Bruin baseball travels to take on another Pac-10 foe in the Stanford Cardinal
Junior Gerrit Cole will be taking the mound for the No. 20 Bruins today to open up a three-game series against the Cardinal in Palo Alto.
STANFORD
Today, 5:30 p.m.
Stanford
By Daily Bruin Staff
April 21, 2011 12:44 a.m.
With four Pac-10 series in the books and five to play, the UCLA baseball team likes where it is: 9-3 in the conference race and tied for second place behind Oregon State.
It’s almost hard to believe when fans harken back to a series loss to San Jose State at home in late February, or a 1-2 finish in the Dodgertown Classic in mid-March.
Coach John Savage continues to stress the importance of Pac-10 play to his team time and again.
A season ago, the conference sent eight teams to the NCAA Tournament, the largest percentage of teams any conference has sent to the tournament in the history of college baseball.
The No. 20 Bruins (20-12, 9-3 Pac-10) embark on another Pac-10 road trip this weekend when they travel to Palo Alto to take on the Stanford Cardinal (17-12, 3-6).
“It’s the Pac-10,” Savage said. “Right when you think you can enjoy a weekend, here comes another one, so you better get refocused.”
Stanford ““ a two-time NCAA champion ““ recently fell out of Baseball America’s rankings after being swept by Oregon State in Palo Alto and losing a series to USC.
UCLA junior pitcher Gerrit Cole knows all too well about the Cardinal’s successful past.
Beside being able to rattle off the names of Stanford’s top hitters at the drop of a hat, he started a 2009 game against Stanford that saw the Cardinal win in 10 innings.
“They’re a real competitive, kind of a quirky team,” Cole said. “They’ve got their own brand of baseball, and they go about things their own way. Especially when you’re playing up there, it can get in your head a little bit. You’ve really got to stay even-keeled and stay within yourselves.”
Luckily for the UCLA batters, they’re coming off their most productive game of the season, a 14-6 win over San Diego State on Tuesday night.
“We’re figuring out how to finish games,” senior right fielder Chris Giovinazzo said. “We were giving ourselves a chance to win a couple of times, but now we’re playing nine innings, and that’s really important.”
Cole has been pleased to see some of the pressure being taken off of the pitching staff as a result of the improved hitting.
“We’re definitely playing better baseball than we did before,” he said. “The Pac-10 is the best conference in the country and it’s kicked us into high gear. We’ve been playing with a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of competitiveness. You have to do that in this conference if you want to survive.”
Bruins add to recruiting class Zack Ortiz, a right-handed pitcher out of Cypress High School, has signed a letter of intent to enroll at UCLA for the 2011 school year.
Ortiz is the ninth player to sign a letter in the 2011 recruiting class. He’s also the third right-handed pitcher in the class.
“We relate Zack (Ortiz) to (current freshman) Zack Weiss,” Savage said. “He’s a very talented guy, a strike thrower, a power guy. We look for Zack (Ortiz) to be a guy that can compete right away as a freshman.”
