Credit: Ben Parker/CardinalSportsReport.com

On Saturday, Stanford baseball fell to Pittsburgh by a final score of 11-10. Andrew Luczak (1-0) was the winning pitcher for the Panthers in a relief role while Colt Peterson (1-1) was the losing pitcher for the Cardinal in a relief role.

Four different players had home runs for the Panthers: Trey Fenderson (1 RBI), Joey Baran (2 RBI), Sebastian Pisacreta (1 RBI), and Carter Dierdorf (2 RBI). Three different players had home runs for the Cardinal: Rintaro Sasaki (1 RBI), Teddy Tokheim (4 RBI), and Eric Jeon (1 RBI). Pittsburgh ties up the series 1-1 and improves to 13-4 overall and 1-1 in the ACC while Stanford falls to 7-11 overall and 1-4 in the ACC.

BOX SCORE: Pitt at Stanford-Saturday, March 14th

“Tough loss, man,” Stanford head coach David Esquer said after the game. “We was going back and forth and man, there was a lot of everything, right? We played pretty lousy for two and half innings to start the game and then finally, you know, got our heads back into and then a little bit back and forth and it’s a little bit of ACC baseball, right? It’s kind of a meat grinder and you can’t take anything for granted. You know, us getting down early didn’t mean we were gonna lose and put ourselves in position and hey, we had the right guys in certain situations and it just didn’t work out. So, I mean, that’s unfortunate.”

Pittsburgh went up 3-0 in the top of the 2nd inning as Jackson Cooke hit a single for the Panthers to bring home Joey Baran and Sebastian Pisacreta with the help of an error. There was also an error by the Cardinal on the play before. AJ Nessler would later hit an RBI single to right field to bring home Cooke. Aidan Keenan, who was starting for Stanford, did not get out of the inning alive as Brock Ketelsen had to come in for relief to finish the inning.

Pitt would go up 4-0 in the top of the 3rd as Trey Fenderson went yard to deep left field, crushing the ball 361 feet. In the bottom of the 3rd, Stanford would answer as Rintaro Sasaki hit a solo home run to right field that carried 373 feet while Charlie Bates hit an RBI single to right field to bring home Teddy Tokheim. It would be a 4-2 game at the end of the 3rd inning as Pitt led by two runs.

Stanford would go up 5-4 in the bottom of the 5th inning as Tokheim hit a two-run homer to deep left field to bring home Luke Lavin after which Bates hit a solo homer to deep right field. The Cardinal now had their first lead of the game.

“Yeah, yeah, he’s been great,” Esquer said of Tokheim. “Clutch, too, right? I mean, his clutch base hit and gave us the lead and you know, we had some, you know, some more opportunities for tack on runs that we didn’t, we didn’t take advantage of, you know, those are big and proved to be big there in the end.”

Stanford would maintain that lead into the 7th inning. In the top of the 7th, Pitt would score three runs as Baran hit a two-run homer to right field after which Pisacreta hit a solo homer to deep right field. That made it a 7-5 lead for Pitt. Toran O’Harran was on the mound for the Cardinal to give up the home runs. Kassius Thomas had to come in to get the final out.

In the top of the 8th inning, Pitt added one more run as Caden Dulin hit a single to bring home AJ Nessler who came home from first base thanks to an error (E1) throwing error by Thomas to first base. 8-5 Pitt led.

In the bottom off the 8th, Stanford scored four runs to go up 9-8. Ethan Hott hit a two-RBI single to make it 8-7 after which Tokheim hit a two-RBI double to left center. Stanford would take that 9-8 lead into the 9th inning.

Colt Peterson came in to get the save for Stanford but would give up the lead and end up getting credited with the loss. After walking Pisacreta with one out, Dierdorf jacked it 409 feet to center field, making it a 10-9 lead for the Panthers. Later on in the inning, with the bases loaded and Ben Reimers now on the mound for the Cardinal, Reimers would walk Kai Wagner, bringing home another run for the Panthers. 11-9 the Panthers led. Fenderson would then fly out to right field to end the top of the inning.

“You know, hey, he’s out there because he deserves to be out there and we need him to keep showing up and need his teammates to stand behind him and support him,” Esquer said of Peterson. “It’s emotionally pretty rough to go through those type of things and he’s gotta just hang in there for us.”

In the bottom of the 9th with one out, Eric Jeon went yard to deep left field to make it 11-10. Jimmy Nati was unable to get on base in the prior at-bat as he nearly had a multi-base hit down the left field line that was just called foul. Truly a game of inches. Philip Cheong would single to left center to advance Ethan Hott to third base with one out as Cheong had a broken bat, causing the ball to flutter into the shallow outfield. Nolan Stoll unfortunately grounded out into a double play to end the game. 11-10 Pittsburgh escaped with the win.

“You need to learn to win them, right?” Esquer said of close games. “I mean, that’s the thing. You gotta break through and you got to learn how to win those games. And so there’s things we can do to give ourselves better chances to win and we just got to keep growing. You know, it’s, hey losses like this, this is hard and you feel like you have it in your hand and then they take it away and great job by them. A couple really big at bats by them, but then we, you know, we come back and Eric Jeon and we got a couple hits and so it was good.”

For Stanford, this is a stinging loss. Their hitting was great, but the fielding and pitching were not enough. As Stanford softball head coach Jessica Allister said about her team’s loss to Notre Dame, in order to win you need to have two of the three of hitting, fielding, and pitching. Stanford had only one of those things. Hence the loss. It’s a painful way for the Cardinal to learn this lesson, but it’s a lesson they have to learn. They can’t expect to win games with their bats always bailing them out.

“Yeah, you know, I mean, hey if you look at it, we’re probably lucky they only scored 11 or 10 with 13 walks, right?” Esquer said when asked about their pitching woes. “How many of them were automatic intentional. Three? Two or three. Yeah, you know, we gotta take, we gotta be better there. We gotta be better there.”

As for Pitt, nice win. They showed a lot of resiliency and fought all the way until the end. They could have given up on the road, but in the end found a way to win. Hats off to them.

Up next for Stanford is game three against Pittsburgh on Sunday. That will begin at 1:05 PM PT on ACCNX.

“Gotta be resilient, right?” Esquer said looking ahead to Sunday. “We’re going to need a good pitching performance and we’ve got to support it with some offense. Same kind of same today, but just maybe, you know, one or two more outs before they score.”

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