Tyler Fay to Start for Alabama Baseball in SEC Tournament Opener Against Missouri

TUSCALOOSA, Ala.— According to Alabama baseball coach Rob Vaughn, it will be all hands on deck from a pitching perspective as the Crimson Tide vies to make a run in this week's SEC Tournament. For the first game in Hoover on Tuesday morning, righty Tyler Fay will start on the mound.

No. 23 Alabama (40-15, 16-14 SEC) plays 16-seed Missouri (16-38, 3-27 SEC) for the fourth time this season when it takes the field as the No. 9 seed in the tournament at the Hoover Met on Tuesday. First pitch will be early. It's scheduled for 9:30 a.m. CT.

"I think you've just gotta take it a game at a time in a single elimination thing," Vaughn said Monday. "You have guys waiting in the wings for Thursday, Friday, Saturday, but you've got to get to Thursday, Friday, Saturday... We will exhaust all options to go beat Missouri tomorrow."

Fay made his first start of the season against Mississippi State on April 13. Since then, he has remained a part of the weekend rotation, most recently pitching this past Thursday at Florida. He got the ball first in April for the home regular season series against Missouri.

He gave up five runs in the first inning of that April 24 game, but soft contact and fielding miscues contributed heavily to that damage, and he settled in after that. Alabama won the game; Fay ended up taking a 55-pitch count into the sixth inning.

Vaughn did not name a starter for a potential Wednesday matchup with No. 8-seed Tennessee, implying it would be matchup-based as opposed to trotting out the rotation in order. The new single elimination format changes how games are managed because they're all win-or-die in nature.

"These times of year are so much fun," he said. "There's somebody in that bullpen that has had a bad year... that is going to have the opportunity to do something really special down the stretch here. I've seen it in all my years."

Fay started the year in the bullpen, where he struggled before turning over a new leaf as a starting arm. He has a 5.15 earned run average across six starts and 43.2 overall innings. Missouri will pitch right-hander Sam Horn, a Tigers football quarterback whom Vaughn does not take lightly.

"Sam Horn, number one, is good," Vaughn said when addressing challenges presented by the Tigers. "He's talented. Talented arm, came back off injuries, [he's] just kind of thrown the ball better and better the more he's thrown."

Alabama had options in terms of players it could have sent out for Tuesday's contest, including former weekend starter Bobby Alcock, who has not pitched since the Georgia series earlier this month. Fay is set to pitch on what generally equates to shorter rest for a collegiate starter (five days).

If the Crimson Tide wins against Missouri again (it swept the regular season meetings), the decision to throw Fay out of the gate (instead of someone like Alcock, JT Blackwood or Aeden Finateri) creates flexibility for how Alabama can sort out its pitching situation on Wednesday.

Due to the new SEC Tournament format, should the Tigers pull the upset, pitching rest will be a moot point for Alabama, as its next game action would be in the NCAA Tournament during regionals.