On Sunday, Stanford baseball fell to Wake Forest at home by a final score of 10-0. Chris Levonas (3-1) was the winning pitcher for the Demon Deacons in a starting role while Austin Steeves (0-1) was the losing pitcher for the Cardinal in a relief role. Wake Forest improves to 29-16 overall and 12-12 in the ACC while Stanford falls to 21-19 overall and 7-17 in the ACC.
BOX SCORE: Wake Forest at Stanford-Sunday, April 27th
“Game got away early a little bit,” Stanford head coach David Esquer said after the game. “We knew we were gonna be a little bit thin pitching. We were going to have to staff it and hope for some magic to happen and it didn’t happen. Their starting pitcher pitched better than all our pitchers. Although we got some guys out there, some new guys out there that are gonna have to show some promise with us to be the program that we want to be.
“So, we’re getting a good barometer of what it takes to win in this league and we’re gonna make our adjustments and we’re gonna figure this out. We’re gonna be able to win in this league here in the short term, but right now it’s a little rough getting through it.”
Parker Warner got the start on the mound for the Cardinal, pitching 1.0 innings and giving up no runs. In hindsight, Stanford would have been wise to maybe let Warner ride at least a little bit as the next pitcher who came in was Austin Steeves, who got the loss. Steves gave up three earned runs in 0.2 innings pitched and everything spiraled out of control from there with the remaining pitchers. Ben Reimers, giving up four earned runs in 0.1 innings pitched later on in the game.
For Stanford, this was just an all-around bad day, but one can’t be shocked given the fact that Christian Lim is done for the year. Stanford was forced to patch together their pitching in this one and given how weak the remaining options were, they had an uphill battle ahead of them. That said, it’s still disappointing to have the series end this way after they had an exciting Friday night win.
All season long, the ACC has been really challenging for Stanford. The league is really good, presenting no easy weekends. Stanford is going to have to raise their level of play, especially on the mound to get up to speed in this league. While they’re taking their lumps for sure, perhaps this is the wakeup call that Stanford will need after their pitching got largely exposed in the College World Series the last couple of times they were there.
“Good question, you know, that’s a good question,” Esquer said when asked about the biggest adjustment from the Pac-12 to the ACC. “I think the floor is a little bit higher right now. You know, there’s no weekends off. And not that there was in the Pac-12. You had to play your best every weekend the same. But, you know, I just think it’s a really talented league and week in and week out, you’re playing a playoff opponent. I mean, I think it works to every team if they win their games and finish in the right part of the conference are tournament teams. We haven’t faced a slouch yet, you know. And so that’s going to make us better and sharper as a program. We’re kind of calibrating our eye on what we need to do to win this league. We’re not quite there yet, but we’ll get there. We’re going to get there.”
Up next for Stanford is a home game against Sacramento State. That will be on Monday at 6:05 PM PT on ACCNX.
“Every win is important,” Esquer said looking ahead to facing the Hornets. “You know, we got to show positive progress and win our game. So Sac State’s a good opponent and they’re, like every team that comes into Sunken Diamond, they don’t care whether you’re having a great year or a bad year. Beating Stanford means something, so we gotta come out and play.”
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