On Tuesday at 6:00 PM PT on WCC Network, #4 Stanford baseball will face the Santa Clara Broncos on the road. Stanford comes in at 31-13 overall while Santa Clara comes in at 27-15.
Probable pitchers: At the moment, the starting pitchers for both teams is TBD.
Last time out: On Sunday, Stanford defeated Arizona State 9-4 to sweep the Sun Devils on the road. As a result, Stanford is now ranked #4 in the nation by D1Baseball.com. Alberto Rios also was named Pac-12 Player of the Week for the first time of his career on Monday.
RECAP: #7 Stanford BSB sweeps #20 Arizona State
Alberto Rios has paid his dues to become a star for Stanford
On Santa Clara: The Broncos have had a solid season. They’re well above .500 overall with a .643 winning percentage and they are also 13-8 in the WCC. They’re on a nine game winning streak and are coming into this game with a lot of confidence. They also faced Stanford earlier this year on The Farm and defeated the Cardinal 10-5, so there’s no reason to doubt their ability to win this game.
The top contact hitter for the Broncos is junior outfielder JonJon Berring, who is batting .329 for one home run, 18 RBIs, a .441 slugging percentage, and a .429 on base percentage. The top power hitters are sophomore outfielder Robert Hipwell and junior infielder Efrain Manzo, who each have a team-high 13 home runs. Hipwell is batting .321 for 36 RBIs, a .686 slugging percentage, and a .487 on base percentage while Manzo is batting .302 for 38 RBIs, a .654 slugging percentage, and a .416 on base percentage.
As a team, the Broncos are batting .289 for 54 home runs and 251 RBIs. Their opponents are batting .239 for 40 home runs and 194 RBIs. As for their pitching, the Broncos have a 4.32 ERA while their opponents have a 5.88 ERA.
Keys to the game: For Stanford, the key to winning this game begins and ends with how their pitching goes in the first three innings of the game. If Stanford pitches well in the first three innings, they should be fine. If come the third inning, they find themselves down by 4+ runs, they could be in some trouble.
The second thing Stanford needs to do is bring a strong offensive attack. They gotta be prepared for the pitching to be shaky at a minimum and so they can’t expect to win if they don’t put up at least eight runs. If they score seven runs or fewer, it could be trouble.
Finally, Stanford needs to not have a letdown game. They just swept Arizona State, they’re now #4 in the nation, and they have a big home series ahead against Arizona this weekend. Plus, this is their last Tuesday game of the regular season. This would be a really easy game for Stanford to glaze over. Stanford needs to match the intensity and focus of Santa Clara. Otherwise, they could fall to them like they did earlier this season.
Prediction: These Tuesday games are always tough to predict. I could see this game going either way. A Stanford victory wouldn’t be a surprise nor would a Santa Clara victory. Given that I don’t pick ties or just leave things at a coin flip, I’m going to pick Stanford simply because they’re the better team overall. Stanford is a top five team coming off a sweep over a really good Arizona State team. Santa Clara isn’t ranked. That said, I think it will be close and high scoring. Stanford 14 Santa Clara 10 is my prediction for this one.
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