May 12, 2008
Stanford, Calif. - No. 14 Stanford baseball closed out their regular season schedule at Klein Field in style, using a seven run fifth inning to run away from the Santa Clara Broncos in their 15-4 victory. Brent Milleville, Sean Ratliff and Jason Castro all went deep and seven Cardinal starters recorded hits in the contest. Senior David Stringer (3-1, 4.79 ERA) came in relief to earn the victory and sophomore Alex Rivers (3-3, 5.71 ERA) took the loss after giving up seven earned runs in just a third of an inning.
The Cardinal (30-18-2) fell behind as they had done in all three contests against California, but for the second day Stanford was able to come back and use their strong offensive to coast to the victory. The scoring began when Nathan Faulkner reached on an error and got all the way to second base on the play. He came around to score of Matt Long's single up the middle to get the Broncos out to the early 1-0 lead.
Tommy Medica and Ryan Conan also recorded RBI hits and the Broncos led early 4-0. Stanford responded with three in their half of the fourth inning to cut the lead to one run at 4-3. Milleville hit his third home run in the past week and Ratliff followed up three batters later with a two-run shot that also scored Randy Molina who walked in between the two home runs.
Stanford really broke out in the fifth inning when they scored seven runs on six hits and two walks. Colin Walsh started the inning with an infield hit and moved to second on a Joey August walk. Castro hit a three-run home run and helped the Cardinal regain the lead at 6-4. Milleville and Molina followed the home run with singles and Brendan Domaracki walked to bring freshman Zach Jones with the bases loaded.
Jones came through with a shot to left field that was about two feet from clearing the wall, but resulted in a two-RBI double that extended the lead to 8-4. Jack Schlander followed with yet another walk and August came up with two outs and laced another single up the middle to score two more runs to bring the score to 10-4 after five complete.
The Cardinal continued the offensive onslaught with five more runs in the seventh inning to bring their unanswered run total to 15. The win was Stanford's third this season against the Broncos in the four meetings this season.
Stanford's bullpen came up big in the victory by going 6 2/3 shutout innings in place of starter Max Fearnow. Stringer produced 2 2/3 innings of shutout baseball, freshman Danny Sandbrink recorded 3 1/3 of shutout and senior Rex Petrill recorded the final two outs in the 30th victory of the season.
Medica was the main offensive threat for the Broncos as he went 3-4 in a lineup that got hits from seven of their nine starters.
The Cardinal will now hit the road for the final two weekends of the regular season and will not have anymore games during the week. The roadtrip begins this Saturday when Stanford travels to Tucson for three games at Jerry Kindall Field where the Arizona Wildcats await. The first game of the three-game set will begin at 6:00 p.m. PST. The series will continue Sunday with a 5:00 p.m. start and will conclude on Monday with a matinee 11:00 a.m. start time.