On Saturday, Stanford baseball fell to Wake Forest by a final score of 12-9. Matt Bedford (5-3) was the winning pitcher for the Demon Deacons in a relief role while Ryhs Bowie (1) picked up the save. Aidan Keenan (1-2) was the losing pitcher for the Cardinal in a relief role. Wake Forest improves to 28-16 overall and 11-12 in the ACC while Stanford falls to 21-18 overall and 7-16 in the ACC.
BOX SCORE: Wake Forest at Stanford-Saturday, April 26th
“Yeah, a tough one,” Stanford head coach David Esquer said after the game. “You know, got a two-run lead in the 9th. It’s one of those games you really feel like you have to have, but there are enough things throughout the game that we could have cleaned up and made some plays and had it go our way better. But, you know I give them credit. They beat our best guy and that’s what you want to have. You want to have your best guy on the mound with the game on the line and you know, they got it done unfortunately and I’d go down with Aidan Keenan 10 out of 10 times if that’s what had to happen. So unfortunately that happened today.”
Wake Forest scored in the top of the 1st inning to go up 1-0 as Kade Lewis hit an RBI single to bring home Cam Nelson. Stanford took the lead in the bottom of the 1st as Temo Becerra hit a two-RBI single to bring home Jimmy Nati and Tatum Marsh. That gave Stanford a 2-1 lead.
Stanford would continue to expand their lead in the bottom of the 2nd and 3rd innings. In the bottom of the 2nd,Trevor Haskins fouled into a double play that brought home Ethan Hott while Cort MacDonald was also out on the play. That made it 3-1. In the bottom of the 3rd, Marsh scored on a passed ball while Luke Lavin flied out to right field to bring home Nati. That made it 5-1.
In the top of the 6th inning, Wake Forest cut Stanford’s lead in half as Cam Nelson hit a two-RBI single. One of the runs was earned to Stanford starter Matt Scott while the other was earned to Ryan Speshyock, who came in for Scott after he pitched the first 5.0 innings. Scott overall pitched well, giving up just two earned runs while striking out five batters. Stanford wouldn’t score in the bottom of the 6th, keeping it at 5-3.
“He did a nice job for sure,” Esquer said of Scott. “And got us to a point in the game where we had a lead. A 5-1 lead and weren’t able to hold that, but then you know, our team had to battle back from some runs that the middle relievers gave up.”
Stanford would have Nick Dugan come in for Speshyock in the top of the 7th inning. That didn’t work out too good as Dugan loaded up the bases with no outs. Trevor Moore then came in for Dugan and didn’t do much better as Wake Forest scored four runs to go up 7-5. Moore would finally force a double play to end the top of the inning. In the bottom of the 7th, Stanford didn’t get anyone on base, keeping it at 7-5.
In the top of the 8th inning, Ben Reimers didn’t give up any runs as he was now on the mound for the Cardinal. That kept it at 7-5. In the bottom of the 8th, Stanford added four runs to go up 9-7: Trevor Haskins, Brady Reynolds, Tatum Marsh, and Jimmy Nati each had an RBI.
In the top of the 9th, Aidan Keenan came in to close the game for Stanford. Unfortunately for Keenan, the 9th inning did not go the way he wanted as he gave up three runs before having to get pulled out for Ty Uber. Two more runs were scored with Uber pitching, making it 12-9. All five runs were earned for Keenan. In the bottom of the 9th, Stanford was unable to answer, making 12-9 the final score.
“You gotta let him know that the reason he was out there is because, you know, he’s supposed to be out there for us, right?” Esquer said of his message to Keenan. “I don’t know the logistics of if there were spots missed or pitches that were elevated and all those things. The results were they scratched out about five hits in a row and were able to keep scoring against him. Tough loss for sure. Tough loss for sure. But being in position to win was and coming back and you know, scoring, getting the lead to the ninth was a positive.”
For Stanford, this is a painful loss given they had the game on the glove of Aidan Keenan. They had Wake Forest right where they wanted them and couldn’t close. That’s been the story of Stanford’s season all year long.
At this point, all that Stanford can do is move on and look to win the series on Sunday. The starting pitcher is TBD, so we’ll just have to see how the Cardinal will roll on that front. What we do know is the game will start at 1:05 PM PT on ACCNX.
“The key to winning the series is somehow figuring out how to get through nine innings of baseball tomorrow with what’s left,” Esquer said. “It almost feels like that game seven of a regional that we’ve had to pace together for years on years when you’ve got remnants of a bullpen left and somehow got to get through nine innings…. You might see some new faces and some new names tomorrow, so it’ll be interesting. It’ll be interesting, but we got to come out and compete.”
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