Takeaways: Stanford Baseball has rough weekend in South Bend
Over the weekend, Stanford baseball had a rough outing against Notre Dame on the road in South Bend, Indiana, getting swept by the Irish in a three-game series. Notre Dame defeated Stanford 6-2 on Friday, 10-7 on Saturday, and 18-13 on Sunday. Every time the Cardinal added more runs the next game, the Irish found a way to score even more. It was truly a frustrating outing for the Cardinal. As a result, Stanford is now 22-22 overall and 10-14 in the ACC while Notre Dame is now 24-20 overall and 11-16 in the ACC.
BOX SCORE: Stanford at Notre Dame-Friday, May 1st
BOX SCORE: Stanford at Notre Dame-Saturday, May 2nd
BOX SCORE: Stanford at Notre Dame-Sunday, May 3rd
Rather than addressing each game individually, I would like to share my overall thoughts on the weekend. By all means, check out the box scores above for detailed breakdowns of how each game went. That’s why I provide those.
The first takeaway I have from this weekend is the Cardinal defense has a lot of issues. The Cardinal had four errors on Friday, two errors on Saturday, and two errors on Sunday. That’s an average of 2.67 errors per game. That is simply an inexcusable number of errors.
One of the things that really separates major leaguers from college players is the number of errors that are committed. Major league players are virtually automatic with their fielding, throwing, etc. You just don’t see a lot of those kinds of mistakes at the big league level. At the college level, you see noticeably more, but even for the college level, the amount of errors Stanford had was embarrassing.
It’s easy to pin this on the coaching staff. At the end of the day all aspects of any team in any sport go back to the coaching, but at the same time, the players have to take more pride in their defense. I can guarantee you they are not coached to make some of the mistakes that they are making.
Ultimately, it’s on both the coaching staff and the players to figure this out. This is an area that is a shared blame by both. The coaches have to figure out how to better get players to stop making these mistakes and then the players in turn have to take more pride in themselves and carry themselves like they are division one players with major league aspirations. This ain’t little league!
On a positive note, Rintaro Sasaki is finally finding his groove after that grand slam to beat Florida State. Against the Irish, Sasaki had one home run and seven RBIs, batting 6-13 (.462 for the weekend) with an on base percentage of 8-15 (.533). It’s too bad to have him have a good weekend and not have any wins to show for it.
Going back to the negative side, the pitching was pretty pitiful for the Cardinal. Their ERA for the weekend was 11.63. That is ugly. Even with the errors being a thorn in their side, the pitching was still the biggest issue from the weekend. That is inexcusable.
The Cardinal’s ERA during their six game winning streak heading into the Notre Dame series was 3.81. Night and day difference. That right there is your story.
Looking ahead to this coming week, Stanford welcomes San Francisco to Sunken Diamond on Wednesday, May 6th at 6:05 PM PT on ACCNX before welcoming NC State to Sunken Diamond for a three-game series from Friday, May 8th to Sunday, May 10th.
If Stanford wants to get back on track this weekend, it’s going to have to be their pitching and defense that steps up. Something that Stanford softball head coach Jessica Allister always says is if you want to win, you need to have two of the three: hitting, pitching, and defense. David Esquer and his team need to take that message to heart.
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