Junior Sean Ratliff has come a long way in his Stanford career. You might never guess it if you watched him patrol center field so familiarly today, but the anchor of the Stanford outfield and the big bat in the middle of the order began his time on the Farm as a freshman working out of the bullpen.

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Jeff Keacher

Junior Sean Ratliff was a star pitcher in high school. He was 19-0 as a pitcher in his last two years in high school, but moved to center field after coming to Stanford. He currently leads the team in homeruns with 15 and has been a sparkplug in the middle of the lineup.

Indeed, when the southpaw arrived from Niwot High School in his home state of Colorado, the now 6-foot-3, 225-pound Ratliff was known as much for his arm as for his bat. In his final two prep years he batted .580 with 23 homers, but even more important was his pitching; he went 19-0 with a 0.73 ERA. He even managed to strike out 121 batters in just 64 and 2/3 innings his senior year.

With Stanford’s lineup pretty much established, Ratliff didn’t get many chances to swing the bat as a freshman. He had just 14 at-bats, in fact, and not a single hit. But there is always room for another left arm out of the bullpen, and Ratliff made his presence felt there. He picked up his first collegiate win in his first appearance, going 3 and 2/3 shutout innings, allowing just one hit while striking out six against Cal State Fullerton. By the end of the season, Ratliff was 2-0 with a team-leading 9.76 strikeouts per nine innings pitched.

Things changed a bit his sophomore season. Ratliff started in the outfield in all but one game and didn’t get a single opportunity to show off his arm on the hill. No matter, Ratliff dusted off his bat and knocked out his first and second hits in the opener — against Fullerton again. The season did not go as the Cardinal hoped, but Ratliff established himself as an offensive force at the collegiate level, being named First Team All-Pac-10 and finishing with a .339 average. He tied for first on the team in homeruns with 12 and was second in RBIs with 45.

Those numbers were good enough to land him on the Wallace Award-an award given to the best player in the nation-Watch List this season and, so far, Ratliff hasn’t disappointed.

“I didn’t have anything specific I wanted to work on from last year,” he said. “I just wanted to have another good year and keep improving my game all around.”

He has started every game so far in center field, and has even had a chance to pitch a few games, picking up two wins. But, as was the case last year, it has been with the bat that Ratliff has defined himself.

He has already passed his power numbers from last year with a team-leading 15 homeruns and is tied with fellow junior Jason Castro for first with 48 RBIs.

But despite the numbers, Ratliff would be the first to admit that hitting like that is not easy. It took patience and a lot of hard work for him to get back on track after enduring a bit of a slump, which saw him strike out 12 times in just 26 at-bats from the end of April to early May.

“I was a little frustrated that things weren’t coming together for me,” said Ratliff. “I spent some extra time in the cages and put in a lot of extra work on my own trying to iron things out and get back on track.”

The work seems to have gotten him not just back on track, but into the zone. In the three games since that rough patch, Ratliff is 5-for-12 (.417) with four homeruns and 11 RBIs. With a big Pac-10 series at Sunken Diamond against Cal this weekend, he could not be heating up at a better time.

“We are going to have to keep playing good baseball on the weekends to compete in the [Pac-10],” Ratliff said. “We have three tough weekends ahead of us, and it will be important to get off to a good start against Cal.”

Stanford is currently ranked No. 6 and sits just half a game back from ASU in the conference with a 10-5 record. But to Ratliff and the rest of this Stanford team, the Pac-10 is just the beginning of the road.

“When we end practice we break on the ‘Omaha,’” Ratliff said, referring to the site of the College World Series in the middle of June. “To get there is the goal. It is not that it would be nice to make it to the College World Series and compete for a title, it is that we are expected to do so. We haven’t been able to the last couple of years, and this year is going to be our chance to get back there.”

It will require everybody to play at their best, but with players like Ratliff, the Cardinal is confident that it has what it takes to keep playing in June.