STANFORD, CALIF. --- UC Irvine baseball never recovered from a gut-wrenching second inning where three errors led to seven runs and told the story of a 12-4 loss Saturday evening to the host Stanford Cardinal at Klein Field in the Sunken Diamond.
SECOND HOP
The damage started to lead off the second inning as Stanford (35-14) got an earned run off the bat of Christian Robinson whose line drive clear the right field fence for a home run and a 1-0 Stanford lead.
A walk and a fielder's choice put a runner on first base with two outs to bring up Adam Crampton. His sharp grounder to
Taishi Nakawake was fumbled allowing runners to first and second. Eddie Park followed with a rocket to
Justin Torres at second who had a ball eat him up and load the bases. Another grounder went to Nakawake off the bat of Tim Tawa, but he made another error to load the bases and bring a second run home to keep the inning going. After a bases loaded walk made it a 3-0 Stanford lead, Kody Huff came up and blasted a shot to left field just over the fence and the outstretched glove of
Luke Spillane to complete the seven-run eruption in the second inning.
ARMS RACE
The seven runs was more than enough for starter Brendan Beck who bent but did not break stranding Anteaters in scoring position in four of his seven innings.
Mike Peabody popped an opposite-field home run in the fifth inning to get on the board, and
Nathan Church singled home
Connor McGuire in the seventh, but Beck had plenty to work with and added nine strikeouts to keep the Cardinal ahead.
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After Pinto was lifted from the devastating second inning,
Cole van den Helder came on and worked very well to keep the game from getting even more out of hand. His longest outing of the season saw him go 4.1 innings allowing just one run and striking out three.
FINAL SCORE: STANFORD 12, UC IRVINE 4
The Anteaters put up fight in the ninth inning adding a pair of runs off a
Nathan Church double, but too little too late to change the outcome. Church finished with three RBIs along with a pair of hits to surpass the 90-hit mark on the season; just the sixth Anteater to reach that height. Peabody continued to add to his lofty totals with his ninth home run and 56th RBI.
The loss to Pinto drops him to 7-4 despite just one earned run of the seven that scored in his 1.2 innings. Beck for the Cardinal improved to 9-1 with a pair of wins against the Anteaters.
Stanford was charged by a career night from Kody Huff who added a second grand slam to his night in the eighth inning to finish with eight RBIs and the two home runs. Robinson with his HR joined Huff and Tawa with three hits each, and Tawa drove in two along with four other Stanford hitters that scored a pair.
Postgame Quotes
Ben Orloff -Â
"Seven-run second inning was kind of the story of the game. After that, as the fate of the game was a little bit decided, we've come back down before, but not by seven with the guy like Beck on the mound. So that's kid of the story of the game. I was happy with how we competed and pitched out of the bullpen after that, but when you give up seven runs in the second facing Stanford and Beck, you've got no chance to win."
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"I thought we played and responded to the second inning and didn't really worry about the score. I'm proud of howe we competed and took at-bats and pitched and played defense. I think it's a testament to our character, and how our kids are, but we're not coming back from that deficit. We still play the game the right way."
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"We saw it last night and we're seeing it again today, everybody that's watching and seeing that this guy is one of the best player sin the country. He's got 33 extra-base hits now. We had a kid a couple years ago, Keston Hiura, who had 31 extra-base hits and was the ninth-overall pick, so I think everybody that's been watching is seeing how special a player he is."
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"We prefer not to come out of the loser's bracket, but I think that the pitching depth with what we had to go through in the Big West and four-game weekends, we're built and in a good enough position on the mound to be able to pitch our way out of the loser's bracket and into a Super Regional.. We have Trenton Denholm who at times in his career has been among the best guys in the country. We have Peter Van Loon, and a lot of our best relievers haven't thrown yet so we've been through this before, we've lost a game and won three in a row, and that's what we'll have to try to do again."
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Nathan Church -Â
"Our hitting plan was to get on the fastball and stay the other way, and I capitalized on that."
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"It was pretty tough going down 7-0, but we tried to keep our heads up and keep taking good at-bats and just playing defense and play through the whole game."
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"We're just going to brush this loss off and get ready tomorrow with Trenton on the bump tomorrow against North Dakota State."
SURVIVE AND ADVANCE
The Anteaters are now in survival mode starting with their next game, Sunday, June 6, at 1:00 p.m. UCI will need to get by 4-seed North Dakota State in that game to keep their season alive. The winner of that matchup will play Sunday night at 6:00 p.m. against Stanford needing a win there to force a winner-take-all game Monday between the same teams.
On Sunday, the Anteaters will ride their junior veteran
Trenton Denholm on the mound to take on another acclaimed junior on the Bison' side, Evan Sankey. The action can be seen on ESPN3 along with KUCI 88.9 FM.
