Stanford in For Tough Weekend Test Against Wake Forest

After a poor first few weeks of the season, the Stanford Cardinal now have one of their tougher series of the year. This weekend, they will travel to Winston-Salem, NC to take on the No.15 ranked Wake Forest Demon Deacons in both teams’ first ACC series of the year. This is going to be an interesting series.

Stanford is coming into the game at 5-7, a poor start to say the least. The Cardinal split their first four games at the College Baseball Series in Surprise, AZ, where they took down No. 24 Arizona and Nebraska but fell to No. 12 Oregon State and Michigan. They followed that with a split of their home-opening series with Cal State Fullerton, before losing a weekend series to Fresno State, 2-1.

On Monday, they lost to Nevada to fall to 5-7 in the early going. It’s clear that the Cardinal have tons of work to do if they want any chance at saving their NCAA Tournament hopes, or even taking a step forward this season.

Wake Forest is entering at 12-1 on the year. After an Opening Day defeat against Houston, the Demon Deacons have bounced back, winning 11 straight. They swept a three-game series against Siena, and followed that up with two-game sweeps against both LMU and Davidson.

They also beat UNC Greensboro, High Point, Indiana State, App State and Washington to get 12 wins. Wake Forest now enters conference play with a chance to dominate at home.

Since their recent move to the ACC, has had a tough time in conference play, going 11-19 last season. Their conference schedule last season began with the Cardinal beating No.4 UNC in two-of-three games on the road, and Stanford followed that up with a series sweep of Duke at home. That was five quick conference wins, which means they went 6-18 from that point forward.

Wake Forest isn’t going to make it easy. Last season, they came to Palo Alto, CA, taking two-of-three from Stanford in a three game series. Despite a Friday night loss 7-6, the Demon Deacons bounced back, winning 12-9 on Saturday and emphatically 10-0 on Sunday. It’s clear that Wake Forest knows how to beat Stanford.

On Thursday, April 24, Wake Forest even visited Sacramento where their teammate just a year prior, Nick Kurtz, was playing in just his second big-league game en route to winning the American League Rookie of the Year.

Wake Forest’s strength is easily their pitching. They allowed eight runs in their opening loss to Houston, but in the time since have held the opposition to one or fewer runs six time this year.

Stanford’s strength is their offense. Charlie Bates, JJ Moran, Tatum Marsh, Rintaro Sasaki, and Brock Sell have been key for the Cardinal in the lineup this year, and will be key for Stanford to have a chance in this series.

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