STANFORD, Calif. – Another stellar outing from freshman Tristan Beck led Stanford baseball to a 6-1 victory over Washington State on Friday night at Sunken Diamond. Sophomore Quinn Brodey added a two-run home run and the Cardinal evened the series with its first Pac-12 win of the year.
Beck (4-1) became the first Cardinal pitcher with 10 strikeouts in nearly two years. He completed eight innings and allowed just one run on five hits. It took just six batters for Beck to match his career high of six strikeouts. He retired every Washington State hitter on strikes in the first two innings.
However, it was the Cougars who struck first. The visitors used three hits to push one across in the top of the third.
Stanford's offense came right back and scored two in the bottom half. Back-to-back two-out hits from Tommy Edman and Nico Hoerner scored a pair. Edman singled home Matt Winaker from second, and on the next pitch, Hoerner launced a triple to right center for a 2-1 lead.
While Beck was cruising threw the rest of his outing, Stanford added four more in the sixth. Hoerner singled -- his sixth multi-hit game already this season -- to leadoff the inning, and Brodey blasted one over the left center field wall. Later in the inning, junior Jack Klein's two-out single scored two more for the final margin.
Junior Tyler Thorne threw a scoreless ninth as Washington State did not get a runner past first base after the third inning. Beck's teammate, Cal Quantrill, was the last Cardinal with double-digit strikeouts in a game -- he had 10 against Utah on May 23, 2014.
The rubber match of Stanford's first Pac-12 series will be at 1 p.m. on Saturday at Sunken Diamond.
G'bye baseball! Quinn Brodey goes deep to left-center, pushes the lead to 4-1. https://t.co/FUnR9mOiIg
— Stanford Baseball (@StanfordBSB) March 26, 2016