On Friday, Stanford baseball fell to Arizona State at home by a final score of 13-1. Arizona State lefty Ben Jacobs (6-2) was the winning pitcher for the Sun Devils in a starting role while Stanford righty Matt Scott (4-8) was the losing pitcher for the Cardinal in a starting role. Arizona State improves to 27-24 overall and 15-13 in the Pac-12 while Stanford falls to 20-26 overall and 11-14 in the Pac-12.
BOX SCORE: Arizona State at Stanford-Friday, May 10th
“Yeah, this was a tough one,” Stanford head coach David Esquer said after the game. “One of our more embarrassing losses recently. We didn’t play well at all. I mean, they scored three in the first without a ball out of the infield. We misplay a strike three where we got a guy dead out to rights and they scored two runs on it and then score on a wild pitch, right? They don’t really do anything.
“So, they literally beat us tonight, the would have beat us without hitting the ball out of the infield and now they did more than that later, but just not a good effort for us tonight. I was disappointed in our effort and just our execution and again, I think a little bit, just didn’t respond well to getting our tails whipped a little bit last weekend.”
This game was one way traffic for the Sun Devils from the jump. They scored three runs in the top of the 1st inning, and added runs in the 3rd, 5th, 6th, and 8th to lead 7-0 before Stanford final scored in the bottom of the 8th to get on the board. Arizona State then shut the door for good with six runs in the top of the 9th inning, making it a 13-1 final score. The three-run homer by Kien Vu off Nathan Fleischli at the end was like a fourth nail in the coffin.
Stanford was never in this game as their pitching was sketchy at best and then their hitting was non-existent. While he ended up being the losing pitcher, Scott only had two earned runs in 4.1 innings pitched. He wasn’t bad. But, he was hurt by having a defense that allowed three additional unearned runs. With his defense letting him down and the offense stalling, the Cardinal were in a for a long night.
At this point, all that Stanford can do is move on from this game and get ready for Saturday’s game. That will be at 2:05 PM PT on Stanford Live Stream and KZSU radio. Stanford freshman lefty Christian Lim will get the start. He is coming in with a 4-5 record and a 4.01 ERA.
“Yeah [better fight] and better performance, right?” Esquer said looking ahead to Saturday. “We had a couple times where we looked like we were starting to get something going and we got first and second and nobody out and then nobody moves, right? And that was at the score maybe five where if you do a little something you can make a game of it.
“Well, they got a lot of left handed hitters. He [Lim] is a left-handed pitcher hoping that makes a difference, right? Because they run five straight lefties up at the top of the order. So, hopefully he can neutralize some of their left-handed bats and we can score a few more runs and just kinda get back to our game. We’ve been playing pretty good baseball, really competitive, and wasn’t able to do that and take it on the road a week ago, but typically we’ve played well at home and certainly not tonight.”
CardinalSportsReport.com on Facebook & X (Twitter): @StanfordRivals
Ben Parker on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, & X (Twitter): @slamdunk406
Email: slamdunk406@yahoo.com
