In a
nutshell
Stanford 9, San Jose State
1
San Jose State (25-19):
010 000 000
Stanford
(26-15-2):
000 315 00x
The heroes: Junior righty Austin Yount allowed a sac fly RBI in the second. The rest of the time, he was just
about untouchable. Yount scattered just four hits across seven innings, helping
Stanford snap out of a recent pitching funk in a major way. Offensively, Brett
Milleville had four hits all to himself, and his two-RBI homer to center in the
sixth all but finished off the Spartans. Still, with eight different Stanford
players combining for 15 hits, the whole team deserves credit.
Tough day at the ballpark: Jeff Whitlow and Joey August went hitless in four combined at-bats. Hardly a slump,
but who else would you put here? Every other Stanford player reached
base.
Key stretch: A Jason Castro double
and Milleville and Molina singles helped Stanford score three in the fourth.
Then, in the sixth, four straight Stanford batters (Zach Jones, Jake Schlander,
Cord Phelps and Toby Gerhart) reached base. After a Castro groundout,
Milleville’s homer gave Stanford a five-run inning and the 9-1 final
margin.
The
pitching
That’s more
like it.
Stanford had
given up ten runs in each of its last three games. All were losses, despite the
offense scoring nine, then nine, then eight runs.
But today,
Austin Yount got the fans home in 2.5 hours with a nice mix of pitches and great
control.
To be fair,
San Jose State didn’t help their cause with a severe lack of plate discipline.
Stanford Media Relations doesn’t track pitch counts at Coach Marquess’ request,
but we’ll let another stat do the talking: San Jose State struck out just once.
Yount is not a strikeout pitcher, but that’s an awful lot of first- and
second-pitch hacking.
Congrats are
also in order to two freshmen, righty Alex Pracher and lefty Michael DeGroot,
who forced the Spartans into 1-2-3 eighth and ninth innings
respectively.
The
hitting
Milleville
takes the headlines with a 4-for-5 day batting cleanup, but how about the three
hitters in front of him, Phelps, Gerhart and Castro? Those top four hitters in
Stanford’s lineup went a combined 9-of-17, and notched eight RBIs and seven
runs.
The
bottom of the lineup was quieter, but Zach Jones and Randy Molina each pulled
their weight with two-hit games.
One concerning
trend is that Stanford drew just two walks, but struck out seven times. All
seven strikeouts came from the five through nine hitters too. It could well be a
400-K season for the Card.
The
miscellany
Not to rain on
the parade here, but how is San Jose State a winning team? The hitting wasn’t
pretty and the pitching might have been worse.
Attendance
was officially 1,538, and those who made the trek to Sunken Diamond enjoyed a
beautiful, cloudless Saturday.
Stanford
runs through the Bay Area gauntlet in the next three days: at San Jose State
tomorrow, versus Pacific Monday and at San Francisco Tuesday. Next weekend, the
Card will welcome Cal for their last home series of the season.
The
quotes
Jason
Castro
On a career-high four
RBIs:
It was a good game. Everybody continued
to hit and people kept getting on base. That was key for us.
On Stanford’s
offense:
We were held back in the first three
innings, but then we had some good situational hitting.
On snapping a three-game losing
streak:
It was good to come out and get a win. It
was great for Austin Yount, and great for us to come back and get hits. That was
big for us as a team. Hopefully we’ll keep it going tomorrow [at
SJSU].
On Stanford’s mentality as it heads
down the stretch:
The big thing for us is pitching and
defense. I think at times pitching is what has carried us, especially when the
hitting’s slacked off a little. It seems like we’ll make it up -- if the
hitting’s not good, the pitching makes it up. That’s been the key to our success
so far this year. If we keep that up and always play good defense, I think we’ll
be in good shape.
On Yount:
He did a great job of mixing speeds and
kept hitters off-balance. He threw strikes and made sure the D had a chance to
play behind him.
On the importance of the pitching
staff breaking out of its slump:
If the pitching staff has it, it takes
pressure off the bats. We’re loose in the box and there’s not as much pressure.
We can do our best and we showed it today. We put up a three-spot in the fourth
and looked relaxed. And we were able to string hits together.
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