After losing the first Pac-12 Conference series to Utah at home, it was Tyger Talley who helped the Arizona baseball team bounce back and clinch its first-ever sweep at Stanford after tossing a three-hit shutout on Sunday at Sunken Diamond.
Arizona (19-6, 4-2 Pac-12) beat the Cardinal 6-0 on Sunday, 6-4 on Saturday and 6-5 on Friday.
With this sweep, the Wildcats improved to a 19-6 record overall on the season, three wins short of what Arizona accomplished during its entire season last year. In addition, Arizona had not swept a conference road series since sweeping California in May of 2012 and had not swept a conference series — home or away — since beating the USC Trojans in 2013.
Getting the series win means Arizona coach Andy Lopez has now led Arizona to nine series wins against Stanford of his 14 seasons at Arizona. Five of those series wins have been at Sunken Diamond.
On Sunday, Talley, who has three wins and zero losses on the season, did not allow a Stanford baserunner past second base and finished with six strikeouts on the game.
Right fielder Zach Gibbons led Arizona’s offense doing 3-for-4 at the plate with one run score, extending his hitting streak to 13 games.
The starting pitcher for Stanford, Chris Viall, had a solid start striking out five Arizona hitters early in the game but Arizona’s offense got going during the third inning.
Back-to-back wild pitches allowed Scott Kingery and Kevin Newman to score for Arizona to take the 2-0 lead in the third inning.
During the sixth inning Elijah Skipps allowed Gibbons to score after a sacrifice fly.
Arizona scored two more runs before third baseman Bobby Dalbec scored the last run of the game on a solo shot home run to centerfield to secure the 6-0 win.
This was Dalbec’s team-leading fifth homer of the season and seventh as an Arizona Wildcat.
During Saturday’s game starting pitcher Robby Medel pitched four innings, allowing four hits, four runs and one strikeout.
Medel had help from Austin Schnabel, Cameron Ming and Dalbec to make sure Arizona finished with the series win.
Schnabel got the win to improve to a (2-2) on the season, Ming did not allow a hit and Dalbec pitched the last two innings, allowing two hits, no runs and recording one strikeout.
Kingery and Michael Hoard were Arizona’s offensive leaders, Kingery went 3-for-4 with one RBI and Hoard went 2-for-3 with one RBI and one run scored.
Hoard was Arizona’s designated hitter during Friday’s game and reached base five times with a two-run triple to secure Arizona’s win.
Defensively for Arizona, it was right-handed pitcher Nathan Bannister who was key for the Wildcats.
Bannister went into the game as a reliever during the fourth inning allowing one hit, and two runs in which only one was earned. Bannister pitched 4.1 innings before Dalbec finished the game.
After the sweep Arizona will be back in action on Friday to host the Oregon Ducks for a three-game series at Hi Corbett Field.
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