Baseball returns to Sunken Diamond Saturday with a doubleheader against UNLV. The Cardinal won all four of their games at the Angels College Classic in Tempe, opening the season with several performances that show No. 12 Stanford doesn't need to play perfect baseball to win.
Stanford only got two hits in the season opener against Ball State's Drey Jameson, a legitimate high-level pro prospect, but still won 2-1. The Cardinal scored five runs on only six hits against Wichita State and six runs on nine hits against Pepperdine. Stanford's lineup finally had fun in the desert sun Monday, scoring 14 runs versus Grand Canyon.
Junior left-fielder Kyle Stowers, a preseason All-American, started the tournament 0-for-10 but had two hits, two RBI and scored three runs in the final game.
“We know how to win ball games," he said about his top takeaway from the tournament. "I felt like we didn’t play our best offensively. Our pitching did great, as usual. I think offensively half the team, or maybe more, is not exactly where they want to be and we’re still finding ways to win games. There are two ways to look at it: You can panic, and I don’t think any of us are, but I think the way we’re all looking at it is we’re not at our best yet and we’re still winning. I think it’s scary for other teams that we’re going to be so much better.”
Similar to last season the Cardinal pitchers appear locked in from the jump. Sophomore Brendan Beck excelled in his first Friday start, striking out 11 and battling pitch-for-pitch with the highly touted Jameson. Jacob Palisch worked through some rough spots in his first college start and kept the Cardinal in the game against the Shockers. Erik Miller struck out nine Pepperdine batters and allowed one earned run on four hits in five innings.
Stanford also got spectacular debuts from freshmen Cody Jensen (struck out the side in his first inning of relief) and Alex Williams (earned the win over Grand Canyon with six scoreless innings).
“I teased them that I didn’t realize college baseball was that easy. It’s cool to see," Stowers said about Williams and Jensen.
The "old hands" were effective as well. Will Matthiessen in particular drew praise from his head coach. In David Esquer's opinion it was the best he'd seen the lanky righty pitch.
The pitching is solid and the defense backed them up, much to the delight of Esquer.
“I was really proud of our defense on the infield. I thought our infield exceeded my expectations. I thought Tim Tawa did a great job at shortstop. We’ll see how the alignment works out when (Duke) Kinamon is back. I thought (Brandon) Dieter played better in the game than in practice. I thought (Brandon) Wulff did a nice job for us at third base and (Maverick) Handley was good at third. (Austin) Kretzschmar came in and played good defense late in the game at third.”
Kinamon is expected to play at shortstop this weekend. He hasn't played college baseball outside of practice since his sophomore year, so Esquer believes it will be a gradual process for Kinamon to get comfortable and confident.
The play of the defense, pitching and situational hitting that allowed Stanford to score five of its first seven runs of the season without a hit is a successful formula for Esquer, at least for now.
“If you can keep those things going for a while you can get by with pitching, defense and situational offense. You want to be a team that if there are runs out there you can score them at the very least. You want to have a personality that you pick up those runs … and do it without any ego.”
