On Sunday, Stanford baseball defeated No. 4 Clemson by a final score of 11-6, avoiding a series sweep after dropping the first two games on Friday (1-11/7 innings) and Saturday (10-11). Stanford junior righty Matt Scott (5-2) was the winning pitcher for the Cardinal in a starting role while Clemson senior lefty B.J. Bailey (2-1) was the losing pitcher for the Tigers in a starting role. Temo Becerra and Jimmy Nati both had three RBIs for the Cardinal, Nati hitting a home run as well. Stanford improves to 19-14 overall and 6-12 in the ACC while Clemson falls to 33-6 overall and 11-4 in the ACC.
BOX SCORE: Stanford at Clemson-Sunday, April 13th
Stanford came out on in this game and didn’t look back. In the top of the 1st inning, they scored three runs as Temo Becerra hit an RBI double to bring home Trevor Haskins after which Jimmy Nati hit a home run to left field to bring home Becerra. Clemson scored one run in the bottom of the 1st inning as Jarren Purify hit an RBI single.
Clemson would tie it up 3-3 in the bottom of the 2nd inning thanks to an RBI single and an RBI fly out, but after that Stanford turned on the jets for good. Trevor Haskins hit a two-run blast in the top of the 4th inning to make it 5-3 and then in the top of the 5th inning, Stanford added five runs to make it 10-3: RBI single from Rintaro Sasaki, RBI single from Charlie Saum, two-RBI single from Temo Becerra down the left field line; and then an RBI single to left field by Jimmy Nati.
From there, Clemson would add a couple runs in the bottom of the 5th to make it 10-5 before both teams traded runs in the bottom of the 7th and top of the 9th innings. The 11th run for Stanford was courtesy of a solo homer by Brandon Larson down the right field line.
For Stanford, this was a nice bounce back win after having lost 11 straight ACC games. They’ve been going through quite the rough patch to say the least and so to snap the streak on the road against a top four team should give them a much needed shot in the arm. Whether or not they can build on this win to have a strong second half of the season is the big question, but they needed to get a start somewhere and this is certainly a start.
To touch quickly on the pitching side, Matt Scott wasn’t perfect at all, giving up five earned runs and 10 hits in 5.2 innings pitched. However, it was good enough as the offense did their thing. And then the bullpen stepped up as Ryan Speshyock (0.1 innings), Toran O’Harran (0.2 innings), and Aidan Keenan (2.1 innings) collectively gave up one hit and one earned run while striking out five batters. With pitching being the main Achilles heel for Stanford, they must take any improvement that they can get and take the little wins that come. This was a step forward for the pitching staff even though they still have a lot of work to do.
Up next for Stanford is a home series against Notre Dame this coming weekend. The first game will be on Friday at 6:05 PM PT on ACCNX.
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