David Pierce gives feelings on Stanford's lineup
Texas, after heading to south Florida to play in Coral Gables for the NCAA baseball tournament regionals, is headed to the West Coast and facing national seed Stanford at the Sunken Diamond in a Super Regional. Texas skipper David Pierce knows the Longhorns will have their hands full facing the Cardinal lineup.
Stanford has an offense that ranks in the Top 25 nationally in a number of statistical categories offensively. Silencing the Stanford bats is going to be objective No. 1 for Texas going into the weekend.
“Powerful, speed. Can use the short game, they’ve got experience,” Pierce said. “It’s one of the best in the country.”
Heading into the Super Regionals, Stanford ranks No. 11 in scoring (8.6 runs per game), No. 9 in batting average (.318) No. 8 in slugging percentage (.548) and No. 13 in runs scored (509 in 59 games).
Among all batters this season, Stanford has 10 players with a .300 or better average. Junior Tommy Troy leads the way with a blistering .410 batting average, No. 13 in the entire country. Junior infielder Carter Graham has knocked in plenty of runs for the Cardinal, ranking No. 16 nationally. He’s had 75 RBI this season to date.
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It’s a potent lineup top to bottom for Stanford, capable of scoring in bunches and sending plenty of baseballs out of the Sunken Diamond. The Cardinal have 113 long balls headed into the Super Regional weekend, ranking No. 11 in the country.
So dominant is the Stanford offense that Pierce thinks the pitching and defense from Stanford gets underrated. The starting pitching trio of Quinn Matthews, Matt Scott and Joey Dixon have a combined 20-7 win-loss record this season across 40 starts for the trio.
Pierce knows that along with quieting the Stanford lineup, Texas getting runs across will be a challenge, too.
“I just think their lineup is very good. They play their roles really well. Defensively, they’re solid. Their pitching gets a little overlooked because their offense has been so good. But you know, Matthews and Dixon, can’t recall the other kids name right now, the starter — Scott,” Pierce said. “Big. Scott’s a big, strong durable kid. So is Dixon. And then you’ve got the wiry left-hander, Matthews. He went 114 on Friday, came back close to 70 on Monday. So I don’t know if he’s going to start Saturday or if he holds him another day, I don’t know.”