Baseball has always been a maddening sport. No matter how much talent a team has, it can be beaten on any given day.

I say it is maddening from the perspective of a player — no one likes to lose when they expect to win — but as a fan and a writer, the unpredictability of the game is what makes it so exciting. Every time you go to the ballpark, you’ll probably walk away having seen something you had never seen before. The same goes for softball.

This irregularity that we fans enjoy is also probably driving Stanford baseball head coach Mark Marquess and Stanford softball head coach John Rittman crazy this season.

As a beat writer for both teams, I have watched them both peak and valley this season in ways that make even a casual observer want to tear his hair out.

Both teams have had moments that made them appear to be among the best teams in the nation, and they have also had moments that make them look as if they don’t belong anywhere near the postseason.

The baseball team’s rollercoaster ride has been exceptionally unpredictable.

Beginning the season, the unranked Cardinal used an offensive onslaught to sweep No. 5 Rice, only to be swept a week later at No. 3 Texas with the offense unable to put up a fight against the Longhorn pitchers.

Over the course of the year, Stanford has gone a very impressive 10-5 against ranked opponents, but has also gone 0-3 against the University of the Pacific, the University of San Francisco and Saint Mary’s, three of the weakest teams on the Stanford schedule. Granted, those losses all came in midweek games without Stanford’s top pitchers on the mound, but nonetheless the Cardinal offense was unable to overcome mediocre pitching to get wins. In the loss to USF, Stanford managed just four hits against five different Don pitchers.

The Pac-10 Conference season has been no different. Just when the Cardinal looked like it was on a roll, having won seven consecutive conference games including sweeps at Oregon State and versus California, Stanford traveled to Washington only to be swept by one of the weakest teams in the conference.

Over a 21-game stretch beginning with a loss at UCLA on April 3, Stanford went on a five-game losing streak, followed by an eight-game winning streak, followed by a four-game losing streak, followed by a four-game winning streak. If that isn’t inconsistency, I don’t know what is.

At times, Stanford has been a hit-first team, and at other times it has been a pitch-first one. Early in the season, sophomore lefty Brett Mooneyham couldn’t find the strike zone with two hands and a flashlight, and recently he has looked unhittable. Meanwhile, sophomores Jordan Pries and Brian Busick were brilliant early but have since come back to earth.

For a while, junior shortstop Jake Schlander was one of the team’s best hitters, then it was junior first baseman Jonathan Kaskow and now it is freshman infielder Kenny Diekroeger. If only they could all hit at once.

The softball team has been equally inconsistent, though its failings have been for different reasons. The young team began surprisingly well considering its reliance on freshmen, starting 30-5 before free-falling to the tune of a seven-game losing streak. Since that 30-5 beginning, the Cardinal has gone a ghastly 3-12.

So why has the Cardinal struggled? The loss of freshman pitcher Teagan Gerhart to an arm injury. Gerhart’s injury reveals the nature of softball: without one dominant pitcher, which Gerhart had proved to be, your team is doomed.

Stanford hasn’t been losing games 1-0 since Gerhart’s injury (except its most recent loss), it has been losing games in which both teams score a lot of runs. Unfortunately for Stanford, outside of Gerhart, it lacks a pitcher that can keep most Pac-10 offenses at bay, and has paid dearly for that.

As their regular seasons wind down, Stanford baseball and Stanford softball must find a way to be consistent if they expect to win in the postseason.

For the softball team, if Gerhart gets back, Stanford would be an awfully brutal draw for a team in any regional. Concurrently, no team would want Stanford baseball in its regional seeing as the Cardinal has shown that it has the potential to beat just about anyone.
Dan Bohm got kicked out of AT&T Park for using a flashlight to show the umpire the strike zone. Discuss better strategies at bohmd “at” stanford.edu.