Recap: Eric Jeon walks it off for Stanford to take the series against No. 8 Florida State
On Saturday, Stanford baseball defeated No. 8 Florida State by a final score of 8-7 as Eric Jeon hit a walk-off single to deep left field in the bottom of the 11th to bring home Nolan Stoll. Teddy Tokheim and Brady Reynolds each hit a home run for the Cardinal to go along with two RBIs while Jeon’s RBI was his only one of the game. Brock Ketelsen (2-1) was the winning pitcher for the Cardinal in a relief role, pitching the 11th inning while Cole Stokes (0-2) was the losing pitcher for the Seminoles in a relief role. Stanford improves to 20-19 overall and 9-11 in the ACC while Florida State falls to 29-13 overall and 12-8.
BOX SCORE: Florida State at Stanford-Saturday, April 25th
“Yeah, it was a great ball game,” Stanford head coach David Esquer said after the game. “You know, pretty obviously even, evenly matched and you know, early on we created some innings for them with a couple misplays and, but you know what, a pretty high level game. You’re playing a top ten ranked team in the country. You can’t give them a whole lot. They’ll take advantage of it.
“But sometimes you play those high level games, it creates some mistakes when you’re not used to that you got to overcome and you got to kind of hang in there and stay resilient. And our guys did that. They’re learning how to do that a higher level. So hopefully we can learn from our mistakes but play a little cleaner.”
Toran O’Harran got the start on the mound for the Cardinal and got off to a good start, giving up zero runs in the first two innings and only allowing one runner to get on base. In the bottom of the 2nd inning, Stanford would add two runs. With one out, Charlie Bates would single to shallow right field before stealing second base with Brady Reynolds at the plate. Reynolds would then homer to deep left field, making it a 2-0 lead. Jimmy Nati and Luke Lavin would strike out swinging to end the top of the inning.
In the top of the 3rd inning, Florida State would score four runs as O’Harran was unable to finish the inning. Sam Garewal had to come in to get the final out. Chase Williams hit an RBI single to right field to make it 2-1; Brody DeLamielleure hit an RBI double down the right field line to tie it up 2-2; Hunter Carns hit an RBI double down the left field line to make it 3-2; and then Nathan Cmeyla flied out to center field to bring home Carns to make it 4-2. Gabe Fraser then flied out to left center to end the top of the 3rd.
In the bottom of the 3rd, with Trey Beard still on the mound for the Seminoles, the Cardinal scored two runs to tie it up 4-4. With two outs, Rintaro Sasaki reached first base thanks to an error. Teddy Tokheim then hit his 11th home run of the season, going yard to deep left field to bring home Sasaki. JJ Moran then struck out looking to end the bottom of the inning.
In the bottom of the 4th, Stanford added two more runs to go up 6-4. With one out, Reynolds doubled to left field after which Nati was walked via wild pitch. Reynolds advanced to third base as a result. Lavin then hit the ball to right field to bring home Reynolds and Nati thanks to an error. Lavin would advance to third base as a result. Stanford wouldn’t add any more runs the rest of the inning, keeping it at a 6-4 game.
With Sam Garewal still pitching for the Cardinal, the Seminoles would tie it up 6-6 in the top of the 5th inning. Eli Putnam doubled to left field after which Williams hit a bunt single to advance Putnam to third base. Williams would steal second base before a wild pitch by Garewal advanced Williams to third base and brought home Putnam. DeLamielleure then singled to center field to bring home Williams. Cohen Gomez had to finish the inning on the mound for Stanford.
In the 6th inning, neither team scored, keeping it at a 6-6 game. Colt Peterson pitched the entire inning for Stanford, replacing Gomez.
In the top of the 7th inning, Kassius Thomas came in to pitch for Stanford. He would give up one run as Carns got walked with two outs after which Cmeyla hit an RBI double down the right field line to bring home Carns. Fraser then struck out swinging to end the top of the inning. 7-6 lead for the Seminoles.
Stanford immediately answered in the bottom of the 7th inning. Lavin would single to shallow center field after which Philip Cheong came in to pinch run. Cort MacDonald then hit a sacrifice bunt to the infield advancing to first base via fielder’s choice while Cheong reached second base. Jeon then hit a ball deep into left field that looked like it would clear the fence only for him to get robbed of a home run. Cheong advanced to third base as a result. Sasaki then grounded out to the right side of the infield to bring home Cheong and advance MacDonald to second base. That tied the game up 7-7.
Tokheim then got walked after which Moran popped up to shallow left field to end the inning. It was a bummer for Stanford that Jeon didn’t get that ball to clear the fence as it would have been a three run home run. However, they at least were able to tie the game as a result of Sasaki’s RBI that brought home Cheong. So, some good did come of Jeon’s fly out.
Thomas would pitch the 8th and 9th innings for Stanford, doing a nice job of keeping the Seminoles at bay. He once again brought the smoke. Florida State had a tough time generating offense off of him. It would go into extra innings tied 7-7.
“Kassius Thomas was outstanding today,” Esquer said. “You know, he’s just, keeps getting better, better, but you know, three innings of great relief that really, that we needed to have.”
In the top of the 10th inning, Mike Erspamer would pitch for the Cardinal. He would get three strikeouts and not give up any runs, walking two batters. In the bottom of the 10th, nobody for Stanford scored, forcing the game into the 11th inning.
“Um, not really much, actually,” Erspamer humbly said when asked what was clicking for him. “Like, kind of went out there, like try to figure it out while we were going and yeah, I don’t feel like I had my best stuff out there, but we get through it and yeah, that’s a big moment and yeah, definitely a good learning moment, too.
“It’s a lot of pressure, but you just gotta learn to treat it like any other inning and I mean, yeah, at the end of the day, it’s just a game. Just gotta go out there and have fun with it and just play your game and you know you have eight guys behind you that are gonna do their job. So you just gotta trust them and do you.”
In the top of the 11th, Brock Ketelsen pitched for the Cardinal after Erspamer pitched the 10th inning. Ketelsen would walk one batter, but force a pop up, foul out to the catcher, and a fly out to end the top of the 11th.
“Well, when you look at it, we used between Peterson, Erspamer, Ketelsen, those three freshmen are getting valuable experience and high leverage games and pitching to win,” Esquer said. “So, you know, again, it’s those experiences and success with experience that I hope just keeps feeding more and more better performance.”
“Our big thing is just go out there, just be a winner,” Erspamer said. “Just do your thing, be a winner, stay loose, and do whatever it takes to go win the at-bat, win the pitch, beat the guy. Don’t be the spot, kind of deal. It’s how you go about it. It’s just one-on-one.”
In the bottom of the 11th, Stanford got the run they needed to win the game. With one out, Nolan Stoll singled to third base after which MacDonald doubled down the right field line to advance Stoll to third base. Up next to the plate was Jeon, who singled to deep left field to walk it off, bringing home Stoll. 8-7 Stanford won the game and in the process won the series.
As one can imagine, Jeon was fired up afterwards. It was a bit of a roller coaster of emotions for him going from having a three-run home run robbed to hitting the walk-off game winner. In the end, it all worked out for him.
“It feels amazing,” Jeon said. “You know, just the whole thing I wanted to do was to come through for my boys, you know? I think it was like the 9th inning. 8th or 9th inning. I didn’t come through that one spot and so this time around, I just wanted to capitalize, you know, on that and just you know, come through for the boys and just you know, get that win.
“It’s unimaginable. You know, I’ve been dreaming of that since I was like, a little kid. Stanford’s my dream school and this season obviously, we’ve walked off a couple times and you know, I just wanted to do it for the team and just, you know, not only come through in that moment right there, but I’ve always wanted to hit a walk off, so that’s, it’s always great.”
“You know, they rob that home run and you never know that maybe it’s not going to be your day when something like that happens,” Esquer said. “That would have made it 9-6, right? But hey, again, we keep preaching, I’m like you just got to keep getting back up. You got to be resilient and that’s what this game demands that you have some resilience to you and not get beat down because it’ll do that to you. So it was really, it was really good to see him get that in. Especially, I think he had a couple of at-bats with runners in scoring position and wasn’t able to cash them in. I know yesterday even, was up to with the bases loaded and didn’t cash the runners in. So, you know, coming back and coming through is huge.”
For Stanford as a team, this is a huge win. They get the series win over the No. 8 team in the nation and now have a chance to get a sweep. Win or lose tomorrow, this has been a great weekend for the program.
While they still have a lot of work to do, this is the first weekend in a while in which Stanford feels like they are getting back to being the kind of program they believe they should be. This game gave me vibes of postseason baseball, something that we haven’t seen at Sunken Diamond the last couple of seasons. This is the kind of weekend that really is a shot in the arm to the entire program provided they can build on this.
“I hope so,” Esquer said of this being a program-defining weekend. “You know, you got to get wins against top caliber competition in the country and they certainly are and to win at home, which we haven’t been doing as well as we’d like to was hopefully a big statement.”
“No, it’s huge,” Jeon said of winning the series. “We’ve been playing really good baseball as of lately and you know, it just shows these first two wins out of the series just show, like our team chemistry and how strong we are. When times get tough, you know, when you know, I don’t go, I don’t come through, when some other guys don’t come through, you know, we need guys to pick each other up. Like Ketelsen, Erspamer, Kash, a bunch of other guys that I haven’t named, but those guys picked us up and just put us into a better position to win. So honestly, it’s a huge weekend, but we’ve been playing good baseball, so we’re gonna continue to do that.”
Given the fact that Stanford softball swept a top ten Florida State team just a couple weeks back, Stanford baseball has a chance to do the same on Sunday. When asked about that possibility, Esquer stressed that they’re going to have play their absolute best to make it happen given how good Florida State is.
“A little bit,” Esquer said with a laugh about there being extra pressure from softball. “Yeah, a little bit. You know, we’d like to match, but tomorrow’s gonna be, you know, we’re probably on fumes in that bullpen a little bit, but you know, Nick Dugan will come out and give us a good outing and then we’ll, hopefully we can get it to Trevor Moore at the end of the game if we need to, but we’ll see.”
Up next for Stanford is game three on Sunday at 1:05 PM PT on ACCNX.
CardinalSportsReport.com on Facebook, IG, Threads, X (Twitter), & Bluesky: @StanfordRivals
Ben Parker on Facebook, IG, Threads, X (Twitter), YouTube, & Bluesky: @slamdunk406
Email: slamdunk406@yahoo.com
