Cal’s postseason hopes are on life support, but the Bears breathed a little oxygen into the hopes with a tense, 4-3 victory over Stanford Friday night in Berkel
Cal’s postseason hopes are on life support, but the Bears breathed a little oxygen into the hopes with a tense, 4-3 victory over Stanford Friday night in Berkeley.
The teams will play the final game of the regular season on Saturday afternoon in the rubber game of this three-game series between the Bay Area rivals. Cal needs to win Saturday’s game as well as a couple games in next week’s ACC tournament to keep alive its longshot chances of earning its first berth in the NCAA tournament since 2019.
And the Bears had the capacity crowd of about 1,500 on the edge of their seats before closing out this win. Stanford put a runner at second with one out in the ninth when Ethan Foley replaced Trent Roach on the mound for Cal. Foley walked the first batter he faced on four pitches, putting runners at second and third.
But he got Teddy Tokheim to fly out to center for the second out, then struck out Cort MacDonald on a 3-2 pitch to end the game. It came with a little controversy as MacDonald thought the 3-1 pitch was a ball and let the umpire know about it. MacDonald then fouled off the next two pitches, before swinging and missing the eighth pitch of the at-bat to give Cal its fifth win in its last seven games.
You may wonder why Cal still has an outside shot at a postseason beath in the NCAA tournament why Stanford does not, considering they have similar overall records and Stanford is two games ahead of Cal in the ACC standings. The difference is in their RPI rankings. Cal began the day with an RPI ranking of No. 56, while Stanford started at 97.
And the RPI is a component the selection committee considers when determining the 64-team field for the NCAA tournament. Cal has had more success on the road than at home this season, owning a 14-11 in away games and just moving to .500 at home at 14-14 with its win on Friday. It seemed Cal was in control for most of Friday’s game.
Cal starter Oliver de la Torre was sailing along with a 2-0 lead heading into the eighth inning thanks to Daniel Murillo’s RBI double in the third and Hideki Prather’s team-leading 13th home in in the fifth. However, two Stanford homers – a two-run shot by Jimmy Nati and a solo homer by Brock Sell – in the top of the seventh off de la Torre gave the Cardinal a 3-2 lead.
Cal freshman Jett Kenady tied it in the bottom of the seventh with a long home run, his 11th of the season, and the Bears reliever Roach shut down a Stanford threat in the top of the eighth by striking out two batters to get out of a two-one, one-out situation. A one-out walk followed by an error by Cardinal second baseman Eric Jeon put runners at first and second.
Ethan Kodama followed with a sacrifice fly to left field to bring home what turned out to be the winning run when Foley got out of the ninth-inning jam. Stanford used seven pitchers in the game with none going more than two innings. Roach got the win for Cal.
Prather and Murillo had two hits apiece for the Bears, who will come back for the regular-season finale on Saturday at 3 p.m.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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