Causey tosses a 6.2 IP, 8 K gem, Tennessee baseball rides its winning wave with 11-3 victory in SEC opener against Crimson Tide

That’s 17-straight wins — second-best in program history

Vols’ starter and Alabama native AJ Causey Gave up back-to-back home runs in the bottom of the first inning but didn’t allow another run through the rest of his outing. Dylan Dreiling, Blake Burke and Kaveres Tears each left the yard with home runs in Tennessee’s 11-3, firecracker-like win over the Alabama Crimson Tide to start conference play.

UT took a one-zip lead to start the game, with some help from Tide starter Ben Hess. Hess, who had allowed 11 walks in his five starts prior to Friday’s appearance, got Vols’ lead-off man Christian Moore out on a first-pitch pop up to the shortstop, gave up a base hit to Burke two pitches later and then handed out free passes to three of the next four batters (two of which came with two outs).

The third walk went to Robin Villeneuve, who started at DH and hit sixth Friday, and with the bases full, Villeneuve’s full-count freebie pushed Burke across home plate.

Hess got shortstop Dean Curley out on a backwards K to end the inning, which stranded the three men on base and got Hess out of the mess.

Even though Causey served up the two consecutive home runs in Bama’s home half of the first, I’d call the half frame a win for Causey given all three outs came via swinging strikeouts. The first one came on three pitches against Tide third baseman Gage Miller, who is tied for ninth in the NCAA with a .478 batting average. Miller finished the game 0-4.

Here’s the final out of the inning when Causey caught grad-student William Hamiter, who started at DH in just his sixth appearance of the year, with something gnarly — a changeup is my guess — Thanks for the score-bug pitch speed, SEC Network.

Neither offense produced a run in the second inning. Hess cruised and struck out Hunter Ensley and Moore, while Causey had to strike his way out of some traffic on the bases. Two singles and a walk had Alabama with three men on and looking to stretch out its 2-1 lead. But Causey got another UA hitter flailing to end the inning without surrendering a run. Another inning, another three strikeouts for AJ.

Once the Tennessee hitters got their second crack at Hess, the bats started cracking. Billy Amick worked a one-out, full-count walk, and Dylan Dreiling hit his sixth home run in his last eight games after hitting just one in his first 10 appearances.

Dreiling absolutely hammered this ball over the fence, past the seats in right field and straight out of the stadium. Per Trackman, the system UT baseball uses to measure hitting metrics, the distance of the blast couldn’t be determined. 30-degree launch angle and 108 MPH off the bat.

Once the going-on-star-status sophomore’s two-run dinger put Tennessee ahead, the Vols blew the game open. Counting those two, third-inning runs, UT plated nine scores over four-straight frames.

After Hess struck out the first two hitters in the T4, Moore got hit by a pitch, and then Burke put a pair of RBIs up with his seventh long ball this season, another bomb to right field. Trackman got the distance on this one — 435 feet — plus a laser-beam like 18-degree launch angle and a ticket for reckless driving with a 112-MPH exit velocity:

A Dreiling single and a full-count walk drawn by Curley set up Cannon Peebles for a two-out, run-scoring base hit. Peebles stole second, and with two men on, Dalton Bargo cleared the bases with a pinch-hit double to right-center.

Tears extended his hit streak to 17 games with his two-run home run in the sixth. Tears led the team in home runs earlier in the season — he’s tied for third now with six — and he’s still leading the team in batting average at .414, despite going just 1-4 in the game. Another home run that went 400-plus feet and left the bat at over 100 MPH:

While the offense did what it does, Causey did what he does. And the defense continued to look impressive. Amick showed off the glove and the arm with this play off a bouncing shot the line to end the fourth:

And Curley made a SportsCenter-worthy play in the sixth, turning a woulda-been infield hit into an out — no glove necessary:

The offense added one more run in the eighth, while Andrew Behnke and Aaron Combs combined for the final 2.1 IP and allowed 1 R, 1 H and 2 BB (all charged to Combs).

Causey’s final stat line in his reunion with his home state: 6.2 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 8 Ks on 111 pitches (76 strikes).

I’m sure we’ll see Drew Beam tomorrow for game two, which starts at 8 PM EST.