With the score tied and the bases loaded in the seventh inning Monday night, Stanford left-hander Ryan Bruno froze Chase Davis with an 0-1 curveball on the outside corner. That put Arizona’s left-handed slugger in an 0-2 hole.
Bruno went back to the curve on the next pitch. This one hung over the middle of the plate. Davis sent it toward the palm trees beyond the right-field wall at Hi Corbett Field.
Davis’ grand slam onto the roof of the Terry Francona Hitting Center gave the Wildcats a 7-3 lead. He earlier hit a two-run homer that erased a 3-1 deficit.
Davis’ monster night propelled Arizona to a 10-3 victory and a series sweep against Stanford – the Wildcats’ first against the Cardinal since 2015.
The sophomore outfielder ignited Arizona’s rally from a 5-1 hole the previous afternoon with a three-run blast. He has a team-high eight home runs. He’s one off the team lead with 23 RBIs.
“It's a dream come true,” Davis said. “It's early still. But at the same time, it's really cool to be able to see where we're at and what we're doing as a team.”
Arizona improved to 16-4, 5-1 in the Pac-12. The Wildcats, the defending conference champions, are tied for first place in the league.
For the third time in the series, Arizona had to mount a rally to win. In the first two games, the Wildcats took the lead in the eighth inning. They didn’t wait that long in this one, scoring two runs in the sixth to make it 3-3 and six in the seventh to go in front and pull away.
It would have been easy for Arizona to let this one get away. The Wildcats already had clinched the series. But they weren’t satisfied taking two of three.
“We try to simplify it: Whether we win or lose a game, each game is its own entity,” first-year coach Chip Hale said. “Obviously you feel good about winning the series. We talk about that a lot. But we try to get over to them, ‘Hey, this is a 60-some-game season. Every game is important.’
“So it doesn't matter if you win the first two or lose the first two. This is a whole new game right now. We try to stay away from thinking we're OK with two out of three.”
Both teams received excellent starting pitching throughout the series. Arizona clobbered Stanford’s bullpen. The Wildcats scored 15 of their 19 runs in the seventh and eighth innings.
“It took really good pitching; all three starters gave us a chance to win,” Hale said. “And clutch hitting. Let's face it: The first two nights, or night and day, that's unbelievable baseball. You're gonna have those games. We had the one at Cal that we lost. You're gonna have some funky stuff happen, and it happened on our side (in this series).”
Right-hander Dawson Netz gave the Wildcats five solid innings, allowing three runs on six hits. Righty Quinn Flanagan threw four dominant innings in relief, yielding just one hit while striking out five to improve to 3-1 on the season.
But the undisputed star of the night was Davis.
His first home run came on a fastball from Stanford starter Drew Dowd, also a lefty. That shaped Davis’ expectations for how Bruno would try to pitch him.
“We had a scouting report on him saying that he was throwing fastballs 97% of the time,” Davis said. “I was like, I already did damage to the fastball earlier in the game. So when I was in the 0-2 count, I was like, OK, he actually might throw a curveball. So I was sitting curveball the whole time and took a nice rip on it.”
Davis’ six RBIs doubled his career high. It was the first multiple-homer game of his UA career.
Inside pitch
Flanagan lowered his ERA to a team-best 1.08.
UA outfielder Mac Bingham went 3 for 4 with a double, a triple and two RBIs. He has raised his batting average from .196 to .286 over the past eight games.
The weekend began with Stanford ranked 10th and Arizona 17th in Baseball America’s Top 25. By the time Monday’s game started, the Wildcats had risen to 12th and the Cardinal had fallen to 18th. D1Baseball.com, which moved Arizona from 16th to 11th, dropped Stanford (9-8, 1-5) from its Top 25.
The Wildcats were set to return to Hi Corbett at 7 a.m. Tuesday to begin their journey to New Mexico. The Cats will face the Lobos at 5 p.m. Wednesday. The team will bus to Phoenix to catch its flight to Albuquerque.
Hale said right-hander Chandler Murphy, who’s been working his way back from an arm issue, could start at New Mexico if he’s feeling right. Regardless, fellow righty Anthony Susac is expected to pitch the bulk of the innings.
Arizona returns home Friday for a three-game series against UCLA (12-7, 1-2).
