Cal Baseball: Astros' Dusty Baker Shows Allegiance to Golden Bears
Astros manager Dusty Baker demonstrated that he is still a Cal backer, but we will get to that later.
The immediate news is that Cal handed nationally ranked Stanford its first series loss of the season over the weekend, although the Bears let a 5-0 lead slip away in a 12-inning loss to the Cardinal in an additional nonconference game on Monday night.
It left the Golden Bears with a 26-23 overall record, a 12-12 Pac-12 mark and an RPI ranking of 101. It means Cal is unlikely to get a berth in the NCAA postseason tournament, although its two remaining series – three games this weekend against 18th-ranked UCLA and three games next week against sixth-ranked and first-place Oregon – give the Bears a chance to improve their resume significantly.
Cal’s Dylan Beavers is second in the Pac-12 in home runs with 14, and Josh White still leads the Pac-12 in earned-run average at 1.93 despite getting rocked by Stanford for six runs (three earned) in five innings in Friday’s opener.
Cal’s leading hitter continues to be Darren Baker, who went 1-for-6 on Monday and is batting .327 with 26 steals while committing just three errors at second base.
Last week Baker was named as one of 10 finalists for the 2021 Senior CLASS Award. The award honors senior athletes who excel both on and off the field and takes into account four factors: community, classroom, character and competition.
His father, Dusty Baker, was a regular at Cal home games in 2018 and 2019, often seen mingling with other Cal fans in the stands on the first-base side as he watched his son.
This year, of course, Dusty Baker is managing the Astros, but he has not forsaken his Cal allegiance, as he demonstrated in a postgame press conference on Friday.
Before we go any further, let’s explain the confusing situation regarding the four games against Stanford.
Cal and Stanford played a three-game Pac-12 series in Berkeley on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Cal won the second and third games in that series in dramatic fashion to take the series. The Cardinal had begun the weekend in first place in the Pac-12 and ranked No. 12 in the country, according to D1Baseball, and had not lost a series all season before that. Monday’s game was played at Stanford and did not count in the Pac-12 standings and was not part of the three-game series at Cal.
Cal no doubt thinks it should have won three of those four games.
After dropping Friday’s opener, Cal won Saturday’s game despite trailing 4-3 entering the bottom of the ninth. But with runners at second and third and one out, Steve Zobac grounded a single up the middle against a drawn-in infield to knock in the tying and winning runs for a walk-off 5-4 victory.
Cal won Sunday’s game 9-5 with the benefit of an eight-run fourth inning that was achieved with just three hits. Two of the hits were home runs – a grand slam by Quentin Selma and a three-run blast by Dylan Beavers, who had led off the inning with a double.
That win gave Cal the series, while dropping Stanford’ to third place in the Pac-12 and to No. 15 in the rankings.
On Monday night Cal looked like it would make it three in a row against the host Cardinal by taking a 5-0 lead into the bottom of the fourth inning. Connor Mack’s three-run homer, his first hit since March 14, was the key hit for the Bears. But Stanford pulled ahead 6-5 before Cole Elvis’ RBI double in the eighth tied it and pushed the game into extra innings.
Stanford won it when Grant Burton singled in the winning run in the bottom of the 12th for a 7-6 Cardinal victory.
Beavers had four hits in the three-hour, 41-minute game to raise his average to .303, but Cal could have used a win because the loss gave Stanford the season series against Cal three games to two.
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