Auburn can’t get everything to go right together.

In what has been one of the worst runs through SEC play in Auburn baseball history with a 3-18 conference record and nine league games to play, the pitching was the problem, especially during the first half of the conference slate. At one point, Auburn had a team ERA in SEC games above nine, worst in the league by more than a full run.

It was pitching that head coach Butch Thompson deemed not “competitive” and forced Auburn’s offense to just try to keep up in order to have a chance to win. That was the story as Auburn lost five straight series to begin SEC play.

Ahead of playing Mississippi State in April, Thompson expressed that it was the beginning of Auburn’s postseason. It had to start playing like it was the postseason then in order to have a chance at making the actual postseason.

And Auburn’s pitching was actually much better. Auburn has pitched to a team ERA of 3.95 over the last two weeks.

“We went from non-competitive to competitive,” Thompson said Thursday. “We’re still getting heart broke a little bit but maybe that’s a step you gotta make to get on the right side of things.”

But Auburn still didn’t win.

Why? As soon as the pitching improved, the offense quickly faded off.

“We just haven’t met at the same time,” Thompson said.

Below is Auburn’s cumulative batting average progression over the course of the 2024 season. It has been a progressive drop since April 5, when Auburn was .288 after the first game of a series against Tennessee.

The team’s cumulative batting average dropped by about .020 during that time. That number appears small, but this late into the season, to cause a drop by tenths of a point and not hundredths of a point is significant, and takes a sustained stretch of quite poor production.

And that shows over Auburn’s last 10 games. The chart below displays Auburn’s batting average as a team in each individual game over its last 10 contests.

As a team, Auburn has hit below. 250 in six of the last 10 games. Four of those have been below .200. Three of those have been .100 or worse.

Over a stretch of four SEC consecutive games — the final two games of Auburn’s series against Mississippi State and the first two games of Auburn’s series against LSU where Auburn lost all four — Auburn as a team went 11-for-110.

That’s a .100 batting average as a team for a total of four games.

Some of the issues could be due to injury. During those 10 games, Auburn has not had Ike Irish, Bobby Peirce and Mason Maners all available the same time because of various ailments.

Some of that could be due to inexperience in the lineup during the crucible of the nation’s most difficult college baseball league, Thompson said.

“We had a starting lineup Saturday, not to make excuses, just protection for the guys now that we’ve taken on some of these injuries,” Thompson said. “These aren’t just guys. These are three everyday pieces for us, or expected to be everyday pieces and were everyday pieces. We had five guys in the lineup with less than 10 RBIs. Six guys with less than 100 at-bats for the entire season. It’s like when we get one thing going, we’ve had a challenge here. And when the challenge gets better here then we’ve created a new challenge.”

That, Thompson said, is why Auburn has still failed to win a single SEC series.

Irish is Auburn’s best player. Thompson expects him back in some capacity for this weekend’s series against Ole Miss beginning Friday night at Plainsman Park. But Irish also went 0-6 in those aforementioned final two games against Mississippi State.

Regardless, getting him back should be a boost. Irish only has one hit in his last 17 at-bats, but still is second on the team in batting average, home runs and runs batted in.

“The injuries, positionally, it was horrible timing for that to happen,” Thompson said. “I’m still fighting for three weekends for us to play our best baseball. The positive has been getting all these young guys some playing time.”

Without Irish and others expected to play a large role this season in the lineup, Auburn has turned to a significant number of freshmen or other newcomers.

Over the last 10 games, nine players who were not on the team last season have made the starting lineup.

Every freshman position player has played this season. Four of the five freshman position players — Eric Guevara, Cale Stricklin, Cade Belyeu and Cole Edwards — have made starts. Three of them — Guevara, Stricklin and Belyeu — have started more than 10 games each.

Belyeu has been especially excellent at the plate as a freshman. He is hitting .304 and is second on the team in on-base-percentage among those with more than 10 games played. Guevara has shown flashes of potential still only about seven months after an ACL injury and Thompson has been pleased with Stricklin, especially as he’s been the one catching behind the plate as the pitching staff has improved.

Maybe it hasn’t led to a lot of results right now. These young players are ahead of schedule. The situation of this season has forced that upon them. In the long run, Thompson believes, that may work out to his, and their, benefit.

“Some of this will pay dividends at some point down the road,” Thompson said. “We found some anchors to hold on in some of these young guys to get experience may before they were supposed to. That will help us at some point. Hopefully, it’s now. But nonetheless, whenever we get there, that will help us transition to get ready for next year.”

Matt Cohen covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @Matt_Cohen_ or email him at [email protected]