No. 12 Baseball cruises past Stanford, 12-4

Sunday, March 8

Palo Alto, Calif.

3 p.m.

University of Texas

10-6

Stanford

9-8

Texas

Stanford

03.08.2015 | Baseball

Box Score

Johnson goes 5-for-5; Barrera, Gurwitz homer

STANFORD, Calif. -- Led by Ben Johnson's career-high five hits the No. 12 Texas baseball team jumped on top of Stanford early and cruised to a 12-4 win that salvaged a split of the four-game series Sunday afternoon at Klein Field at Sunken Diamond.

Texas cranked out 15 hits on the afternoon, a third of which came from Johnson who is leading the Big 12 in that category. The junior left fielder drove in two runs and scored two, while also being hit by a pitch, to reach base in all six of his plate appearances.

Collin Shaw and Brooks Marlow added two hits apiece while Tres Barrera and Zane Gurwitz each blasted two-run home runs. Every starter had at least one hit and eight of nine scored at least one run in the game.

The Longhorns (10-6) struck for five runs in the first inning to take a commanding lead and increased it when Barrera's homer made it 7-0 in the second inning.

Josh Sawyer (2-1) gave the Longhorns a steady start that lasted five innings, as the sophomore limited Stanford to two runs (one earned) on four hits.

The Cardinal (9-8) looked to make a game of it with a pair of runs off reliever Travis Duke that cut the lead to 7-4 in the sixth, but Texas responded the next half inning by scoring two on RBI singles from Johnson and Shaw.

Gurwitz put an exclamation point on the victory with his two-run blast in the ninth inning, and Texas capped the scoring when Johnson followed with a triple and was driven in on a RBI single by Shaw.

In Texas' big first inning, Johnson led off with a single before Stanford starting pitcher Griffin Weir (1-1) got the first two outs of the inning. Texas, though, showed a patient approach in drawing four straight walks, three of them on full counts, to take a 2-0 lead.

After the Cardinal went to the bullpen, Taylor Stell ripped a single that deflected off third baseman Mikey Diekroeger and into left field to score two runs. The Longhorns got their fifth run of the inning when Johnson was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded.

Sawyer, meanwhile, put up zeros in four of his five innings, just getting touched up for two runs on one hit and an error in the third. Kyle Johnson worked 2 1/3 scoreless innings of relief and Connor Mayes closed out the win with a 1-2-3 ninth inning.

The Longhorns return home to open a four-game homestand when they play host to Incarnate Word Tuesday at 6 p.m.

QUOTES FROM COACH AUGIE GARRIDO

On the patience of the hitters and getting two-out base hits: We really improved in every game we played here. The toughest game was the first one. I didn't want to bring it up, but the players spent six hours in the airport waiting to take off and got here at 3:30 in the morning, so they had a lot of adjustments to make prior to that first game. We were uncharacteristically impatient and swinging at bad pitches, but we got it straightened out and ended the series in the right way.

On getting the series split after dropping the first two: It's really important for the RPI. If you split 50/50 you're coming out of it with a pretty good score, but if you go three losses and one win it really adds up in the wrong way quickly.

On Josh Sawyer: He's improved each time he's been out there. He's got a little perfectionist in him which is part of what makes him good. He practices right, takes his bullpens and really works at them game-like. He's an up-and-coming star pitcher for us.

On Ben Johnson: Ben has worked really hard at his game. He's worked very hard in the weight room to get stronger and faster, if that can be done, because he's already the strongest and the fastest guy on the team. But he's also the hardest working guy. He really takes care of himself and I think this is really leading towards a level of confidence that he really feels like he deserves to be successful. That's a very important element, that feeling of confidence he has, it's almost magical the way it turns into base hits. He got five of them today which is a pretty good season for a lot of people. He's really doing a great job for us.

SERIES NOTES

- Texas scored in the first inning for the second straight game and the seventh time this season. The Longhorns are 5-2 when scoring at least one run in the first inning. The five runs were the most in the first inning of a game since Texas had six at Oklahoma on 4/11/14.

- Ben Johnson had multi-hit games on Thursday (3-for-4) and Sunday (5-for-5). He has a team-high nine multi-hit games this year and is hitting .443.

- The Longhorns drew 24 walks in the series while Texas pitchers issued 15.

- Brooks Marlow set a career high with seven assists in Saturday's game. Bret Boswell had a season-high five.

- Parker French picked up the 19th win of his career by going 7 innings and allowing just one run in Saturday's 3-1 victory, lowering his ERA to 1.61 which ranks eighth in the Big 12. French is the Big 12 active career leader in wins and innings pitched (271.0).

- The series record between Stanford and Texas moved to 34-31-1 in favor of the Cardinal. Garrido is 47-49-1 in his career against Stanford including 28-31-1 at UT.

- Texas came into the weekend tied for second nationally with 30 doubles and had five in the four-game series. The Longhorns had 11 total extra base hits (5 doubles, 5 home runs, 1 triples) and have 50 this season.

- Johnson (8-for-17, .471), Barrera (5-for-14, .357) and Cantu (5-for-14, .357) all hit above .300 for the series.

- Texas' win over the Cardinal on Saturday snapped an eight-game losing streak at Stanford. Prior to that, the last Longhorns road win came on March 8, 2009.