While the average Stanford student was privileged with a nice week-long break, the No. 17 Stanford baseball team had its hands full with two three-game series, one away game in Sacramento and one home game against Long Beach State. The Cardinal won four of the seven games, capturing both of the series against Pacific and its first Pac-10 series against Washington State, which brings the team’s record to 13-7 overall and 2-1 in conference.

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Jeff Keacher

The Stanford baseball team finished its spring break on a strong note, routing No. 10 ranked Long Beach State by the score of 9-3 yesterday.

Stanford had a rough start to spring break at Klein Field at Sunken Diamond on Friday, Mar. 21, when they lost 10-6 against Pacific.

The Cardinal came back from its initial loss in a 7-3 victory the next day in Stockton, tying up the series. Stanford completely turned around its game, playing well both offensively and defensively.

Starting pitcher senior Erik Davis got the win, striking out a career-high 10 batters in a career-high-tying 7.0 innings pitched. Freshman Drew Storen earned his second save of the season after coming in to close out the bottom of the eighth. He retired all six batters he faced with two strikeouts.

The Cardinal jumped out to a two-run lead which it would never relinquish. Junior infielder Cord Phelps and junior outfielder Jeff Whitlow led the team with three hits each. Phelps scored a career-high-tying three runs while Whitlow’s three hits in a single game was also a career high. Senior Brendan Domaracki and freshman Zach Jones each added two hits on the game to outhit the Tigers, 13-5.

Stanford took its momentum from the previous night to tab its first shutout in the third game of the non-conference series at Stockton. Sophomore Jeffrey Inman and junior Max Fearnow made for a fiery pitching combination by limiting the Tigers to 5 hits and racking up 10 strikeouts.

Stanford started off strong in the first, amassing a five-run lead and eventually finishing the game with a 14-0 victory. Junior Brent Milleville had 4 RBI after the first two-homer game of his career. The Cardinal concluded the series with 16 hits in the final game.

“We played poorly the Friday after finals,” head coach Mark Marquess said. “We had three or four errors and played [the] worst game we’ve played all season. We had great pitching Saturday and Sunday, and we were able to swing the bat well enough to earn us the series win.”

The very next day, Stanford traveled south to face Sacramento to fine tune its game before opening the Pac-10 season against Washington State. Stanford scored all three of its runs in the fourth inning, but Sacramento State answered back in the same inning with a double by David Flores, followed by a homer from Gabe Jacobo. The Hornets went on to win by the final score of 5-3.

After a two-day break in the action, Stanford opened Pac-10 play at Sunken Diamond with a 10-4 loss in the first game of a series against Washington State. The Cougars’ Ross Humes had a no-hitter until the bottom of the eighth, when junior Sean Ratliff blasted a one-out homer. In addition to Humes’ stellar performance, the Cougars also tallied three homers on the game from Greg Lagreid, Paul Gran and Alex Pracher.

The Cardinal rallied back in the second game to even the series with a 7-3 win. Stanford’s own Davis pitched the first complete game of his career. He allowed two runs in the second and one in the third before allowing just one hit and one runner in scoring position over the last six innings of the game. He also retired the final nine batters that he faced to seal the Stanford victory.

Stanford took the decisive third game against Washington State on Sunday to win its first league series of the season with a score of 4-1. Inman pitched 7.1 innings, his longest start of the season, while allowing eight hits and no runs.

Storen came in during the eighth and allowed two hits and one run but tabbed the final five outs to end the series with a Stanford victory.

Yesterday, Stanford was able to keep up the momentum with a 9-3 win over No. 10 Long Beach State. The game remained scoreless until the bottom of the fourth inning, when Castro reached base on a fielding error, and Molina advanced Castro to second on a throwing error. The biggest hit of the game came from Ratliff after he blasted a three-run homer off of the Dirtbags’ Lorin, his third homer of the weekend.

“This was a good win for us, especially against a team of Long Beach’s caliber,” Ratliff said. “I haven’t made a whole lot of changes to my batting technique. I’ve just been trying to stay balanced and I’ve been seeing the ball well. I guess it’s all starting to come together.”

“The big hit this game came was Ratliff’s three run homer that gave us the lead,” coach Marquess said. “We had another errorless game with good defense. I’m pleased to win against a quality team.”

After winning the past three games, the Cardinal is trying to build momentum going into this week’s games against Hawai’i (9-19) today and Arizona State (25-1), who is No. 1 in the nation. The Cardinal handled its busy spring break schedule well and looks forward to these challenging upcoming games of the week.

“We’re a little rusty after break, but we’ve gotten better,” Marquess said. “But we are back to the rigors of going to class. We have been playing a lot of baseball, and we are going to keep playing because we have a lot of games scheduled for the next four to five weeks. The weather has been great, and hopefully it will continue for the upcoming games this week.”