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Cal Sports Report

Cal Baseball's Postseason Hopes Take a Hit in One-Run Loss to Stanford

Cal needed to dominate this final three-game series to have a shot at a berth in the NCAA tournament
Jake Curtis|
Carl Schmidt
Carl Schmidt | Photo by Daniel Moebus-Bowles, Cal Athletics

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California Golden Bears

Cal’s slim chance of reaching the NCAA baseball tournament got slimmer on Thursday when the Bears suffered a tough, 7-6 loss to Stanford in the first game of a three-game series in Berkeley.

The Bears (27-25, 10-18 ACC) nearly pulled off an impressive comeback from a five-run deficit, but Stanford was able to hang on when Cal’s Hideki Prather was thrown out at the plate by Stanford left fielder Brock Ketelsen for the final out of the game.

Cal entered this final regular-season series knowing it had to win at least two of the three games this weekend and may have needed to sweep the Cardinal to have any shot at its first postseason berth in seven years.

This loss made the long postseason odds even longer for Cal, which entered the game with an RPI ranking of 56, a little outside the typical range for a team to be considered on the bubble.

Ultimately, Thursday’s outcome wasn’t a matter of Stanford beating Cal as much as it was a case of Cal beating Cal.

Cal pitchers issued eight walks and hit two batters, and practically gave the game away in the first inning when the Cardinal (26-23, 13-15 ACC) scored four runs on just one hit.

Cal freshman Jett Wright, making only his second start of the season, faced just five batters, and did not get any of them out.  He gave just one hit, a single, but walked two batters and hit two others before departing after giving up a bases-loaded walk and a bases-loaded hit batsman in zero official innings of work. 

After Cal reliever Jordy Lopez walked the first batter he faced to force in the third run, Luke Lavin added a sacrifice fly to give the Cardinal a 4-0 lead after a half inning.

A walk and an error helped Stanford score a run in the sixth, and a walk and an error in seventh helped the Cardinal increase its lead to 7-2.

Cal got itself back in the game in the bottom of the seventh inning on a two-out, three-run double by Cade Campbell that was followed by a run-scoring double by Carl Schmidt to make it a 7-6 game.

The Bears had runners at first and second with one out in the bottom of the ninth against Stanford closer Trevor Moore, but Moore got Campbell on a soft liner to the shortstop to leave it up to Schmidt with two outs.

Campbell hit a sharp single to left, but a charging Ketelsen picked the ball up cleanly and threw accurately to home, getting a tumbling Prather by plenty after he had tried to score from second base.

Cal may need to win the final two games of this series on Friday and Saturday as well as a few games in the ACC tournament starting Tuesday in Charlotte, North Carolina, to have any chance to land one of the 35 at-large berths to the NCAA tournament.  And even that might not be enough.

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Jake Curtis
JAKE CURTIS

Jake Curtis worked in the San Francisco Chronicle sports department for 27 years, covering virtually every sport, including numerous Final Fours, several college football national championship games, an NBA Finals, world championship boxing matches and a World Cup. He was a Cal beat writer for many of those years, and won awards for his feature stories.

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