ASU Baseball: Stanford Series Recap
By Mike Slifer
This article was contributed by Emily Achondo
Despite strong starting pitching, the Arizona State University baseball team fell just short to the Stanford Cardinal, losing two of the three games in the weekend’s Pac-12 matchup.
The starting pitchers for ASU gave up only three runs all weekend against Stanford.
Head Coach Tim Esmay was pleased with the starting pitchers’ performances in the series against Stanford.
“(If) we pitch like that with those three starters, we’re going to be at a chance to win most of our games.” Esmay said. “I thought they pitched really well.”
The Sun Devil offense could not respond against the Stanford starting pitchers, however. ASU got only 17 hits and scored six times in the series loss.
“They pitched well against us,” Esmay said. “We didn’t do a very good job of adjusting to what their plan of attack was to our guys.”
After falling behind early in the three game series with a 4-3 loss in the first game of the series, the Sun Devils split the final two games against Stanford.
In Thursday’s game, ASU held a 3-0 lead after the first four innings, but they gave up three runs to the Cardinal in the eighth inning to tie the game. Stanford would take the lead and the win in the bottom of the ninth.
Starting sophomore pitcher Brett Lilek threw six and one-third innings, giving up only four hits and no runs. Center fielder and ASU sophomore Johnny Sewald went 3 for 5, with one run.
The Sun Devils had two errors in the game.
The second game of the series brought victory for the Sun Devils. Once again, the fourth inning resulted in scoring for ASU, where they scored three runs. Stanford would make an effort to come back in the sixth inning, scoring two runs.
“We just came out and had good at-bats,” Sewald said of the game. “We hit some balls hard and tried to put the ball in play, and we got a couple runs early.”
Starting pitcher, sophomore Ryan Kellogg, threw seven innings in the win, allowing only the two runs in the sixth.
“We came out better as a team with our hitting approaches,” Sewald said of the win. “Ryan Kellogg threw great… He’s been big for us all year and all last of year.”
In the final match of the three-game series, the fourth inning was the only inning to bring scoring. Starting pitcher for the Sun Devils junior Darin Gillies pitched eight innings and gave up a solo home run to Stanford’s first baseman Danny Diekroeger, which would be the only point on the board for the whole game.
Next, the Sun Devils will travel to Tucson to take on the Arizona Wildcats for the second time this season in a three-game rivalry matchup.