It’s a long season–you can’t let your emotions get too high or too low. You can’t win every game. But the great thing about baseball is that you don’t have to wait long to get another chance.
Clichés aside, the No. 26 Stanford baseball team needs to start winning some games.
Yes, the Cardinal (16-12, 3-6 Pac-10) has been playing the best teams in the nation, and yes, the games have been close–but close (to use another cliché) only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. If Stanford wants to host an NCAA regional playoff, it needs to find a way to turn those tough, one-run losses into wins.
That task will be easier said than done this weekend, when No. 11 UCLA (19-12, 9-3) pays a visit to the Farm for a three-game series that starts Thursday night, a day earlier than usual, due to the Easter holiday.
Already in a prolonged slump, the Cardinal has the unenviable job of facing what may be the most talented pitching staff in college baseball.
The Bruins will trot out their usual trio of righthanders: Gerrit Cole on Friday, Trevor Bauer on Saturday and Adam Plutko on Sunday. The rotation’s stats speak to UCLA’s dominance on the mound, and none are more revealing than this: only Cole has an ERA above two, and his is still a stingy 2.22.
Who knows, maybe this is the challenge Stanford needs to wake up its bats.
“We just got to focus on getting baserunners; that’s what our coach preaches,” said sophomore centerfielder Jake Stewart, one of the few starters not mired in a slump. “Whether a walk or an error, just get on anyway we can.
“We might have to win a one-run game; it might not be getting six hits, we just got to get one hit and execute on bringing him home.”
If Stanford can find a way to scratch out a few runs, its pitching should give it a chance to win–provided it can outduel the Bruins’ solid starters.
Sophomore Mark Appel will take the mound Thursday night in an attempt to add a win to his 2-4 record this season. In his last start against Oregon State, the righthander tossed 6.2 innings of one-run baseball. However, Stanford lost 1-0.
The Friday start will go to junior Jordan Pries, who has allowed more than three earned runs just once all season.
On Saturday, head coach Mark Marquess is shaking up his staff and replacing struggling sophomore Dean McArdle with surging senior Danny Sandbrink, who has a 2.49 ERA, the second-best on the team.
With only five Pac-10 series remaining after this weekend, Stanford cannot afford to slip any further in the conference standings. These games are not must-win games, but a series victory would go a long way towards revitalizing a depressed team.
“It’s baseball, you’re going to struggle,” Stewart said. “It’s hard to win games when everyone struggles. We just got to stay positive and keep working every single day. We can’t focus on what happened the last couple weeks.”
And the last couple weeks have not been pretty for Stanford.
Since taking two games from Washington State the first week of April, the Cardinal has gone 4-5, losing two Pac-10 series along the way.
First was a trip to USC, where Stanford won the first game 8-1–but then the team-wide slump set in. The Cardinal lost the next two games 3-1 and 6-2.
After beating Pacific 3-1 in a midweek game, Stanford’s offense continued to struggle against Oregon State. The Cardinal bats couldn’t provide any support for Appel in the first game, losing 1-0. The Beavers then outgunned the Cardinal with excellent pitching and defense in the next two games, winning them 8-1 and 6-4 for a series sweep.
The Cardinal removed the taste of defeat with a 10-3 win over a less-than-stellar Santa Clara team on Tuesday, but the true challenge will be when the Bruins come to town this weekend.
First pitch for Thursday’s game between the Bruins and Cardinal is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. at Sunken Diamond.