ASU baseball played a close game against second-ranked Stanford Friday night but couldn’t take home a victory, falling by a final score of 3-1.
Alec Marsh took the mound for the Sun Devils Friday and gave his team a pretty strong effort.
The sophomore gave up seven hits across six innings pitched, but only allowed three runs while also striking out three and walking three.
Marsh ran into most of his trouble in the first few innings, as he allowed a second inning solo home run to Cardinal right fielder Kyle Stowers and a third inning RBI triple to shortstop Nico Hoerner to put ASU in an early 2-0 deficit.
He settled down after this, however, as he kept the Cardinal off the scoreboard until the seventh inning when his leadoff walk came around to score after a wild pitch by reliever Jake Godfrey to make the score 3-0.
Marsh pitched well enough to keep the Sun Devils in the game, but the ASU offense could not pick him up, as they struggled to piece anything together against Stanford starter Tristan Beck.
Beck gave up five hits and four walks in his seven innings of work, but did not allow any runs to come across.
The Sun Devils put at least one base runner on in five of the seven innings that Beck pitched, but could not string anything together in order to start the rallies that they needed in order to jump back into the game.
The lone ASU run came after Beck’s departure, when they finally managed to get on the scoreboard at the expense of Stanford closer and midseason All-American Jack Little.
After Spencer Torkelson and Lyle Lin led off the eighth inning with back-to-back singles, Carter Aldrete roped a double into right center field to score Torkelson and make the score 3-1.
This was the first run Little had allowed all season, and with runners on second and third with one out, it looked like the Sun Devils were primed for more.
This would not be the case though, as Little struck out Taylor Lane and got Alika Williams to ground out to end the threat. Little would then go on to retire the side in order in the ninth, locking down the win for Stanford and securing his 11th save of the season.
This was the fourth straight loss for ASU, which brought their overall record down to 14-20 and their conference record to 6-7.
Next: ASU Baseball: Devils look to turn season around against No. 2 Stanford
Stanford improved their record to an outstanding 25-5 with the win. Game two of the three game series between these two teams takes place on Saturday with first pitch scheduled for 3:05 p.m. PST.