Frelick, Gold homer twice, Eagles open series with 8-2 win
BC won its third straight, cruising past Auburn on Friday night.
Before Friday night’s series opener against Auburn, Boston College baseball head coach Mike Gambino described it as a “super-regional type weekend between two top teams at a great ballpark.”
The 18th-ranked Eagles didn’t shy away from the big stakes. Sal Frelick and Luke Gold each hit two home runs, Mason Pelio outdueled fellow top draft prospect Richard Fitts, and they rolled to a convincing 8-2 series-opening win at Plainsman Park.
Gold, a sophomore who has now registered multi-hit games in six of his last seven games, opened the scoring with a two-run shot to left field off of Fitts in the second inning. He took two balls before swinging for the fences, setting a trend that would continue as the game went on against the Tigers’ ace.
Fitts, a 6-foot-3 righthander pegged as a top-15 talent in the upcoming MLB Draft, threw 90 pitches over five innings and was charged with five runs—all earned—on seven hits. In the third, Frelick capitalized on a 1-0 fastball that caught too much of the plate and launched it 390 feet to right field where it landed on top of Auburn’s new development center.
Fitts settled in, retiring six straight, but when Frelick came up again in the fifth it was a similar story. Auburn’s starter fell behind him 2-0 and then left a fastball up in the zone, which Frelick clubbed over the right field fence. That stretched the lead to 4-0, but the Eagles potent lineup wasn’t done. Cody Morissette and Brian Dempsey hit back-to-back doubles to tack on another run, but Dempsey was thrown out trying to stretch it to a triple to end the inning. Morissette finished with a pair of doubles in his second consecutive multi-hit game after being mired in a 1-for-18 slump.
In the top of the sixth, it was more of the same against Tigers’ reliever Brooks Fuller. Gold greeted him with his second home run of the game, this time a solo shot down the left field line. The sophomore is 13-for-33 (.394) on the year with nine extra-base hits and a team-high 13 RBIs.
Frelick and Gold became the first Eagles’ teammates to both have multi-homer games since Mickey Wiswall and Andrew Lawrence combined for five total vs. Bryant in 2009 (h/t Brendan Flynn). If you thought Gold’s numbers were ridiculous to start the season, just consider Frelick’s. The junior is rising on draft boards thanks to a torrid 17-for-36 (.472) start that features four doubles, three homers, and an eight-game hitting streak.
Meanwhile, Pelio was working in and out of trouble but keeping Auburn’s bats at bay. The Tigers entered with the national lead in a plethora of offensive categories but they couldn’t break through against BC’s ace. Pelio scattered four hits and three walks over 5 2/3 scoreless innings, eventually giving way to Joey Walsh with two runners on base in the sixth. Walsh—who registered the save against Rhode Island earlier in the week—kept Pelio’s line scoreless with a big strikeout.
The Eagles tacked on two insurance runs against Fuller in the seventh via groundouts from Morissette and Dempsey—who also registered a multi-hit game—while Auburn got two back against Walsh in the eighth. Bryson Ware had a sacrifice fly and Kason Howell drove in a run with a single for the Tigers. It was too late for a comeback effort, though, and Walsh finished off the three-inning save by stranding a pair of runners in the ninth.
It was a comfortable series-opening win for BC, who has now scored five or more runs in each of its seven wins. Unlike some of its previous victories, though, the offense was almost exclusively concentrated around the heart of the order. The 7-8-9-1 hitters all finished hitless, a rare occurrence in the early goings of this season, so it’ll be interesting to see how they bounce back in Saturday’s rematch.
"This is what I expected from Boston College, but not what I expected from us," Auburn’s head coach Butch Thompson said after the game, per The Auburn Plainsman. "We hit it to their outfield in some of our good at-bats, and they hit it over our outfield in their good at-bats."
UP NEXT
Saturday’s game is set for a 3 p.m. ET first pitch. Emmet Sheehan (2-0, 1.50 ERA) is scheduled to start for the Eagles and he’ll face Auburn’s Mason Barnett (0-0, 1.69 ERA). There doesn’t seem to be a stream for the second game in a row.
Images by Olivia Ramirez/AU Athletics, Courtesy of Boston College Athletics