackson said after the game while gesturing to Hamiter. Hamiter suffered a broken foot in late February and was out of the lineup until April 1^st. Since returning, he’s had 8 RBIs and been on base five times.

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“It felt real good,” Hamiter said of the bomb. “Having the teammates behind me in the dugout, that gives you all the confidence.”

Alabama rotated in two more pitchers throughout the rest of the game, freshman Luke Holman and junior Brayden Gainey. Leger, Holman, and Gainey managed to not give up a single hit.

“We got a lot of young guys in the game,” Jackson said. “They work their tails off. We haven’t had a chance to get them in games on the weekends, so we went into tonight really wanting to make sure those guys got some work because they’re really working hard and they’re getting better and they’re gonna be big pieces for us we think.”

The 10-1 victory is the Tide’s fifth in their last six outings. The team struggled in spurts early in the season, but seems to be showing improvement and hitting their stride here in April. Jackson said he’s been very happy with the progress the team is making.

“We’ve put some more crooked numbers up on the scoreboard and I think we’ve started to figure out where some guys fit with their roles in the bullpen,” Jackson said. “We’ve got a lot of talented arms but I think we’ve started to figure out who fits where a little bit better.”

The Tide will hope to carry that momentum and progress into Oxford, Mississippi this weekend for a tough three game away series against Ole Miss.