May 10, 2008
Stanford, Calif. - No. 6 Stanford baseball dropped their second game in a row 5-2 on Saturday in front of another big crowd of 2,774 at Klein Field. The game featured some missed opportunities for the Cardinal, who couldn't take advantage of two Golden Bear mistakes. Jeff Whitlow led the Cardinal, going 2-2 and threw out Jeff Kobernus at home to end the seventh inning.
Both starters for the second night in a row worked very quickly and were effective in the early going. Craig Benningson improved to 4-3 and picked up the win after going six strong innings and only gave up one earned run. Erik Davis pitched well, but ran into trouble in the seventh inning and ended up going 7 2/3 innings and gave up five earned runs. Davis dropped to 7-2 with the loss.
California got the scoring started in the top of the third inning when Kobernus singled to begin the inning and went to second on Michael Brady's sacrifice bunt. Charlie Cutler came up two batters later and stroked a single up the middle to bring Kobernus around to score. This gave the Golden Bears an early 1-0 lead.
The Cardinal responded in their half of the third inning when Whitlow led off the inning with an infield hit on a comebacker to Benningson. Benningson also was very wary of Whitlow's speed and threw often to first base in an attempt to control Whitlow's lead off first base. One of his pickoff attempts went wide of first baseman David Cooper and went deep into the foul territory at Klein Field. Whitlow went all the way to third on the miscue and gave the Cardinal a runner on third base with nobody out. Jake Schlander came up two hitters later and stroked a single to right field to tie the score at one apiece.
Whitlow began the scoring rally again with another infield hit and went to second on a Zach Jones sacrifice bunt. Up came Schlander, who stroked another clutch single to right field to bring home Whitlow once again. This pushed the Cardinal out in front by the score of 2-1.
This lead held until the seventh inning when California was able to bring home three and take a 4-2 lead. Josh Satin led off the inning by getting hit on helmet and moved to second on a walk by Brett Jackson. Blake Smith also walked to load the bases with just one out. Kobernus came up and laced a two RBI single through the right side and pushed the Golden Bears out in front 3-2. Brady then executed a suicide squeeze right after and Davis threw an errant throw to catcher Jason Castro and that allowed Brady to get all the way to second and brought in Smith. Davis avoided further damage, but the Cardinal left the inning with a 4-2 deficit.
The Golden Bears added another run and Stanford brought runners to the corners in the ninth inning, but couldn't solve California closer Matt Gorgen, who picked up his ninth save of the season in the 5-2 victory.These two teams will face off again tomorrow afternoon at 1:00 p.m. at Klein Field. The match will be shown on CBS College Sports as well as on the 90.1 KZSU airwaves.