For Stanford baseball, this weekend’s series at Texas will be a critical barometer for measuring where the Cardinal stands talent-wise early in the season.

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Sean Ratliff and the Cardinal take to the road to square off against the No. 14 Longhorns in Austin this weekend. The Cardinal have won their last two games after being swept in Fullerton to start the season. #gallery http://daily.stanford.edu/image/full/6912
Mike Ramm

Sean Ratliff and the Cardinal take to the road to square off against the No. 14 Longhorns in Austin this weekend. The Cardinal have won their last two games after being swept in Fullerton to start the season.

For freshman righthander Brandt Walker, it will mean fulfilling a life-long dream.

Walker grew up in Austin, a stone’s throw away from the University of Texas campus. But while his friends dreamed of one day playing for the Longhorns, Walker aspired to someday wear cardinal and white instead of burnt orange.

“Playing against Texas is something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time now,” Walker said. “Texas is always a big series for us, and this weekend is going to be a great atmosphere, filled with rambunctious fans.”

Stanford (2-3) was swept in its opening series at Cal State-Fullerton but answered back against Fresno State, as the team swept a two-game set this past weekend. Last Tuesday, the Cardinal defeated Tokyo’s Rikkio University, 5-1, in an exhibition at Sunken Diamond.

“These past three games gave us a lot of confidence heading to Texas,” Walker said. “We played some solid games and have a ton of momentum.”

Junior catcher Brian Juhl’s bat continues to fuel the Cardinal’s offense with a .389 batting average. Sophomore infielder Austin Yount is batting .350 with a team-leading four RBI, but pre-season All-American slugger Michael Taylor has been limited to .250 with four RBI.

“We’re going to see some great competition in Texas,” sophomore infielder Jason Castro said. “We’re going to try to do our best pitching-wise, and hopefully our hitting will be able to take care of itself.”

Castro himself had a coming-out party Wednesday, going 3-4 with one RBI in his first game back from injury this season. As a team, the Cardinal is hitting .344 with 32 RBI.

Stanford pitching has also gotten the job done recently, recording a staff ERA of 7.07 — a number inflated by Fullerton’s offensive explosion two weeks ago.

“We’re fortunate our pitchers haven’t walked too many, but we haven’t done a great job locating our pitches, so we’ve allowed a lot of hits,” head coach Mark Marquess said. “We’re going to need to pitch better against Texas and play good, solid baseball. You need to play quality games on the road because, otherwise, such great teams are going to burn you. It’ll be a good test for us and let us know where we need to be.”

No. 14 Texas (4-4) enters the weekend hitting .314 with a 4.23 staff ERA. Today’s first pitch is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. PT in Austin, Texas, with an 11 a.m. PT start time for both Saturday and Sunday.