On Friday at 1:00 PM PT on ESPN+ and KZSU radio, Stanford baseball will take on Binghamton to open up their home regional of the NCAA tournament. Stanford comes in as the top seed in the region and the number two overall seed in the tournament. Texas State and UC Santa Barbara, the number two and number three seeds in the regional, will face off afterwards no earlier than 6:00 PM PT on ESPN+.
Last time out: On Sunday, Stanford defeated Oregon State 9-5 to win the Pac-12 tournament.
RECAP: Stanford defeats Oregon State to win Pac-12 tournament
On Binghamton: Famous for being the alma mater of Pardon The Interruption co-host Tony Kornheiser, Binghamton has had some success on the diamond this season. While their regular season was nothing to write home about (22-28 overall, 15-15 in league), they made up for it by running the table and winning the America East tournament, qualifying for the NCAA tournament as a result.
The top contact hitter on this Bearcats team is senior short stop Jake Evans, who is hitting .386 on the year for 0 home runs, 21 RBIs, a .424 slugging percentage, and a .456 on-base percentage. The top power hitters are junior catcher Connor Aoki (8 HR, 27 RBIs, .288 BA, .532 SLG, and .404 OB) and freshman catcher Evin Sullivan (7 HR, 41 RBIs, .350 BA, .552 SLG, and .413 OB).
As far as pitching is concerned, their top pitcher is junior righty Jack Collins, who has a 3-3 record and six saves to go along with a 2.18 ERA. He doesn’t have any starts under his belt, but when put in winning situations, he does very well. The two most frequent starting pitchers are junior righty Ryan Bryggman (5-5, 5.05 ERA) and junior lefty Thomas Babalis (4-6, 5.06 ERA) who each have 15 starts on the year.
Keys to the game: For Stanford, the first thing they need to do is take advantage of Binghamton’s sketchy pitching. If Stanford’s bats go wild and have a big afternoon, I don’t see how the Bearcats make this one interesting.
Secondly, Stanford needs to get off to a strong start on the mound. At times, they’ve dug themselves into holes and made things more dramatic than they need to. If the Stanford pitching staff comes out with a strong start, that will set the tone for the rest of the game.
Finally, going back to the first point a bit, it would be huge if Stanford can have at least one inning where they put up four runs or more. A big key to Stanford’s success has been to score runs in bunches and have big innings where they score five or six runs. For the purposes of winning this game, if Stanford could have at least one inning where they put up at least four runs, I think they’ll be sitting pretty.
Prediction: Stanford is at home, it’s the NCAA tournament, and they’re coming in hot having won 16 games in a row. They should win this game. No question about it. The only question is by how much. Given that Binghamton is coming in hot as well, I think this one could be interesting early on before Stanford pulls away in the end. Stanford 12 Binghamton 3 is how I see this one playing out.
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