On Monday, Stanford baseball defeated Sacramento State 2-1. Nick Dugan (5-0) was the winning pitcher for the Cardinal in a starting role, pitching 7.0 innings while Sam Garewal picked up his first save of the season, pitching the final 2.0 innings. Sean Carey (1-2) was the losing pitcher for the Hornets in a starting role. Stanford improvs to 22-19 overall (7-17 ACC) while Sacramento State falls to 26-18 overall (10-5 Big Sky)
BOX SCORE: Sacramento State at Stanford-Monday, April 28th
“Good day, obviously Dugan and Garewal were the story tonight,” Stanford head coach David Esquer said after the game. “They pitched great, holding them down to one run and just enough in the first inning to win and could have done things better, coulda got more hits, coulda picked up that runner off of third base with less than two outs, scored him and made it easier, but we didn’t, but we still won. And that’s something we’ve been good at in the past is don’t always have to play your A-game but just be able to win.”
All the scoring came within the first couple of innings. In the bottom of the 1st inning, Stanford scored two runs as Cort MacDonald hit an RBI double to bring home Trevor Haskins after which Jimmy Nati grounded into a double play to bring home MacDonald, who had advanced to third after a single from Tatum Marsh. That made it 2-0.
Sacramento State added one run in the top of the 2nd inning thanks to an RBI single from Cameron Sewell. That made it 2-1. From there, neither would score the rest of the game as both pitching staffs did a good job holding their opponent to six hits each for the entire game.
For Stanford, Nick Dugan carried the torch for the first seven innings, totaling six strikeouts and giving up six hits. Sam Garewal then shut the door in the final two innings, not giving up a hit and striking out three batters. Collectively, both did their job and had strong performances.
“Yeah, I mean, I was locating the fastball and today my pitch was the changeup,” Dugan said of his performance. “I was able to throw it for a strike and a ball. Got a lot of easy outs, quick outs…He [Garewal] did better than I did. He had more K’s than I did, I think and I threw like seven innings. You know, I had like four Ks, he had like five?”
“Just fastball was really good,” Garewal said of his outing. “I was able to throw in and out, just pretty consistently and was throwing them off enough to get some good outs and let the defense do their thing…Dugan kinda set them up with such a strong performance that it was just pretty easy to keep that going and it was clear that, like, it just filled up the zone, they were gonna fold pretty easily and so I just wanted to carry that on…My fastball and change up were working really well. I was able to get some change ups low and away and good counts and they chased a few times, so that worked out well.”
Even though the offense didn’t get going for Stanford, it was nice for them to win a low scoring pitching battle. As they look to build some momentum down the stretch of the season, it’s good for them to get strong outings from their pitching. Especially from a pair of juniors in Dugan and Garewal who will look to have a strong senior season next year.
“We pitched way under our normal ERA, which is good, right?” Esquer said. “That’s a positive and we showed that we can do it and get a little momentum on the mound. That’s what we need.”
“We just try to give the offense a chance every time,” Dugan said of winning a low scoring battle. “It doesn’t really matter how many runs we score, just try to give them a chance…The two seam has gotten me a lot of outs and it’s letting me go deep into games.”
Up next for Stanford is a road trip to face Boston College. Game one will be on Friday at 3:00 PM PT on ACCNX.
“We gotta kind of the same it’s been over the last three or four weeks,” Esquer said of what his message to the team is. “We’re trying to win one game as often as we can, right? It’s just about win one and it’s not about win three. It’s not about sweeping anybody. It’s not about trying to go on a winning streak. It’s just let’s win one as many times as we can.”
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