After giving head coach Mark Marquess his 1,600th victory with a win against California, No. 20 Stanford baseball (15-9, 3-4 Pac-12) heads south to take on USC (15-12, 4-5) with a three-game set beginning on Thursday at 6 p.m.
Marquess reached his newest milestone after 41 years of coaching at Stanford. He is one of four head coaches in Division I history to win 1,600 games.
The Cardinal defeated school rival Cal (12-14, 4-5) 8-4 on Tuesday. Stanford’s offensive explosion in the fourth inning lead to its eight runs — out of 13 players who batted, eight had hits. Freshman third baseman Daniel Bakst had two of the fourth-inning hits to extend his own hitting streak to a team-high 10 games.
Meanwhile, freshman pitcher Erik Miller was getting important outs on the other side, pitching four innings and only giving up two runs.
Looking ahead to its next series, Stanford will look to both its promising younger players and solid veterans to perform against the Trojans, who are coming off a 6-0 loss to Long Beach State.
Stanford has an overall record of 153-144-2 against the Trojans. Although the Cardinal have won six of the last nine series against the Trojans since 2008, USC has taken two of the last three.
Lefties will start on the mound in each game for Stanford — Sophomore Kris Bubic (2-4, 3.44 ERA) will start Game 1, junior Andrew Summerville (1-1, 2.88) takes Game 2, and senior Chris Castellanos (4-1, 2.09) will start the final game.
Juniors Quinn Brodey (.304 average against USC) and Mikey Diekroeger (.545) have had success against the Trojans in the past. Meanwhile, the Cardinal will look for continued success from junior closer Colton Hock, who has been dominant for the team so far with a career-high seven saves (16 total in his career) and an overall ERA of 2.95 (1.59 in three appearances against USC).
After the three-game set with the Trojans, the Cardinal will play a mid-week game at San Jose State and then a three-game home set against UCLA.
Contact Jose Saldana at jsaldana ‘at’ stanford.edu.