Oregon baseball had its best win of the season Thursday, upsetting No. 3 Stanford 10-1 behind a stellar performance by Kenyon Yovan and a display of power on offense.
This is the first time the Ducks have beaten a top-5 team since 2012. This marks Oregon’s first victory over Stanford since May of 2015.
Yovan picked up his second win of the season in his second career start. The former closer struck out a career-high nine batters and only gave up three hits over six innings.
The offense was led by center fielder Johnny DeLuca, who went 2-4 with four RBI’s and a home run.
The scoring began in the second inning when DeLuca knocked Gabe Matthews in with an RBI single. Matthews had led-off the inning with a single and advanced to second on a failed pickoff attempt.
In the third inning, Spencer Steer doubled the Ducks lead, singling Taylor Travess home.
DeLuca’s fourth inning home run was the third of the inning. Matthews and Jakob Goldfarb led-off the inning with back-to-back home runs. After a Ray Soderman single, DeLuca hit his second home run of the season, making it 6-0 Oregon.
The Ducks added three more in the seventh on only one hit thanks to Stanford pitchers John Henry Styles and Carson Rudd losing the strike zone.
Styles hit Kyle Kasser and walked Daniel Patzlaff. Rudd entered and walked Steer and hit Matthews, which brought in a another run for the Ducks. Soderman then hit in Patzlaff on the lone single and DeLuca hit a sac-fly to score Steer.
With Yovan still stretching out his arm, the Ducks went to the bullpen in the seventh inning with a 9-0 lead.
Hunter Breault was first out of the bullpen and held the Cardinal scoreless. Jesse Hobaica took over for Breault and surrendered the shutout. After allowing a lead-off walk, West Linn’s Tim Tawa doubled in a run to make it 9-1.
The Ducks quickly avenged that run in the next half-inning. Goldfarb hit a leadoff double and was Soderman drove him in to bring the score to 10-1.
The Ducks will face Stanford again tomorrow at 6:05 p.m. looking to win their first series over the Cardinal since 2015.
Follow Maverick Pallack on Twitter @mavpallack
Yovan, offense shine as Oregon baseball defeats No. 3 Stanford
March 28, 2018
Oregon sophomore starting pitcher Kenyon Yovan was in a bind. After allowing only two hits and one run through eight innings, Yovan put Arizona runners on first and second base with no outs in the ninth inning. He had just hit a batter, and his pitch count was well above …
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