On Tuesday, #4 Stanford baseball defeated Santa Clara 19-0 on the road in their final midweek game of the regular season. Tommy O’Rourke (2-5) was the winning pitcher for Stanford in a starting role while Alex Reelfs (4-7) was the losing pitcher for Santa Clara also in a starting role. Stanford improves to 34-14 overall (18-9 Pac-12) while Santa Clara falls to 24-26 overall (11-16 WCC).

“Yeah, I mean they’re a talented team,” Stanford assistant coach Andre Mercurio said after the game. “Any team that you’re going to play on the West Coast is gonna be tough and we understand how fragile momentum is and so we knew we had to come out and play these guys with their A-game today and we did that, a lot of strong performances by some guys, and we know we need some momentum moving forward in the weekend against an SC team and just glad that we hit the ball well tonight.”

Midweek games have been a challenge for Stanford this season. They lost 8-1 at home against Saint Mary’s at the beginning of April, the narrowly beat San Francisco by one run twice, and at Cal Poly, it was a close 10-8 victory. This one was unlike all the other midweek games in that it was one-way traffic for Stanford from the opening inning.

In the top of the 1st inning, Stanford scored five runs. Brett Barrera hit a single to bring home Brock Jones who was on third base for the first run. With two outs, the bases would then get loaded for Drew Bowser with Barrera on third, Kody Huff on second, and Eddie Park on first. Bowser did the best possible thing he could do in that at-bat: He hit a grand slam to center field to make it a 5-0 game. Tommy Troy would then hit a double before Adam Crampton popped up to second base for to end the top of the inning.

“I mean, we knew that this team, if we came in with a B or C game that they were going to put it on us,” Mercurio said. “Not so much of starting fast, more about just playing hard the entire game because we know that they’re going to be tough like they were the first time and ball didn’t bounce their way today, but we knew that we were going to have to bring our A-game to beat these guys and to bring momentum just into the weekend.”

In the top of the 2nd inning, Stanford added one run. Jones singled to second base and proceeded to steal second base during Carter Graham’s at-bat. Graham hit a single to right field to advance Jones to third base after which Barrera flied out to left field to bring Jones home. Bowser would later ground out to end the top of the inning. 6-0 Stanford lead.

“Yeah, that’s always reassuring going out there being like hey, you know, you got a lead right now, you don’t have to be perfect,” O’Rourke said. “Trust your guys are gonna score runs for you and it worked out.”

After O’Rourke kept Santa Clara scoreless for a second straight inning, Stanford went back to work in the top of the 3rd inning. Troy hit a double and advanced to third base thanks to Crampton grounding out. After Jones struck out looking, Graham singled to third base with two outs to bring Troy home. That would be the only run Stanford scored in the 3rd inning, but with a 7-0 lead, things were clearly going their way.

“Yeah, so I felt like I had a good two innings,” O’Rourke said. “My job was pretty simple. Set the tone for the game, for the rest of the staff, throughout the whole nine. It feels good to pick up a win always, but it feels better to get a whole-staff complete game shutout. So, that was great. I thought my two innings of work I had my fastball, slider, change-up all working in the strike zone and I was trusting my defense behind me. So, not much more you can ask for there.

“Just as our pitching coach Eager says, get the first guy out and that’s huge for a pitcher to get the first guy out. All of a sudden you’re rolling; you’re feeling your confidence goes up and all that. So, for me it’s the just first guy I’m going to face no matter the situation, no matter the inning, what kind of game it is, just focus on getting the first guy out.”

O’Rourke’s evening would end in the 2nd inning as Max Meier came in to pitch the bottom of the 3rd inning, getting three straight outs. Santa Clara was just unable to get anything going offensively. Much like their first meeting with Stanford earlier in the year.

“Tommy hasn’t been on the mound for a little bit,” Mercurio said of O’Rourke. “And we knew that just number one he’s going to be fresh, he’s going to have some serious bullets in him. And number two, we just need to get him back out there. We know how talented Tommy is and how good he has been for us. We know how important he’s going to be down the stretch for us, and so we just need to kinda get him out there in a situation where maybe he has a little bit of hey, if you walk out, it’s not the end of the world. To a fresh start, not bringing him in with the bases loaded or whatever the situation might be. So kinda just get him back on the mound because we know how talented again, what he’s done for us and what he’s going to do for us. We knew we just had to get him out there.”

In the top of the 4th inning, Stanford heated up again with another five run inning. Braden Montgomery and Kody Huff hit back-to-back home runs to start the inning. 9-0 Stanford lead. With one out, Bowser singled to center field after which Troy hit a single and advanced to second base on the error, which advanced Bowser to third base. Crampton then grounded out to third base to bring Bowser home, making it a 10-0 game. With Troy on second base, Jones then hit a two-run home run to center field to make it a 12-0 game. Graham would then strike out swinging to end the top of the inning.

“We set the tone with BP [Batting Practice],” Barrera said of what allowed them to light Santa Clara up like a Christmas tree. “I mean, balls were just flying everywhere in BP. We knew what we had to do to get the ball up in that jet stream and so once we saw their pitchers throwing stuff down the middle, anything we can handle we just did our thing.”

In the bottom of the 4th, Meier did his job for Stanford, not allowing anyone to score. He did give up a single, but aside from that it was smooth sailing. Stanford’s dominance on the mound continued.

“The mindset for the staff was basically get ahead, attack with a fastball, try and get early contact, get weak contact, and put them away with your best pitch if need be,” O’Rourke said. “But, the main focus was get ahead with the fastball.”

The 5th and 6th innings would be scoreless for both teams. Justin Moore came in to replace Meier in the 5th inning and would pitch the 6th inning as well. Stanford appeared to finally be cooling down offensively, but with a 12-0 lead, any runs they’d score from here on out would be gravy.

In the top of the 7th inning, Stanford added some gravy to the scoreboard. Seven runs, to be exact. Bowser flied out to bring home Montgomery; Joe Lomuscio hit a single through the left side to bring home Park and Huff; Trevor Haskins doubled to left center to advance Lomuscio to third base and bring home Crampton; and Barrera hit a homer to left center to bring home Haskins and Lomuscio. 19-0 Stanford lead at the 7th inning stretch after Montgomery struck out swinging.

“It was awesome,” Mercurio said of getting more guys involved. “To see Trevor Haskins get his first college hit, especially kind of in his home area. I know he’s from San Jose, went to Valley Christian, that was awesome. To see Joe Lomuscio get two hits and kinda get back to it, Owen Cobb turned that double play to end the game, bunch of pitchers just doing an excellent job of just coming in and getting zeroes, it was awesome.”

In the end, Stanford would win 19-0 as they didn’t score in the 8th or 9th innings while Santa Clara remained scoreless all the way until the final out. Ryan Bruno pitched the bottom of the 7th, Braden Montgomery pitched the bottom of the 8th, and Cody Jensen pitched the bottom of the 9th. Just an all-around dominant performance from Stanford both behind the plate and on the mound. There wasn’t anything that didn’t go well for them in this one.

“It feels great,” Barrera said of putting up 19 runs. “I mean, yeah, plus a shutout, too. It wasn’t like a big scoring game for both teams. So our pitching and our hitting was really firing on all ends. On all cylinders and yeah, it was great.

“Yeah, I’m a little surprised [it was 19-0], but I feel like it was a matter of time. Especially on a Tuesday game where you just get a different pitcher every inning. You get the back end of the bullpen, you don’t have that Friday-Saturday guy going for six, seven innings. Yeah, but it was a matter of time. I was a little surprised, though.”

For Stanford, when you consider how past Tuesday games have gone, it feels really good for them to win this one with such little trouble. It made for a much more enjoyable evening. The guys were able to play loose and relaxed and they all fed off of that. Coming in hot having swept Utah was really nice and Stanford did a great job of building on that momentum in this game.

“It is nice just to be in the dugout, be a little bit more relaxed,” Mercurio said. “And we feel like we play best when we’re relaxed and so as the game goes on, you have a big lead and you can kind of get more relaxed and you see how our guys respond to that. And so it’s nice. We understand how baseball is again. Number one momentum is fragile, number two it’ll humble you so we just gotta make sure that nineteen to zero, it’s a big score, but these guys just to stay humble moving forward, but we know every game is not going to be like this and we just happened to be on the right side of things tonight.”

“As much momentum as we’ve had all year,” Barrera said of how they’re feeling right now. “This is great. Especially going in leading into USC and the Pac-12 tournament, we’re going to do great. This momentum is all we can do. And we’re looking forward to continuing it.”

Up next for Stanford is a three-game home series against USC to close the regular season. The first game of that series will be on Thursday at 6:00 PM PT on Pac-12 Bay Area and KZSU radio.

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