AUBURN | Back in January as preseason practice got underway, there was plenty of excitement and anticipation for the 2021 season.

The Tigers returned 79 percent of the hits and 66 percent of the innings pitched from a year ago. Seniors Jack Owen and Cody Greenhill were two of eight SEC pitchers with a career ERA of less than 4.00 with over 100 innings pitched.

But many of the players Auburn was counting on, particularly in the pitching staff, had their seasons derailed due to injuries. The Tigers finished 25-27 with Tuesday night’s 7-4 loss to Ole Miss in the first round of the SEC Tournament.

“Just tough years in the league before as an assistant coach, as a pitching coach, even as a head coach. I remember my first season here coming in just two or three months to prepare for a season,” said Butch Thompson reflecting on a tough 2021.

"This one was different. I thought we had a lot of pieces. I just thought the injuries -- but if you look around the entire league, so many of our teams -- I don't know if it's because of the shortened year, whatever, we've all had challenges. Now is not the time to talk about all of those.”

The cracks started forming even before the first game when Owen dislocated a finger in his throwing hand a couple of weeks before the opener. He wouldn’t pitch until a month into the season and wouldn’t earn a win until April 16, nearly a month later.

After coming into the season with a career 9-5 record and 3.76 ERA, Owen finished 2021 2-5 with a 5.47 ERA.

Greenhill’s season was also derailed by a series of injuries. In his second start of the season against Oklahoma, Greenhill left the game early with a foot injury. He missed a couple of weeks and the foot continued to bother him throughout the rest of the season as he struggled to get his fastball over 90 mph after hitting 93-94 pre-injury.

After Bull moved back to the bullpen to shore up AU’s biggest problem area, shoulder issues cropped up due to overcompensating for the foot injury. Greenhill threw just 5.1 innings over the final 18 games.

Greenhill, who didn’t allow an earned run in 12.2 innings last year and came into the season with a 2.59 career ERA, finished 2021 with a 3.28 ERA.

The third projected starter coming into the season, Richard Fitts, suffered the same foot injury as Greenhill in his third start of the season. The star of preseason, who was garnering 1st-round draft mentions and hitting the upper 90’s on his fastball, didn’t pick up a win until his final start of the season at Missouri. Fitts, who was 1-0 with a 2.77 ERA in six appearances last year, ended 2021 1-3 with a 5.88 ERA.

Sophomore Hayden Mullins got off to a great start and looked to be an emerging talent in AU’s bullpen. In his first six appearances, the left-hander was 2-0 with a 0.82 ERA and 19 strikeouts in 11.0 innings. But he pitched just 0.1 innings the final 37 games due to a forearm injury.

Another top reliever, junior Carson Skipper, missed more than three weeks with an oblique injury. He had a 0.00 ERA in 5.2 innings with six strikeouts before the injury. He returned to go 0-2 with 7.81 ERA over the next nine appearances before finally finding his form over the last two and a half weeks, going 2-0 with a 2.40 ERA and two saves over his final five appearances.

Peyton Glavine was having the best stretch of his career before being injured. The junior left-hander allowed just four earned runs over 15.0 innings, a 2.40 ERA, in seven appearances from March 26 to April 30. He missed the TAMU series and was knocked around for three runs without recording an out when he returned against Missouri.

Injuries also hit Auburn’s position players, particularly Judd Ward. The senior was off to a great start hitting .375 with two home runs and six RBI in the first seven games. After running into the outfield wall and injuring his shoulder against Baylor Feb. 27, Ward hit just .179 with two home runs and 11 RBI over his final 38 games.

Another senior, Steven Williams, was lost for the season after being hit in the face in the final series against Missouri May 20. Auburn was able to clinch the final spot in the SEC Tournament the next day but knew it would be without the player that had helped carry the team to the 2019 College World Series and was tied for 7th all-time in career home runs for the entire 2021 postseason.

But even with all that, Auburn was able to overcome a 3-16 start to conference play and a 6-14 record in conference games decided by two runs or less, to win seven of its final 11 games and finish 10-20, beating out Texas A&M and Missouri for the final spot in Hoover.

Instead of a disappointment, the resilience and toughness it took for this team to overcome the injuries and still make it into the postseason can be viewed as a success.

“I thought it was one of the best efforts I've seen out of young people,” said Thompson. “Every time I thought this group of guys may stop or pause or just think it's too much, they kind of woke back up. I kind of feel the same way if we were able to continue to play, but when you got to a part of the season, and we put ourselves in position to where you've got to perform.

“Tonight was one of those nights, and so it comes to an end. The resilience kind of kept me going with the ball club. Watching those four infielders want to continue to play at a high level kept me going. Seeing those two young catchers, Dyal and LaRue, get better kept me going. Seeing Fitts last week as the pitcher of the week kind of keeps you going when they could have stopped along the way.

“So I'm appreciative. A lot of these guys like a Ryan Bliss and a Woley come to our program and has raised our bar and our expectations. When we have a moment like this and we're sitting 2-13 in the league at the halfway point, for them to have a winning record in the second half and continue to play for us says a lot about what they've done to raise our expectations and says what quality people they are and how they were raised by how they finished.”