Cal Baseball crushes Stanford 18-2 on Saturday to even Big Series

Well, that was sure fun. In front of a season high crowd at Evans Diamond on Saturday afternoon, the home California Golden Bears (29-16, 14-9 in Pac-12) absolutely destroyed rival Stanford Cardinal (36-9, 18-5 in Pac-12). Forget that the Cardinal is the 3rd ranked team in the country in the coaches’ poll or that they had their most consistent starting pitcher in Will Matthiessen starting. Saturday belonged to the Golden Bears in a dominant 18-2 rout of Stanford.

This was of the biggest Cal baseball win in recent history. More importantly, this one came on the weekend rather than one of those midweek games when inexperienced pitchers were given the opportunity to throw some innings. Cal bats, at least in the early part of this game, crushed a legit future baseball pro prospect.

Check out the highlights from the Pac-12 Network, who recorded this game for posterity.

Bears jumped out to a 4-0 lead in B1. They knocked out Matthiessen with 4 more runs in B3. Even though the margin of victory does not matter, Bears will add a run in B5, 6 big runs in B6, and 3 runs in B8. 5 Bears hit homers and none of them are the usual suspects of Andrew Vuaghn (1 for 4 with a 2B) nor Korey Lee (3 for 4 but no extra bases). Bears also hit 5 doubles as 10 of the 20 hits recorded by Cal went for extra bases.

Hitting in front of Andrew Vaughn, Cal 3B Quentin Selma hit another homer on Saturday after two on Friday. He was interviewed after the game.

On the mound, Cal junior ace RHP Jared Horn had another great outing. Horn struck out 6 in 7 strong innings, giving up just 3 hits and 3 walks. Horn improves to 5-1 on the year and lowered his ERA 1.80 (2nd best in the Pac) and his WHIP has gone back under 1.00 again to an impressive 0.98. Horn has really upped his game against top competitions between this gem and the game when he dominated the top ranked UCLA Bruins. This obviously bode well for the Cal Bears’ hope for a long postseason.

The win set up Sunday’s 12:05 pm PT game 3 as the rubber game after Stanford took Friday’s game by a 10-7 result despite early Cal lead. Senior LHP Arman Sabouri actually threw 5 innings on Friday instead of just 1-2 innings as an “opener”, so I am not sure if he will be available on Sunday (okay, I would not be shocked if Sabouri is called upon by Cal head coach Mike Neu to close out a potential win). A series win over Stanford would be a first for the Cal Bears since 2014.

Stanford head coach David Esquer will go with LHP Erik Miller (6-1, 2.64) in the finale after both of his weekend starters have been hit hard by the Bears so far.

The TBD starter for the Bears will probably be freshman Sam Stoutenborough again. Other Cal pitchers who will probably be called upon on Sunday includes Grant Holman and Ian Villers, whom have steadily decrease their still very high ERA of 4.89 and 6.38 in recent outings. It will be very interesting to see if Cal has enough pithing depth to win this game.

It should be another exciting contest.

GO BEARS!