On Monday, Stanford baseball defeated Creighton 6-3 to pick up a much-needed win as they were playing to avoid a sweep. Stanford righty Trevor Moore (2-0) picked up the win in a relief role while righty Nick Dugan picked up his first save of the season. Creighton lefty Casey Trapp (1-1) was awarded the loss in relief role. Stanford improves to 10-11 overall while Creighton falls to 17-4.
“Hey, you know, another strong pitching performance,” Stanford head coach David Esquer said after the game. “I thought we had three of them on the weekend. Obviously a little glitch in the bullpen yesterday for one inning, but all in all, I think 26 of the 27 innings, we probably pitched pretty solidly, right? And so that was the key. That gives us a chance.
“I thought the two new guys in the lineup gave us a little spark. We tried to change it up. We had difficulty scoring runs, but a couple big hits finally. Temo Becerra had a big hit and Brett Blair came in there and got a good hit for us. So I mean, that’s all part of it.”
BOX SCORE: Creighton at Stanford-Monday, March 25th
To touch quickly on Sunday’s game, Stanford led 1-0 through the end of the 8th inning before giving up eight runs in the top of the 9th and losing 8-2. Freshman lefty Christian Lim was fantastic for the Cardinal. In 6.1 innings pitched, he pitched a shutout, giving up only three hits and two walks while striking out 11 batters. Unfortunately for Lim, he wasn’t able to get the win as the run support wasn’t there while the bullpen fell apart in the end.
“It’s tough any time you lose a game,” Stanford pitching coach Thomas Eager said after Sunday’s loss. “Christian Lim, I thought pitched outstanding. He seems to find a niche. Like if you don’t, they had a chance to probably get him out of that game for multiple reasons.
“One, his pitch count was getting kinda high. He’s a freshman and I’m not gonna extend him in a one inning sense. Like, it was getting close where if he got close to that thirty pitch mark, thirty five pitch mark in the inning, you’re gonna pull him. Just because of health and his youth. They were like a hit away from that possibly happening and then he gets out of it and then he rolls for the most part. He had three pitches working. He was executing his location and executing his pitches and he ended up pitching the ball really really well and got us all the way into the 7th I believe, right? He threw six and third? Yeah.
“And I thought the matchup was great. I thought they had a lefty leading off, he was at 93 pitches, he was gonna go get the lefty and be done. If he got on, we’d bring Dugan in for the bunt. If they didn’t, we’re gonna bring Kassius in and let him roll. Kassius got the two outs and it’s just unfortunate that, I don’t think we’ve had a shutout in over a year and a half. In ’22 I think we led the nation in shutouts and then ’23 we didn’t get one and we’ve been close twice.
“And then hey, you know, give them credit. They flattened out some balls on Toran and hit a couple walks in there and it’s just a little unfortunate. If you go back and look at some of the things, biggest thing is lack of execution. I think the confidence was there, but the execution happened to be middle-middle on a lot of the pitches and when we were ahead in the count, it ended up being back to middle-middle and not being where the pitch was supposed to go and that’s baseball sometimes. You gotta give Creighton credit. They took advantage of all of our mistakes in the last inning and ended up beating us up a little bit.
“Hopefully our guys learn from it and understand where they need to be at mentally when those stings start happening. How to slow the game down and make some pitches.”
Moving on to Monday, the Cardinal did a great job of bouncing back. Freshman righty Joey Volchko got the start and got off to a hot start. After getting through the top of the 4th inning, Volchko didn’t give up any runs, keeping it a 0-0 game entering the bottom of the 4th.
“Dugan will probably start on Thursday,” Esquer said of their pitching strategy going into the game. “So we just had him limited and so we didn’t want to use him too much today. And I’ve wanted to see what looks like at the end of the game as well. He didn’t have his best stuff, but he kinda battled through to get the outs.”
In the bottom of the 4th, Stanford got on the board and scored the first run of the game. With one out, Brady Reynolds singled through the right side after which Brandon Larson singled to right field and was out at second base while Reynolds advanced to third. Temo Becerra then singled to right center to bring home Reynolds. Stanford didn’t add any more runs the rest of the inning, but they were now in the lead up 1-0.
In the top of the 5th inning, Creighton would respond with three runs. Ben North would hit a single through the left side and advance to second base on a wild pitch after which Connor Capece was walked. This ended Volchko’s day on the mound as Trevor Moore came in for relief.
Kyle Hess then hit a bunt single to load up the bases. The Bluejays were close to getting on the board. Tate Gillen then got hit by a pitch to bring home North and keep the bases loaded. After Moore struck out two batters in a row, he then gave up a single to Teddy Deters, who singled through the left side to bring home Hess and Capece. Creighton wouldn’t score any more runs the rest of the inning. This made it a 3-1 lead for them entering the bottom of the 5th.
In the bottom of the 5th, Stanford responded with three runs of their own. Gabe Springer hit a single to right field after which Malcolm Moore was walked. Jimmy Nati then lined out to left field to advance Springer to third base. At this point, Creighton made a pitching change as Casey Trapp came in to pitch for Shea Wendt, who was the third pitcher of the day for the Bluejays.
Trapp would struggle out of the chute as he threw a wild pitch to Cort MacDonald, which allowed Springer to come home while Moore advanced to second base. MacDonald then hit a single to second base to advance Moore to third base. Reynolds then struck out looking, which would be the final batter Trapp would face. Parker Primeaux came in for relief hoping to do some damage control.
MacDonald then stole second base after which Jake Sapien was walked. Up next to the plate would be Becerra, who singled up the middle to bring home MacDonald and Moore while Sapien advanced to second base. Saborn Campbell then flied out to left field to end the bottom of the inning. Stanford was now ahead 4-3.
“Honestly, I’ve been just working hard with Steven and today was just trying to stick with the same approach,” Becerra said of his success on the day. “See it away and just try to hit it up the middle and I guess it kinda paid off today.”
“Just the key two out hits, right?” Esquer said of finally scoring some runs. “And we’ve had base runners on all weekend. I think we’ve left quite a few on, in runners in scoring position. So, guys are trying really hard. It’s one of those where they gotta almost relax a little bit and trust themselves because it’s not a group that can try harder and play better.”
From there, Stanford would go on to win 6-3 as Creighton did not score the rest of the game. Moore and MacDonald hit RBI singles in the bottom of the 6th inning to give the Cardinal pitching staff a bit more breathing room the rest of the way.
As for how Stanford’s pitching went from the 6th inning on, Moore would pitch the top of the 6th and 7th innings, getting three straight batters out in both. Nick Dugan would then pitch the top of the 8th and 9th innings, not giving up a run and securing the save. Dugan didn’t have his best stuff, hitting and walking a batter in the 8th inning while giving up a double in the top of the 9th. Fortunately for Dugan and the Cardinal, he got the outs when he needed to and at the end of the day that’s all that matters.
“…The pitchers just have to learn how to slow their heart rate down and understand what is the next attack here,” Eager said of what he wants to see from his pitchers. “It’s to minimize, right? Would we trade a sac fly for an out? Yeah we will. We’ll take the out, we’re down one, that’s fine. We’ll take a ground ball or we’re playing infield in. End up walking that guy, so be it, too. Right?... I just told them, I said hey guys, like, go out there and let’s be a little ugly.
“We’re not trying to be big leaguers right now. We’re trying to play baseball and we gotta have some will and we gotta go out there. We gotta give our offense a chance and that’s our motto. Give our offense a chance to win the game.”
“It’s more spontaneous,” Dugan said of coming out of the bullpen. “You kinda get told to get warm and then you’re just throwing in the fire, which, I love it, though. It’s sick…Nothing was super consistent, but I just came back and made pitches. Like my fastball wasn’t there a couple times, came back. Change up wasn’t there. Ended up making an adjustment and coming back.”
For Stanford, Monday’s win was much needed. They did not want to get swept and after having a couple of close games on Saturday and Sunday, to finally win one felt good. They got the runs they needed and the pitching staff did their job for all nine innings. Really not much to complain about how Monday went. It’s the other two games of the series that they should be kicking themselves for not winning.
“We knew it was gonna be gritty,” Becerra said of pulling out a win on Monday. “We just had to come out here and play our game and just stay focused throughout and we were going to get the result we wanted to.”
At this point, all that Stanford can do is be grateful they won on Monday and look ahead to their next series at Utah. That will begin on Thursday at 6:00 PM PT on Utah Live Stream and KZSU radio.
“Honestly, we just gotta keep playing hard and keep staying focused,” Becerra said. “And just being aggressive at the plate and we’re gonna be just fine.”
“I think Utah’s very improved, obviously, right?” Esquer added. “They beat Oregon State and played them close in other ball game and beat Cal two out of three on the road. So, they’re obviously improved. I think their record is solid and we’ve learned over the past couple weeks the margin between winning and losing is very thin.
"We could look back on this weekend. You lose 3-2 on Friday and maybe a missed play affects it and not scoring some runs affects it. And yesterday, the game is probably different with a 3-0 lead in the 9th versus a 1-0 lead in the 9th. So, offensively and pitching-wise, it’s a very thin line and that’s probably where we’re weakest at right now is being able to, the experience it takes to win those games.”
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