Stanford Club Baseball faced off against Saint Mary's, playing three games in one day this past Saturday. The Cardinal swept the Gaels in dominating fashion, winning each of the three games by mercy rule. The final scores from the triple header were 14-3, 16-0, and 17-5.
Stanford's offense came out hot in Game 1, scoring 3 in the top of the 1st inning. However, the Gaels responded with three runs of their own in the bottom of the inning. Gabe Seir, the Stanford Game 1 starter, was absolutely dominant from then on, only allowing two base runners the rest of the game. Seir had heads spinning from his dominant repertoire featuring a lively fastball, a sweeping curve, and a tight slider. The grad student ended the day with 9 strikeouts, no walks, and only 4 hits allowed on his ledger. He would help himself out at the plate too. Stanford scored once in the 3rd to take a slim lead, but broke open the floodgates in the 5th when Seir hit a 2-run inside the park home run. The Cardinal would go on to score 7 more runs in the 5th and 6th, mercy-ruling the Gaels in 6 innings.
The bats stayed red hot entering Game 2, as 11 runs scored in the top of the first before the Gaels even took their first at-bats. And by the time the dust had settled after the 5th inning of the mercy-rule shortened game, Stanford had scored 16 runs on 14 hits and 9 walks. Evan Schieber, Cooper Tenney, William Ho, and Aaryan Shah all had multiple hit days. The team did not strike out once. Joseph Seddon, while quite appreciative of the run support given to him by his offense, did not need that much help in securing Stanford a victory. The freshman right hander absolutely dominated the Gaels, throwing a complete game shutout with 3 strikeouts, 2 hits, and 1 walk. Seddon pitched with precision and efficiency, effortlessly inducing weak contact. He only needed 48 pitches to go the distance.
With such a low pitch count, Stanford would have been stupid to not run Seddon out for a couple more innings during Game 3. So that's exactly what they did. Seddon pitched the first two innings of Game 3, striking out another two on 19 pitches and bringing his total workload for the day up to 7 spotless innings. Angel Villeraldo Amador, fresh off his no-hitter, came in and threw 2 clean innings while striking out 2. Senior Evan Schieber, notably not a pitcher, was able to stave off a late rally by Saint Mary's and close out the 5 inning mercy rule with an inning of his own. The inning was kept to five games thanks to one last offensive explosion by the Stanford offense. The Cardinal scored 17 runs on 10 hits and 11 walks, with 11 of those runs coming in the first two innings. Evan Schieber and John Paul Aguilar both had multi-hit games.
Collectively, Stanford's offense produced at a MVP level rate. Over the course of the triple header, the offense had a .375/.557/.525 slash line with a 1.082 OPS. The team scored 47 runs on 30 hits (23 singles and 7 extra-base hits) and 31 walks, only striking out 5 times over the teams 80 at bats. Evan Schieber, William Ho, and Cooper Tenney led the way with each having 4+ hits and multiple walks.
This sweep brings Stanford's winning streak up to 5 games. Stanford will finish its season at Cal next weekend.
