Okay, I know what you’re thinking: “Mac’s a Giants fan. Oh, she must be so crushed by this pick.”

I am. I am, indeed.

/hears all smack talk from Cal buddies on twitter

//facepalm

///sigh

But! The big picture: Chris Reed was drafted!

Reed is from Reseda, California, was born in London, England. At Stanford, he is a management, science, and engineering major.

On the mound this year, Reed has a 2.54 ERA, a W-L record of 6-2, and 9 saves in 28 appearances. He walked only 15 and struck out 48. He held opposing batters to a .201 average.

Congratulations on getting drafted, Chris! Good luck!

I am literally flailing in my basement. I didn’t think he was going to go in the first round. I was shocked.

Congratulations, Chris! SO proud of you!

So we swept Cal this weekend. That means they didn’t beat us at anything this year that involved playing baseball. Isn’t that awesome? We think so.

Anyhow, here’s some important things so you can see us on TV. We look cool on TV.

• Regionals. You can catch us on ESPNU on Friday, presuming you get that channel. We’ll be playing at 4 pm, which I’m pretty sure is in Pacific time because we’re playing at Fullerton. Please be excited for us and cheer us on so we win. We also like being reminded we are smart.
• People who won awards. Piscotty was First Team All Pac-10. Ragira was Pac-10 Freshman of the Year. Ragira, Kenny Diekroeger, Tyler Gaffney, Chris Reed, Jake Stewart and Austin Wilson all made honorable mention, as well. So we win things. We are cool besides being smart.

Now that you’re all excited for us and stuff, the next big event after the postseason is the MLB Draft, which is a week from now. Less than that, even, since it starts on Monday. So maybe some of these boys will become professionals in something other than neuroscience.

Except for the part where there are four more hits.

Danny Sandbrink, A.J. Vanegas, Scott Snodgress and Chris Reed combined to hold San Jose State to four hits and two runs last night, which was more than enough to hold their opponents off. Stanford pushed one run across in the first and four more in the second, in doing so securing an easy 5-2 victory on the day.

Oh, and Kenny Diekroeger got another hit. That’s fifteen games now, if you’re keeping track.

Conference play is continuing this weekend as Stanford heads south to play USC. This means we’re supposed to win, I think. So let’s do that.

Yeah. That first game against Washington State, where Mark Appel left with an 8-2 lead? Let’s forget about that one. It didn’t go as planned. Walk-off homers from the other team kind of put a damper on things.

Now that second game – let’s talk about that one. Jordan Pries struck out a season-high seven batters over five innings, and despite the fact that  there was snow – yes, snow – the Cardinal ended up scoring 22 runs. They haven’t scored over 20 since April of 2008, which they did against USC. (2008 means they still had players like Jed Lowrie and John Mayberry Jr. on the roster. That makes this fairly impressive.) Ragira had a grand slam and seven RBIs, Lonnie Kauppila had six hits and drove in five runs, and Austin Wilson went 4-6 and drove in four more. That’s sixteen of the runs right there.

Basically, that game was good.

And the third one – oh, the third one. You see, the third one gave Nine his 1400th career win, and that’s why it’s easily the most important one in this series despite the high-scoring affair from the day before. After taking a 4-0 lead, errors allowed Washington State to creep back into it before Chris Reed shut them down with a five-out save. And of course, Dean McArdle started this one, which means he still refuses to lose a game. Ever.

A couple of notes:

• Zach Jones, who had been struggling to open the season, drove in seven runs between Friday and Saturday after having just one RBI the entire season up to this point.
• Kenny Diekroeger has a 14-game hitting streak. Keep tabs on Kenny.
• Stanford is playing San Jose State on Tuesday at home before heading off to USC for the weekend. The San Jose State game starts at 5:30 pm PST.
• There are six players and two GMs in the Majors right now who hail from Stanford. I’m sure at some point this season you will hear about all of them here, because Steph is crazy.

Dean McArdle is undefeated, everyone! He came pretty close yesterday, though.

McArdle couldn’t escape the first inning, giving up four runs and being chased from the game. A.J. Vanegas took over for him and pitched a solid 4.1 innings – a career-best – to keep the Card in it. They ended up getting McArdle off the hook, picking up one run in the second and four runs in the third, and adding one in the sixth to answer an LBSU score in that inning. Therefore, they won 6-5 and it was good. The winning pitcher was Scott Snodgress, who relieved Vanegas and threw 1.1 innings, and Chris Reed followed him to seal the deal.

Stanford’s offensive star of the game was actually LBSU’s third baseman Michael Hill, who made two timely errors that ended up allowing quite a few runs for the Cardinal. Stephen Piscotty also had a two-run single in the third to kick off the four-run rally.

Stanford plays next against Saint Mary’s on Tuesday at Sunken before heading off to Washington State to kick off Pac-10 play. Stuff’s about to get real.

Although it was overshadowed by a couple of other awesome wins (softball had a walk-off, and the women’s basketball team seniors are now officially undefeated on their home court), the baseball team had a nice, solid win last night, too.

It was really a low-scoring affair, with Stanford winning it 3-2. They picked up their first run in the first when sophomore wunderkind Kenny Diekroeger grounded out, bringing Jake Stewart home from third. Two more runs were tacked on in the 4th on a Tyler Gaffney home run. One inning later, Daniel Cepin drove the two UC Davis runs in, but that was pretty much the extent of the enemy’s scoring for the night.

And you can credit that to Cardinal pitching. Mark Appel started the game and went two scoreless, and then Jordan Pries picked up where Appel left off, throwing through the 7th inning. Both UC Davis runs were on Pries’ watch. Chris Reed pitched the 8th and 9th, and he was virtually spotless, striking out 3 of the 7 batters he faced and stranding some baserunners.

The nerdy kids with the tree are back in action against Santa Clara today at home. You can catch ‘em at 1 pm PST, which means Steph will have to check in with them at 4 pm EST.