March 5, 2013
SANTA CLARA, Calif. - Fierce winds at Stephen Schott Stadium were not enough to keep No. 9 Stanford from blowing by Santa Clara, 6-4. Sam Lindquist shelved his third save and Brian Ragira extended his hitting streak to nine games Tuesday evening as the Cardinal (10-2) won its ninth straight.
Stanford's three pitchers combined for 12 punchouts though the Cardinal was out-hit by Santa Clara, 8-6.
Dean McArdle (1-0) gave up a leadoff single to start the game and Santa Clara went on to take a 1-0 lead after the first inning. The Broncos (6-7) used a Drew Ozanne sacrifice bunt and Greg Harisis' single up the middle gave the home team its short-lived lead.
McArdle settled in to fan six against one walk in 4.0 innings for his first win on the season.
David Schmidt provided 2.2 innings of four-hit relief. Schmidt struck out four and surrendered a pair of unearned runs in the fifth.
Lindquist began his evening by extinguishing a potential two-out Bronco rally. Santa Clara had runners on second and third when Lindquist stepped in and induced an Ozanne foul fly to Ragira to get out of the seventh.
Lindquist put two on base in the bottom of the ninth with the tying run at the plate. Lindquist gave up an RBI single to Ozanne, balked two Santa Clara runners on base up a bag but stayed cool enough send back Harisis on strikes.
Alex Blandino drew a one-out walk in the second and a pair of errors on Dominic Jose's infield grounder put two runners in scoring position for Jonny Locher. Locher promptly singled to center to plate his game-high two RBI.
Jose scored twice for the Cardinal.
Brant Whiting's sacrifice fly scored Lonnie Kauppila from third to start a three-run fourth for the Cardinal. Austin Slater singled home Jose and Danny Diekroeger poked a single to right to score Slater which gave Stanford a 5-1 lead.
Diekroeger led Stanford with a pair of hits and scored once with one RBI.
Santa Clara scored two unearned runs when a Blandino mishandled an Ozanne grounder to third, buying enough time for a pair of Broncos in scoring position to scurry home in the fifth.
Diekroeger added an insurance run in the ninth when Blandino drew a bases-loaded walk.
Santa Clara did little to help its cause by committing four errors which led to three Stanford runs.
Stanford returns home for a three-game series with UNLV (March 8-10) this weekend at Sunken Diamond. The non-conference series begins at 5:30 p.m. on Friday with video, audio and stats available at GoStanford.com.
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