On Saturday, Stanford baseball fell to No. 25 Georgia Tech at home by a final score of 10-3. Georgia Tech righty Jaylen Paden (3-0) was the winning pitcher for the Yellow Jackets in a relief role while Stanford righty Aidan Keenan (1-1) was the losing pitcher for the Cardinal in a relief role. Georgia Tech improves to 25-6 overall and 10-4 in the ACC while Stanford falls to 17-11 overall and 5-9 in the ACC.
BOX SCORE: Georgia Tech at Stanford-Saturday, April 5th
“They make you play nine innings, right?” Stanford head coach David Esquer said after the game. “Seven innings isn’t good enough, right? And we got it even. We got it even and probably left a lead out on the bases, right? And so, we needed to play better in the last three innings and we didn’t, right? They roll eight runs in the last three. That’s going to make it tough for any team to win. So I give them credit. They make you play nine innings. You don’t just get to play six or seven good ones. They’re a quality team. They may be an Omaha team. So we got our hands full. We got to come out tomorrow and play our best game.”
Stanford lefty Christian Lim got the start on the mound for the Cardinal and he did a good job, pitching 6.0 innings while giving up two earned runs and four hits while also getting three strikeouts. While this game didn’t go the way Stanford wanted it to go, it was good for them to have Lim bounce back from a couple of rough outings.
“Oh yeah, yeah. I thought he had some pitch, he had some location,” Esquer said of Lim. “I thought he created some room on the inner half of the plate and his change up was the best it’s been all year. You know and so I thought he gave us six good innings of two runs, right? We haven’t had an outing like that in a while. But, six innings and two runs gives us a chance.”
“I think getting that fastball down in the zone for strikes early in the count and then playing the change up off that,” Lim said of what was working for him. “Pretty much that whole start. Those were my main two pitches against the right handers and I was able to land both my change up for strikes and blow the zone for balls and for some chases when I needed it.
“First off, is not try to dwell on the past too much, you know? If you have a bad start, you just gotta flush it and move on to the next. You gotta trust your midweek bullpen, your catch play, the adjustments that you and the staff are making throughout the week and I feel like that was a product of what I’ve been working on throughout these past few weeks, and I feel like I’ve been trending in a good direction. I’m hoping to continue in that direction.”
Where this game really went sideways for Stanford was in the final two innings of the game. After the 7th inning, it was tied 3-3 as Temo Becerra, Luke Lavin, and Ethan Hott each had an RBI for the Cardinal. Stanford got down 2-0, giving up runs in the 3rd and 5th inning, but responded with two runs in the bottom of the 6th before swapping runs in the 7th inning. Things were looking ok for Stanford.
Unfortunately for the Cardinal, they gave up three runs in the top of the 8th inning as Aidan Keenan was on the mound. He gave up a solo home run, and an RBI double after which Trevor Moore came in for relief and gave up a fly out to bring home another runner, earned to Keenan. That made it 7-3.
In the top of the 9th inning, Kassius Thomas came in to pitch for the Cardinal, but didn’t do much better as he gave up three more runs. Stanford failed to add any more runs in the bottom of the 9th inning, making it a 10-3 final score.
For Stanford, what makes this loss so disappointing is the fact that they were in the game through seven innings and then fell apart like they did in the final two innings. You just can’t let that happen. Especially with Chrisitan Lim giving them a solid outing. They had to take advantage of Lim pitching well, but they simply failed to do so.
Things didn’t get any better for Stanford on Sunday as Georgia Tech dominated them 18-2 (7 innings). Full recap of that is coming.
CardinalSportsReport.com on Facebook, IG, Threads, X (Twitter), & Blue Sky: @StanfordRivals
Ben Parker on Facebook, IG, Threads, X (Twitter), YouTube, & Blue Sky: @slamdunk406
Email: slamdunk406@yahoo.com
