After having a six-game winning streak snapped Sunday at UCLA, the No. 5 Cardinal baseball team started another one Monday night against Santa Clara, walloping the Broncos 13-6 on the road at Stephen Schott Stadium.

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Junior second baseman Cord Phelps knocked in Stanford’s first two runs last night in the third inning. The Cardinal’s 13 runs scored was its second best mark of the year, trailing only Feb. 22’s 17-7 victory in the season opener against Nebraska. #gallery http://daily.stanford.edu/image/full/9009
Jeff Keacher

Junior second baseman Cord Phelps knocked in Stanford’s first two runs last night in the third inning. The Cardinal’s 13 runs scored was its second best mark of the year, trailing only Feb. 22’s 17-7 victory in the season opener against Nebraska.

Stanford (22-12-2) scored all 13 of its runs in a five-inning span. But the Broncos first leapt out to a 1-0 lead in the first when left fielder Evan LeBlanc hit a solo homerun with one out. Junior second baseman Cord Phelps put the Cardinal on the board with a pair of RBI on a hit to left in the third before being picked off on the play. The Broncos answered back in the bottom half of the inning scoring four runs on three singles, a stolen base and catcher Tommy Medica’s three-run homer.

Stanford took hold in the following four innings, though, scoring 11 unanswered runs in those frames. Junior first baseman precipitated the Cardinal rally with a grand slam in the fifth inning. Senior DH Randy Molina followed that up with a two-run shot of his own as the Cardinal scored six runs in the inning.

Molina would go on to pick up another three RBI in the sixth on a double to left field. That largely capped off the scoring for the night, as Stanford would only go on to record a single run in the seventh while Santa Clara would answer with a run in the eighth. The 13-run effort was good for Stanford’s second best offensive output of the season, capped only by Feb. 22’s 17-7 win over Nebraska in the first game of the 2008 season.

“I think we all did a great job relaxing and just seeing the ball today,” Milleville said. “We had struggled with off-speed pitches on Sunday and we were able to adjust today. I thought we did a good job using all parts of the field and that helped us a lot.”

Another key contributor to the Cardinal’s second win of the season over the Broncos was senior right-hander David Stringer, who pitched four scoreless innings of two-hit baseball in relief of starter freshman Michael Marshall.

“Stringer has closed games for us and started games for us in his career,” Milleville said. “[T]hat versatility makes him really valuable to us. He can give us four, five or six innings or shut them down in the ninth. He is a huge part of this staff and this team”

It was Milleville and Molina, though, who starred offensively for the Cardinal, a duo which has rarely seen much action at the same time this season, an issue Milleville ultimately sees as a blessing for the team.

“A lot of guys have had to wait to get at-bats because we have so much depth,” he said. “That is the great thing about playing on this team — there is just so much depth. It can be tough sometimes, but you get used to it and I think [Molina and I] have a lot of experience coming off the bench and sharing time. We can be successful at it.”

The Cardinal currently leads the Pac-10 with an 8-4 conference record, just one game ahead of Arizona State and California, who are tied for second. Next up for Stanford is a 6 p.m. home contest against Saint Mary’s tomorrow to be followed by a three-game weekend series against Southern California this weekend at Sunken Diamond. USC is currently tied for sixth in the conference with a 6-6 record.