Oregon St. Opens Series Against Stanford

Stanford (10-11, 3-3) at #6 Oregon St. (22-6, 6-3) / Goss Stadium / 5:05 PM PDT / No TV / KEJO 1240 AM / KPOJ 620 AM

Game Notes / Stanford Game Notes

Oregon St. opens a weekend home Conference series this evening against Stanford.

The Beavers, who are tied with Oregon and UCLA for second in the Pac-12, 2 games behind Washington going into the weekend, took last weekend's series in Tucson 2 blowouts to 1 against Arizona, winning 11-2 Friday and 11-0 Sunday, but getting beat 11-2 Saturday.

Oregon St. also took a 9-6 win Tuesday at Portland, after opening a 9-2 lead. In the process, Dylan Davis drove in 3 RBIs, giving him 35 for the season, and moving him past Michael Conforto, who has 34, for the team, and there fore, the Pac-12, lead.

The Cardinal are tied with California and Washington St. for 6th, with 3 fewer conference games having been played, a product of Stanford already having had their league bye weekend.

Stanford took both ends of a double header from Oregon last Friday, winning 6-3, and then 2-1, in 11 innings, after one of the weekend games was moved up to get ahead of impending weather. It was a good idea, in that Saturday's action was rained out in Palo Alto.

The Ducks bounced back for a 9-2 win on Sunday.

The Cardinal also had a Tuesday non-conference game across the bay in Berkeley rained out.

Stanford's sub-.500 record has been impacted by the country's toughest schedule, devoid of any easy to win series, contrasted with Oregon St.'s 186 out of 302 Division I teams.

Oregon St. has won the last 5 games against Stanford, and a win tonight will tie the all-time record for the Beavers against the Cardinal of 6 consecutive wins.

Here's Oregon St. coach Pat Casey talking about preparations this week for Stanford:

Oregon St. will send senior LHP Ben Wetzler (5-0, 0.47 ERA) out to start. Wetzler allowed only 3 hits in 7 1/3 innings last Friday against Arizona, on his way to his 5th win in 5 starts.

If Wetzler can get the win, it will be the 30th of his career at Oregon St., tieing Ken Noble for the club record.

Stanford will counter with freshman RHP Brett Hanewich (1-1, 2.05 ERA). Hanewich started the season as the #2 guy in the rotation for the Cardinal, but moved up to the #1 spot after a couple of weeks. He finally got a win last Friday, in the first game of the double header against Oregon, after taking some no decisions in games that Stanford lost after he left the game.

Hanewich is usually going 6-7 innings, and has 10 runs allowed, and 11 walks, against 16 strikeouts this season, and 27 hits. Against the Ducks, he had 3 strikeouts, and gave up all 3 of the runs the Cardinal allowed, and 6 hits, in 6 innings.

Here's tonight's Oregon St. lineup:

CF - Jeff Hendrix

2B - Andy Peterson

LF - Michael Conforto

RF - Dylan Davis

3B - Kavin Keyes

DH - Michael Howard

1B - Jerad Casper

C - Logan Ice

SS - Trever Morrison

P - Ben Wetzler

Andy_Wooldridge@yahoo.com