The Cardinal stared down its toughest challenger of the season and they defeated Oregon 4-0 to rally for the series win. Stanford (20-3, 5-1) outscored the Ducks 9-1 in the last two games after losing 10-1 Thursday.

"I thought the last two days, as far as I’m concerned, that was playoff quality baseball," said head coach David Esquer. "To me it felt like with as much as we needed to concentrate with every pitch and every defensive situation, that’s playoff baseball.

"They’re the best team we have faced so far in how they played us. Being able to learn how to compete against that pressure, I thought we grew up a little bit probably starting the second or third inning of yesterday’s game."

Stanford got four innings from sophomore starter Erik Miller (four hits, three walks and two strikesouts), but he had to battle for every pitch against a Ducks lineup that refused to help by swinging at a bad pitch. Freshman Jacob Palisch earned the win with 2.2 clutch innings of work that started the bridge to get the ball to rising star closer Jack Little (nine saves, no runs allowed and 24 strikeouts).

Little retired the last five hitters and struck out the side in the ninth, but when he came in during the eighth inning it was still a 1-0 game. There had been chances to make the lead more comfortable.

Stanford stranded Maverick Handley on second base in the first inning and the first two batters got on in the second inning. Kyle Stowers was thrown out at home after a great diving stop by third baseman Spencer Steer on a grounder.

Stanford finally broke through in the third when Tim Tawa led off with a single and reached third after a sac bunt and fielder's choice. Nico Hoerner hit a grounder to shortstop Daniel Patzlaff, who tried to catch Tawa going to third, but the Cardinal freshman beat the throw to put runners on the corners with one out.

Andrew Daschbach smacked a low liner not even a foot off the ground that Steer snagged with a spectacular diving effort -- likely saving two runs. But Ducks starter Kolby Somers threw a wild pitch that scored Tawa.

A combination of stellar defense and clutch pitching kept that 1-0 margin safe until Stanford opened up the game in the bottom of the eighth.

Hoerner led off with a single, stole second and sprinted for third on a short fly ball to right field. With one out Stowers launched a blast over the trees in right field and Hoerner could take his time going the final 90 feet.

Hoerner made spectacular plays with his glove to go with his base-running hustle.

"He is the anchor to our whole team in so many ways," Esquer said of the shortstop. "I think the biggest play was he steals second base and moves up on a foul pop-up. He really puts their pitcher in a situation when he has to try to strike (Stowers) out and Stowers probably took advantage of it. It put him in a sacrifice fly situation and it went into the trees."

Beau Branton delivered his third two-out RBI in the past two games to give Stanford its final 4-0 winning margin.

"Our guys are doing a good job of coming through in the clutch," Esquer said. "I was teasing him (Branton) that he couldn’t have thrown a ball better into right field to score that last run."

The play of Stowers and Branton are two of the examples of players who have had to step up with injuries to starters. Stowers wasn't in the opening game lineup before second baseman Duke Kinamon got hurt and that caused a domino effect. Now Branton appears to be the regular at second until Kinamon returns.

And the injury hits keep coming. Brandon Wulff is out for an extended, and currently undetermined, period of time after injuring his foot Thursday. He was seen on crutches and with a walking boot Saturday.

"Our guys have shown great character," Esquer said. "They’re a pretty close bunch of guys. It’s the next man up mentality and they’re going to pick up for a fallen brother. And they don’t think twice about it, so I’m really proud of this group."

Hoerner said that while there is truth to the perspective that Stanford will be a stronger team down the road for having dealt with adversity, it's still a difficult situation to handle.

"That really hurts," he said. "Between Duke and Wulff you have guys that are not only productive players statistically, but they’re guys who are at the foundation of the program and have been here for three years. They work hard and people respect them. You lose leadership and production. Once again we have great chemistry and depth and guys who are ready. Ready not fill the shoes -- like Beau isn’t trying to be Duke Kinamon right now. He’s trying to be Beau and doing a great job of it. (Nick) Brueser came in yesterday and got some hits. They weren’t home runs but they were good at-bats and he did what he could with his skill set, which is really good."

And the timing could be better. Stanford plays Gonzaga Monday and Santa Clara Tuesday before traveling to UCLA for a top-20 series. The Cardinal hold a two-game lead in the loss column of the Pac-12 standings after UCLA and Oregon State each dropped two games this week.