Over the weekend, Stanford baseball got swept by Virginia on the road. In game one on Thursday, Virginia won 11-8. In game two on Friday, Virginia won 13-7. In game three on Saturday, Virginia won 9-8 in 10 innings. Stanford is now 16-9 overall and 5-7 in the ACC. As a result, Stanford has now fallen outside of the D1Baseball Top 25.
BOX SCORE: Stanford at Virginia-Thursday, March 27th
BOX SCORE: Stanford at Virginia-Friday, March 28th
BOX SCORE: Stanford at Virginia-Saturday, March 29th
Rather than provide a summary of all three games, I just wanted to provide some thoughts on the recent struggles that Stanford has been going through. The box scores are above in case you want to catch the play by play.
To start off with a positive, hitting and scoring runs hasn’t been the issue for Stanford. They’re getting plenty of run support and the bats are overall doing a good job. In the three games against Virginia, they had 39 hits and 25 runs. That’s an average of 8.3 runs and 13 hits per game. That is plenty of offense. If they can keep that up, odds are good that they can come out of this rough patch.
On the flip side, the pitching and defense, especially starting pitching has been terrible. In 3.2 innings pitched on Thursday, Matt Scott gave up six hits and three earned runs. In 4.0 innings pitched on Friday, Christian Lim gave up five hits and five earned runs. In 6.0 innings pitched on Saturday, Joey Volchko gave up nine hits and five earned runs. Just across the board, the starting pitching was bad.
As for the defense, in Saturday’s loss, the defense both kept them in the game and also cost them the game. Rintaro Sasaki, who has overall been playing well at first base, wasn’t able to field a hop that went over his head. It was a bit of a tricky bounce, but one he still should have gotten. And then in the outfield, Tatum Marsh had a clutch catch late in the game to keep it tied and end the inning. So, it’s been a bit of a mixed bag there.
Virginia had three errors over the series while Stanford had two. When looking at those numbers, it’s clear that the errors weren’t what cost Stanford the series, but at the same time, they definitely didn’t help. In the previous series at home against Cal, I could have written the same basic report for the three games. The offense was actually a little better against Virginia, but in both series’ it was the starting pitching that really dragged the Cardinal down. The bottom line is if Stanford wants to get back on track and become a ranked team again, they’re going to have to get the starting pitching to settle down.
If the starting pitching can find its groove, Stanford should be a dangerous team in the NCAA tournament and down the stretch of ACC play. If not, it’s going to be tough for the Cardinal to come out on top. I still have faith in their ability to right the ship, but if they’re going to do so, it’s going to have to start this week. They can’t delay this turnaround any further than they already have. They can’t have another bad week.
On that note, Stanford will return to action at home on Tuesday, April 1st against Santa Clara at 6:05 PM PT on ACCNX. They will then welcome Georgia Tech to The Farm for a three game series on Friday, April 4th through Sunday, April 6th.
CardinalSportsReport.com on Facebook, IG, Threads, X (Twitter), & Blue Sky: @StanfordRivals
Ben Parker on Facebook, IG, Threads, X (Twitter), YouTube, & Blue Sky: @slamdunk406
Email: slamdunk406@yahoo.com
