March 2, 2013
STANFORD, Calif. - No. 14 Stanford nearly handed No. 22 Texas its second straight shutout but settled for a 7-2 non-conference baseball win Saturday. Stanford (8-2) clinched the three-game set with the Longhorns by claiming its seventh consecutive win and remains undefeated at Sunken Diamond heading into the weekend finale set for 1 p.m. (PT) on Sunday.
Texas (6-4) seemed ready to redeem its 2-0 setback on Friday by loading the bases in the top half of the first. John Hochstatter put two on with eight straight balls and allowed an Erich Weiss single before cleanup hitter Mark Payton promptly lined into a 4-6-3 triple play.
"It wasn't my first triple play, but it was a nice one," said Stanford second baseman Danny Diekroeger, who gloved Payton's laser to start the defensive gem.
Hochstatter allowed one more hit in his next pair of innings on the mound and gave way to Daniel Starwalt (2-0). Starwalt received three runs from the Cardinal offense and fanned three in 3.1 innings.
Sam Lindquist scattered three hits but earned his second save despite giving up a pair of ninth-inning runs to the Longhorns. The runs were the first scored by Texas in the series' opening 17.2 innings and snapped a streak of 22.2 frames of shutout ball produced by the Cardinal pitching corps.
Diekroeger was one of five Stanford players to notch two hits with Austin Slater driving in a game-high two scores.
Justin Ringo's double and triple went for naught, though the designated hitter but his season slugging pct. to .636.
Dillon Peters (1-1) was tagged for a pair of earned runs on eight hits in 5.0 innings of work for Texas. Weston Hall went 3-for-3 and Weiss logged a pair of hits with two RBI.
Stanford waited until the fourth to produce a run and scored once more in each of the next two innings. Dominic Jose knocked one of his two hits on the day to left-center and booked it to second on Drew Jackson's single to right. Wayne Taylor drove in Jose with a smack to right.
One pitch was all it took for Diekroeger to get it done at the plate with a solo homer to left to start the fifth which gave Stanford a 2-0 cushion.
Texas yanked Peters in the sixth before Stanford began to blow it open by taking advantage of a pair of balks, one of which scored Lonnie Kauppila from third. Kauppila was walked by reliever Ty Marlow and advanced to second on a balk. After Jackson sacrificed Kauppila to third, Travis Davis took the mound and balked in Kauppila before throwing a single pitch.
Jose scored again during a four-run seventh, in which he singled along with Kauppila, Jackson and Slater. The output put the finishing touches on Stanford's 13-hit effort.
Sitting on a 7-0 lead in the ninth, Texas mustered two runs on two hits highlighted by Weiss' two-out, two RBI single to right.
Live video, stats and audio will be available for Sunday's game at GoStanford.com.
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