A key part of any plan for a successful season includes winning midweek games. Stanford won 15-9 at Santa Clara to finish unbeaten in such matchups this season.
The game featured the best performance of the year for junior Jesse Kuet, who has played the past several weeks in place of an injured Mikey Diekroeger. He finished the game with only 43 at-bats on the season, but Kuet is just starting to feel comfortable, said head coach Mark Marquess.
"On defense and especially with the bat, he's handled the bat really well," Marquess said of the past few games from Kuet. "It's a real plus for us for him to pick us up there."
It was difficult coming off the bench after having not played consistent baseball for a month or two, Kuet said. He leaned on the coaches and teammates to get up to speed as quickly as possible.
Kuet also had a hit Monday at Cal when they were in short supply for Stanford, and he had two hits and an RBI Saturday.
Stanford jumped to a 6-2 lead at Santa Clara through three innings and got some help from some wild pitching. A Cardinal batter was hit in each of the first three frames, including Brandon Wulff twice.
The Broncos recorded consecutive three run innings on Brett Hanewich in the fifth and sixth innings, but the Santa Clara production sandwiched a seven run outburst by Stanford.
The Cardinal batted around in the inning and all but one Stanford starter finished the game without scoring a run. The final offensive punctuation of the night was a Duke Kinamon two-run blast in the ninth inning that easily cleared the left field fence.
It was the type of drubbing expected by the No. 9 team playing one that is 13-37.
The Cardinal were able to get several pitchers some work and Erik Miller (two innings, one earned run and three strikeouts) didn't match the six innings of his outing last week against so that he could pitch this weekend. Will Matthiessen also was limited to two innings, leaving both freshmen available as long relievers as soon as Friday if need be.
Keith Weisenberg finished off the final two innings, allowing a run and striking out three.
Stanford will play five games this week because of the TV schedule changes for the Cal series that pushed the games to Saturday-Monday.
Marquess said the Cardinal practiced on a few extra things Friday and took Tuesday off.
"We're ready to play and they realize no matter who we play we have to play well," he said of the Washington series. "They're very good and playing for postseason and we're playing for postseason. It's big. Toward the end it really gets tight for everybody. It's good tonight that we got guys throwing who hadn't thrown. And we didn't have to use (Tyler) Thorne or (Colton) Hock."
The Cardinal are almost in a must-win situation in the last six games of the season if they want to overtake LSU, who D1 Baseball bumped to the No. 8 seed in its most recent projection. Last week the Cardinal were in the No. 8 position, but not after the loss to Cal and given LSU's current hot streak. The Tigers swept No. 13 Auburn and play at No. 11 Mississippi State this weekend.
Short of a collapse in the last two conference weekends, Stanford is guaranteed to host a regional. At stake in the next two weeks is just how favorable a position the Cardinal will be in to make a postseason run.
"We're coming into this with an intensity, but at the same time calmness," Kuet said. "We've been comfortable at the plate. We're comfortable on the mound. We're comfortable overall."
