On Friday, Stanford baseball defeated Arizona State 8-0 to take the first game of a three-game home series. Stanford senior right-handed pitcher Alex Williams (3-1) picked up the win pitching a full 9.0 innings of shutout baseball to go along with six strikeouts and only three hits. Arizona State redshirt junior right-handed pitcher Kyle Luckham (4-2) was awarded the loss for Arizona State. Stanford improves to 15-10 overall and 7-6 in the Pac-12 while Arizona State falls to 14-17 overall and 5-5 in the Pac-12.
“Alex Williams, that’s the biggest change,” Stanford head coach David Esquer said about the difference from Tuesday’s loss to Saint Mary’s. “Alex Williams. We offensed much better, but Alex Williams sets the tone, doesn’t let’em score, and just threw strikes and got early outs. And got us back in the dugout and got us able to go out and hit again. We got some big hits. Obviously the three home runs were big. Martinez and Graham and Montgomery, those are big. That’s a big part of our offense. We finally get back on track and offense like we do.”
In the top of the 1st inning, Alex Williams made quick work of the Sun Devils lineup securing two flyouts and a strikeout. As for the bottom of the 1st inning, Stanford showed signs of life immediately as 1st baseman Carter Graham reached on a throwing error and advanced to second base with one out. In the next at-bat, 2nd baseman Brett Barrera was walked. After right fielder Braden Montgomery reached first base via fielder’s choice, Barrera would be out at second base and Graham would advance to third. Catcher Kody Huff popped up to second base to end the inning, but Stanford was off to a promising start.
After Williams got three quick outs in the top of the 2nd inning, Stanford went wild in the bottom of the 2nd, scoring six runs. In the first at-bat, Vincent Martinez, who was back in the designated hitter spot, hit a solo home run to get things going. 3rd baseman Drew Bowser and left fielder Eddie Park would not get on base in the next two at-bats as Bowser hit a fly out and Park struck out. It looked like maybe Arizona State would escape from the inning only giving up one run.
“Good to get him in the lineup,” Esquer said of Martinez. “He had a couple hits again today and he’s given us a little bit of a spark and that’s big. Big in the middle of the lineup to have some guy who gave us some production and Vincent’s, he’s done a great job of getting himself back in the lineup and the guys really respond to him, so it’s good.”
“Honestly, the count wasn’t going my way early, I went 0-2 pretty fast,” Martinez recalled of his home run at-bat. “But I thought like I was seeing it well. Kept throwing me off-speed stuff and I was all over it. I knew at some point I was gonna get a heater and I dunno, fastballs away you just kinda do what you can with it and went in my favor. Happened to be wanna go out and honestly, this whole week we just kinda talked about not only being tough on the field but battling opportunities when we could. And so for me and for the guys on the team, it kinda felt like this is where we put into play, this is an opportunity for us to expand on the things we’ve been practicing on and the things we’ve been working on and kinda see it show up in the game.”
But then, that’s when the wheels came off for Arizona State and Stanford started to take over. Short stop Adam Crampton hit a single before stealing second base during center fielder Brock Jones’ at-bat. Jones would get walked to get on first base. In the next at-bat, Graham hit a three-run homer to left center to make it a 4-0 lead for Stanford. Following Graham’s at-bat, Barrera went to the plate and got beaned in the head by Luckham, which resulted in Luckham getting ejected and Arizona State head coach Willie Bloomquist getting ejected shortly thereafter as he was arguing the call. While it didn’t look like Luckham did it intentionally, this has happened to him before, making it a four-game suspension on top of the ejection. The umpire had little choice but to toss him and Bloomquist given the circumstances.
“I don’t think that was intentional at all,” Esquer said of Luckham’s unlucky pitch. “I think our guy was asking for time out and the guy got kind caught up, you saw him hitch a little bit. Like is he gonna call it or not? And then just got thrown off in his delivery. So, I don’t think there was any intention at all.”
While Stanford didn’t believe Luckham had any malicious intent, it does look like that moment pumped them up all the same. Sometimes moments like that can give a team an extra pep in their step.
“The team takes some energy from it,” Esquer admitted. “Even if it’s not intentional, they can pretend it is and use it as some fire. That’s fine, but it was not intentional.”
“Personal, I don’t think it was intentional, I know the guy,” Williams added. “He’s a good guy. I think it just a little bit heat of the moment, got out of control and missed him. Honestly you don’t like to see your guy get hit in the face. It’s a tough spot in general. Especially Brett. Brett’s one of the nicest guys on the team. And it did give me something, a little extra to play for in that third inning. But realistically Brett was all good, once I checked that he was all good, it’s like alright cool, let’s just do this as a team, keep working. It was nothing too intentional. I wasn’t too angry about it.”
As a result of getting hit by the pitch, Barrera advanced to first base after which Montgomery hit a two-run shot to right center to make it a 6-0 Stanford lead. Huff would ground out to short stop to end the inning. It’s amazing how much can happen with just one out to spare.
“Contagious for sure,” Esquer said about the home run hitting in the 2nd inning. “The offense is contagious. Hopefully we’re catching something.”
In the next few innings, Williams continued to dominate the Sun Devils’ lineup while Stanford wasn’t able to add on to their lead. There would be an occasional hit or guy getting on base, but nothing much.
“Honestly just filling up the zone,” Williams said of what was working for him on the mound. “It’s a pretty aggressive team and so they came out swinging the bat. I got a lot of first pitch swings and so I wouldn’t say one pitch was better than another, they were just liking to swing and I had good command and was able to mix it up a bit. Missed barrels.”
In the bottom of the 7th, that’s when things finally heated up again. Luke La Flam was now on the mound to replace Jared Glenn, who had been called in to replace Luckham after he got tossed. La Flam walked Graham and Barrera to get things started, already getting two guys on base. Then, Montgomery hit a single to drive home Graham while Barrera advanced to third base. 7-0. In the next at-bat, Huff flied out to center field deep enough that Barrera was able to come home. 8-0. Martinez and Bowser would strike out to end the inning, but Stanford was sitting pretty.
The rest of the way was more of the same as Williams kept the Sun Devils in check while Stanford’s offense had done its job. In the end, Stanford walked out with an 8-0 victory thanks to an explosive 2nd inning and a 7th inning that added some insurance runs.
“You let him go ahead and go for the outing,” Esquer said of letting Williams go for the complete game. “But if they were to score a run or two, we would have got him pretty quick and got someone else in there…He had’em all. Fastball, slider, change. He had all the off-speed. He was getting a lot of early outs in the count, a lot of first pitch outs, which kept his pitch-count down, and gave him a chance to go all nine.”
“Personally I just try to treat it like a 1-0 game or zero-zero game,” Williams said of the key to his stamina. “Every time I go out and it’s a bit lead, and I act like it, realistically I think the bats are pretty free in a big thing. So there’s not a lot of tension, not a lot of pressure, and I think bats are usually actually good at those points. So I just try to treat it like a zero-zero game and just keep pitching the way I do at the start and I don’t know, if I start treating the game like I do on the score, then I’m gonna start pitching bad, so I can’t do that.”
For Stanford, this is a really important win. After getting rattled by Saint Mary’s on Tuesday, they needed to come out strong in this one and to their credit, they did just that. Even though it came in spurts, the hitting was excellent while Williams was dominant on the mound. You add those two things together and you have a recipe for success.
“It wasn’t just the messaging on Tuesday,” Esquer said. “A lot of it was the way we practiced the last two days, which was much better and a lot more intense. So, I think that had a lot to do with it. They practiced hard and they practiced intense the last two days and they brought that to the field today.”
Up next for Stanford will be a home game on Saturday against Arizona State. That game will begin at 2:05 PM PT on Stanford Live Stream-2 and KZSU radio.
“Yeah, tomorrow’s gonna be a reset,” Esquer said. “I mean, we won tonight. Fairly handily, but don’t expect that that’s going to continue. I think tomorrow we’ll have another dog fight.”
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