Finally, the No. 2 ASU baseball team (25-8, 10-2 Pac-10) gets a little primetime love.
Ok, so it’s a tape-delayed FSN broadcast for the series opener on Friday, but for the first time this season, an ASU game will be televised as the Sun Devils host the Stanford Cardinal (15-13, 7-5 Pac-10) for a three-game Pac-10 series.
Stanford is coming off of a second-place Pac-10 finish to ASU and a College World Series appearance in 2008, when it was eliminated by Georgia, SU did manage two wins in Omaha against Miami and Florida State. Stanford was a top-20 pick in most pre-season polls and was ranked as high as No. 5.
Though Stanford’s youth and inexperience does not compare to ASU’s, it did lose nine letter winners in the off-season, including four players from the 2008 team to the MLB draft.
SU started the 2009 season by losing 10 of its first 14 contests. Recently, however, the Cardinal has stepped it up, winning 11 of 14, including Pac-10 series wins against Oregon, UCLA and Washington.
“We have our work cut out for us,” ASU coach Pat Murphy said.
“Stanford is hot. They have played great. They have faced great pitching. They just faced UCLA’s pitching and that’s as good as there is on the front end.”
“They have a real experienced lineup, so you are going to see the Pac-10 really come to fruition in the next six weeks, seven weeks,” Murphy said.
From a statistical standpoint, Stanford comes into the series looking fairly unimpressive. The Cardinal ranks sixth in the conference in team ERA, ninth in team batting average and is void of a player in the top 15 in the conference in either batting average or ERA.
The Cardinal does lead the Pac-10 in the field, however, which given ASU’s recent trend of making game-changing blunders, could be a difference maker in the series.
The Sun Devils come into the series after taking two of three from Washington State, losing 10-4 in the series finale. ASU scored 24 runs and had dominant starting pitching in the first two games, as the latter has been the case all year.
The pitching tandem of juniors Mike Leake and Josh Spence continue to make their case as the best duo in the country. The two are first and second in the conference in ERA, wins, innings pitched and strike outs. Leake and Spence have combined for 17 of ASU’s 25 wins, which is the best mark in the country for any pitching tandem.
Spence is third in the country in strikeouts, while Leake is seventh.
Spence leads the country in ERA with Leake in 12th, and Leake leads the nation in innings pitched while Spence is fourth.
Both players have allowed batters to hit less than .200 against them and have strikeout to walk ratios of 5-to-1 or better.
There is not another pitching duo in the country that even approaches the two in any of those categories.
If the overwhelming performances continue throughout the year, college baseball fanatics will be able to compare the two to some of the best pitching combinations in college baseball history.
ASU will start the trio of Leake, Spence and sophomore Seth Blair, while Stanford will likely trot out right-hander Jeffrey Inman (1-4, 5.09), freshman Jordan Priest (3-0, 3.86) and left-hander Bret Mooneyham (2-1, 4.15). Players to watch for Stanford include outfielder Kellen Kilsgaard and first-baseman Brent Melleville, who have combined for 13 long balls in this season.
Reach the reporter at nick.ruland@asu.edu.
