May 17, 2008
Tucson, Ariz. - No. 14 Stanford baseball came together late against the Arizona Wildcats Saturday night at Jerry Kindall Field, but couldn't overcome a big 9-1 hole en route to a 9-6 loss. Junior Austin Yount (3-3, 3.86 ERA) gave up eight runs in only 1 1/3 innings and despite a very strong bullpen effort that included 6 2/3 innings of one run baseball, it wasn't enough to lead the Cardinal to victory.
Arizona junior Preston Guilmet wasn't too sharp either, going 4 1/3 and giving up six runs, but the Arizona bullpen threw 4 2/3 shutout innings, with Jason Stoffel earning his 10th save of the season. The win went to Arizona junior Ryan Perry (5-3, 3.47 ERA), who threw 1 2/3 innings of shutout and only allowed one hit.
Stanford was led by junior Cord Phelps who went 2-5 with two RBI's in the contest on his ninth home run of the season. Junior Jason Castro went 2-5 as well in the loss. The Wildcats were led by Diallo Fon and C.J. Ziegler, who recorded three hits and Ziegler hit his 17th home run in the game.
The Cardinal got on the board first with some small ball when Phelps led off the game with a leadoff single to left field. Junior Joey August followed up with a single of his own to center and the Cardinal had runners at first and second with nobody out. Castro moved Phelps to third on a fly out to deep right and came in to score on junior Brent Milleville's sacrifice fly.
The lead was short lived though when the Wildcats scored two runs in their half of the first and exploded for seven runs in the bottom half of the second. Fundamentals evaded the Cardinal temporarily as the Wildcats were able to get three bunt hits in a row and freshman Danny Sandbrink had T.J. Steele in a rundown, only to see him get to second base safely.
The big blow in the inning was a three-run home run by C.J. Ziegler, who hit his fifth home run in the past four games after hitting four in their last series against Utah Valley State. Senior Colt Sedbrook also hit two-RBI single up the middle in the frame. The other two runs were plated on a RBI single by Bryce Ortega and a sacrifice fly by junior Brad Glenn.
The Cardinal offense fought back for three more in the top of the third inning when freshman Jake Schlander led off the inning with a single and came all the way around when Phelps hit his ninth home run of the season to right field. This made the score 9-3, but after an August fly out Castro lined a single left field and went to second on a wild pitch by Guilmet. Up came Randy Molina who hit a ball that Ortega couldn't handle cleanly. Castro never stopped running from second and came all the way around to score on the play. After two and half, the Cardinal cut the lead down to 9-4.
Sloppy play continued to plague the game, this time as the host Arizona Wildcats made two crucial mistakes in the two-run Cardinal fourth inning. Junior Sean Ratliff reached on an error by Ziegler and got to third on a double in the right field gap by senior Brendan Domaracki. Raliff scored on a groundout by Schlander, which also pushed Domaracki to third. Guilmet then threw his third wild pitch of the game, which plated Domaracki and trimmed the Wildcat lead to just 9-6. Stanford at this point had scored five unanswered runs.
Sandbrink continued his strong play and took the Cardinal all the way into the sixth inning, while allowing just one earned run. All tolled Sandbrink went 3 1/3 innings and helped Stanford into keeping the Wildcats off the board in three straight innings after scoring nine runs in the first two.
Junior Blake Hancock threw two shutout innings following Sandbrink and Max Fearnow also recorded an inning of shutout in the bullpen's strong performance.
The two teams will return to the field tomorrow at Jerry Kindall Field at 6:00 p.m. to resume the three-game series. The series finale will take place in a rare Monday matinee game at 11:00 a.m PST.