It hasn't been the start to the 2026 baseball season that Alabama fans were hoping for. While the 4-1 record looks fine on the surface, it's how the Crimson Tide has arrived at that mark that has plenty sounding the alarm bells after just five games.
Alabama had a disappointing season-opener, dropping a game to Washington State before bouncing back with consecutive dominant wins to earn the series victory.
Nothing that happened during the Tide's two midweek contests against Samford and Alabama State did much to inspire confidence. Alabama had a comeback win over Samford, 3-2, on Tuesday, and then beat Alabama State 2-1 on Wednesday.
It was the aftermath of the Alabama State win that led Rob Vaughn to express his disappointment with a Nick Saban-coded message.
"I talked to our guys, winning baseball games is hard, but there's a standard to what it means to play at Alabama, and we didn't live up to that tonight," Vaughn said. "Credit Alabama State. Man, they gave us all we can handle. We didn't play the game the right way. We didn't play hard, and we're going to fix that, I can promise you. Today just simply was short of our standard."
Rob Vaughn says Alabama is not playing up to the standard
Scoring five total runs in two mid-week games is certainly cause for alarm. That's especially true of the game against Alabama State, in which the Crimson Tide did not collect a single RBI hit.
Alabama's two runs came on an error and a passed ball. Other than that, the Hornets shut out the Tide's bats and held them to just five hits.
Alabama's pitching staff was expected to be the real question mark, again, and it certainly seemed that way in the season-opening loss to Washington State. But the offense was supposed to be able to mask the majority of those issues. That's just not happening early in the season.
Fortunately, it's early. And baseball, more than any other game, has significant highs and lows that every team goes through. If Alabama was destined for an offensive slump, it's better to get it out of the way early.
Vaughn will look to get his team on track this weekend with a three-game home series against Rhode Island.