They say the third time’s the charm, and after the No. 6 Stanford baseball team dominated St. Mary’s in both of the teams’ previous meetings, that looked like the case for the Gaels at Sunken Diamond last night. In game three, St. Mary’s was up 8-3 heading to the bottom of the ninth, in position to finally secure a win against the Cardinal.

 

Not so fast.

 

In a wild, four-hour-and-15-minute contest that saw the Cardinal erase that five-run deficit, get the game-winning hit from sophomore Danny Diekroeger in just his fifth appearance of the season and rely on junior third baseman Stephen Piscotty to pitch — coming in not once, but twice — for the win, Stanford got a much-needed injection of energy in a 9-8 victory on the Farm.

 

After the squad lost four of its past five, this one has got to feel pretty sweet for the Cardinal (17-6, 2-4 Pac-12).

 

“As far as the momentum, I think we’ve got that now,” Piscotty said.

 

Stanford has struggled with its fielding and hitting during its current slump, but this time it was the Cardinal bullpen that took a beating, as the Gaels burned through eight Stanford pitchers with 17 hits in the first nine innings and forced head coach Mark Marquess to insert Piscotty.

 

At the plate, though, the Cardinal got continued production from sophomore first baseman Brian Ragira, who extended his hit streak to eight games with three more base hits and two RBI.

 

“I’m so impressed with Ragira, because he went through a little bit of a slump a couple of weeks ago,” Piscotty said. “He doesn’t let frustration get to him, and that really shows in how quickly he rebounded and just the solid hits he’s been having.”

 

Marquess used the midweek matchup as an opportunity to tweak his struggling lineup. Besides giving juniors leftfielder Tyler Gaffney and catcher Eric Smith the night off, Marquess benched shortstop Lonnie Kauppila for just the second time this season, a result of a 3-20 hitting stretch for the sophomore that included a five-error disaster in an 8-4 loss to USC on March 26. Taking his place was junior Kenny Diekroeger, who started 56 of 57 games at short in 2011 before switching to second base after this year’s opener, with upstart freshman Alex Blandino getting his first start in the infield after knocking in six runs in five games as the squad’s designated hitter last week.

The moves seemed to backfire in the top of the second. With the Gaels already up 2-0 on a pair of first-inning doubles off junior righty Dean McArdle, senior catcher Tony DeMello launched another two-bagger off the glove of diving junior Justin Ringo, a play that would have likely been made had the speedy Gaffney been in left. Two batters later, Blandino booted a two-out grounder that would’ve ended the inning but instead extended the St. Mary’s lead to three.

 

With Ragira on the basepaths, though, Blandino made up for his mistake, launching his second career home run into left to narrow the margin to one.

 

The Gaels responded in the top of the third. With the wind blowing out to left, catcher Troy Channing skied a ball over Ringo’s head that just didn’t seem to want to come down, clearing the left-field fence to make it 4-2 and force McArdle from the game. Junior reliever Sahil Bloom quickly allowed another double to set St. Mary’s up in scoring position yet again.

 

But even after a terrible defensive stretch that saw the Cardinal nearly double its error total in a week’s time, the Stanford fielders came through in the third inning to bail out Bloom. Kenny Diekroeger grabbed a grounder and adeptly gunned out freshman first baseman Collin Ferguson at third instead of taking the easy force out; on an ensuing single, sophomore rightfielder Austin Wilson fired across the diamond just in time for the tag at third base.

 

“We’re infinitely better [when we play good defense],” Piscotty said. “When we don’t allow them any free bases, it makes it tough for the other team to score runs.”

 

Kenny Diekroeger came through again with two on and two out in the fifth, ranging to grab a grounder from senior Chris Murphy and beating him to first with an off-balance throw. Yet the Gaels tacked on a fifth run on a sacrifice in the sixth, getting six hits off Bloom in just over three innings, before making it 6-2 with a two-out rally against freshman righty David Schmidt in the seventh.

 

Stanford set itself up for a comeback in the bottom half of frame, getting two runners on with no outs, but a double-play and a full-count strikeout by Kenny Diekroeger limited the damage to a single run. St. Mary’s reliever Jordan Brockett got out of the inning, having to face just 16 Cardinal batters in his four innings of work.

 

Stanford needed four different hurlers to get out of the eighth, and ironically it was Piscotty — making his second pitching appearance of the season — who escaped the jam after two runs had already come around to score for the Gaels.

 

With Piscotty going back to third base for the ninth, redshirt sophomore lefty Garrett Hughes had a clean inning on the mound for Stanford, striking out two batters in his first appearance of the season. Still, it looked like it wouldn’t really matter with the score at 8-3 heading to the bottom of the ninth.

 

“Honestly, it felt a little dejected in the dugout,” Danny Diekroeger said. “Guys felt like maybe we were going to lose this one.”

 

But the Cardinal came up in the clutch, loading the bases to force a pitching change. After junior centerfielder Jake Stewart fouled out, Stanford got one run back on a Kenny Diekroeger single, but a Piscotty pop fly didn’t leave the infield and the Cardinal was down to its final out and was still down by four.

 

Luckily it was Ragira who came to the plate, and Stanford’s best hitter of late doubled into right-center to bring in two runs and make it 8-6. With the Gaels outfielders playing deep in hopes of snagging a fly ball from Cardinal power hitter Wilson, the sophomore instead blooped one into right field to tie things up.

 

“That’s what you’ve got to bank on, those clutch hits down late in the game,” Piscotty said. “That’s what we had to do, and we did it.”

 

Having pinch-hit for the designated hitter spot with Piscotty as the pitcher in the eighth, Marquess no longer had access to his DH slot, and he opted to bring the preseason All-American back into the game to pitch the 10th so he could keep his star bat in the lineup. The third baseman looked like a veteran on the mound, though, allowing just an infield single in the frame to give the Cardinal a chance to win it in the bottom half.

 

Stanford couldn’t convert, but Piscotty kept rolling on the mound with a one-two-three top of the 11th. Piscotty also contributed at the plate, singling in the bottom half of the frame, but the Cardinal couldn’t move him over and the marathon rolled past its fourth hour.

 

With Gaffney loosening up in the bullpen — perhaps planning to add reliever to his running-back/leftfielder repertoire — Piscotty got out Ferguson, who was hitting 5-of-6 on the night at that point, to end the inning.

 

“Coming out twice was kind of weird,” Piscotty laughed after the game, but his 3.2 innings of two-hit, three-strikeout pitching would prove to be enough as the Cardinal’s leading RBI man moved to 1-0 on the season. Blandino blooped a single and was promptly bunted over to second, and Danny Diekroeger came to the plate with the game on his bat.

 

“Everyone was getting a chance, so I had a feeling I would get in there,” he said.

 

Danny Diekroeger made the most of his opportunity, grounding a 1-0 pitch through the right side of the infield to score Blandino and get Stanford the win.

 

“When I hit it, I thought it was in the right place,” he said. “It’s awesome when a team rallies like this, and I’m pretty confident that we’ll have a good weekend.”

 

Stanford now has a much-needed two-day break before facing Washington (16-9, 3-3 Pac-12) on the road in a three-game series starting this Thursday. The Huskies most recently dropped two of three at No. 19 Oregon State.