The Stanford baseball team (28-20, 11-10) travels to Tucson, Ariz. this weekend to play its penultimate Pacific-10 Conference series at Arizona (31-18, 10-11).
The Cardinal fell from the national rankings this week after losing two of three against Washington State last weekend, continuing a pattern of inconsistent play in the conference.
This weekend’s series is crucial for the Cardinal’s postseason chances and for its fleeting hopes of winning the Pac-10 title. Stanford currently sits in a three-way tie for third place in the conference, five games behind leader Arizona State and three games behind UCLA. The Cardinal takes on the Sun Devils at Sunken Diamond next weekend in its final games of the season.
Currently, Stanford is in pretty good shape to make a regional, but a poor ending to the season could mean a very difficult regional or no regional at all—a fact that the team understands.
“It’s all in our hands,” said junior shortstop Jake Schlander. “If we play well, we set ourselves up well, and if we don’t play up to our abilities, we may not be in the postseason or we may be in a tough regional.
“We hold the key to our destiny,” he added.
The Cardinal did bounce back from losses on Saturday and Sunday with a 5-1 win Tuesday against Hawaii.
Stanford will try to take that momentum to Arizona, which is always a difficult place to play as a road team.
The Cardinal will send sophomore lefty Brett Mooneyham to the mound today. Mooneyham, who got off to a rocky start for the season, has bounced back well, posting a 3.76 earned run average in his last six starts while striking out almost a batter an inning. Arizona is likely to counter with freshman righty Kurt Heyer, who is having a brilliant first season. He is 6-2 with a 2.83 ERA in 13 starts.
On Saturday, sophomore righty Jordan Pries will start for Stanford. While Mooneyham has gotten better as the season has gone on, Pries has gotten more inconsistent. He has not made it through six innings in his last three Pac-10 starts, but still leads Cardinal starters with a 3.53 ERA. Sophomore Kyle Simon will likely start for Arizona.
Freshman Dean McArdle, who got the first weekend start of his career last Sunday, is scheduled to start Sunday as long as he isn’t needed in relief today. Redshirt junior Daniel Workman, who has been a huge disappointment this season, going 2-2 with a 7.11 ERA, will probably start for the Wildcats.
Offensively, the Cardinal continues to be led by freshman third baseman Kenny Diekroeger. Diekroeger comes in on a 22-game hit streak and is hitting .370 for the season.
Outside of Diekroeger, however, the Cardinal offense has been stagnant. Schlander blames the offense for the team’s recent inconsistencies.
“We’ve been a bit down on the offensive side of the ball,” he said. “We’ve been getting good pitching, but we haven’t been scoring—we haven’t been getting big hits.”
For the Wildcats, sophomore outfielder Steve Selsky leads the offense with a .400 average, six home runs and 46 runs batted in.
The Cardinal currently sits a game ahead of the Wildcats in the conference standings, so this weekend’s series is crucial in determining how the Pac-10 standings will shape up.
After returning from Tucson, Stanford will play a midweek nonconference game against UC-Davis before hosting the No. 3 Sun Devils to close out the season. Six or seven losses and the Cardinal could miss the postseason, while six or seven wins could set it up to host a regional. It will all start today in Tucson, with the first pitch at 5 p.m. PST.