College baseball notebook: Japanese star Rintaro Sasaki finds stroke right away in Stanford debut

By Canadian Press on February 17, 2025.

Rintaro Sasaki certainly lived up to the yearlong hype surrounding his debut at Stanford.

The slugging first baseman went 6 for 14 with two doubles and a team-best eight RBIs in three weekend wins at Cal State Fullerton.

Sasaki set the Japanese high school record with 140 career home runs for Hanamaki Higashi High, the alma mater of superstar Shohei Ohtani and where Sasaki’s father, Hiroshi, is head baseball coach.

Sasaki opted out of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball league draft — he was the projected No. 1 pick — to play college ball in the United States. He considered Vanderbilt, California and UCLA before he signed with Stanford. He enrolled last March to get acclimated, learn English and work out with the Cardinal.

The 6-foot, 275-pound Sasaki, named Baseball America’s preseason freshman of the year, was No. 3 in the batting order for the first three games. He was 2 for 5 with four RBIs in the opener, 1 for 4 with a double and RBI in the second game and 3 for 5 with a double and three RBIs in the third.

In the polls

Texas A&M (3-0), Virginia (2-1) and LSU (3-0) remained the top three teams in the D1Baseball.com poll Monday.

The Aggies also are atop the Baseball America rankings, followed by LSU and Tennessee (3-0).

Dominant defending champs

Defending national champion Tennessee outscored Hofstra 46-2 in a three-game home sweep. The Volunteers, whose 184 home runs last season were the second most in Division I history, went deep seven times in the series with Reese Chapman and Hunter Ensley each hitting grand slams.

The Pride, picked ninth in the 12-team Colonial Athletic Association, managed just seven hits in the three games.

Sensational Cincinnati

Cincinnati picked up its first series victory over a ranked opponent in six years by taking two of three at Duke, which had been as high as No. 10 in the polls.

The Bearcats won 8-3, lost 6-5 in 12 innings and won 19-5. Their previous series win over a ranked team was in April 2019, when they won two of three at UConn.

Now that’s an inning

Indiana State, the two-time Missouri Valley regular-season champion, unloaded for 20 runs in Sunday’s 36-6 win over Wagner of the Northeast Conference in Gastonia, North Carolina. The Sycamores had 21 consecutive batters reach base with all nine players in the order either recording a hit, scoring a run, or driving in a run during the inning.

The 20 runs were the most all-time in a third inning by a Division I team, according to the NCAA. The most runs ever scored in any inning is 21 by several teams.

Cleanup spot

UNCW’s Connor Marshburn pitched six no-hit innings in his first career start as the Seahawks beat a top-10 Georgia 6-2 Sunday. … Ethan Kleinschmidt pitched six innings in his Oregon State debut in a combined one-hitter in a 6-0 win over Indiana on Sunday. The Hoosiers, expected to challenge for the Big Ten title, went 0-3 on opening weekend. They were held to a total of eight runs and 18 hits by UNLV, Xavier and the Beavers. … Freshman Noah Franco homered twice in a nine-run fourth inning as TCU won 13-5 at San Diego on Sunday. … Texas won the Shriners Children’s College Showdown in Arlington, Texas, riding an eight-run fifth inning in a 14-8 victory over Oklahoma State on Sunday. Four teams won two games in the tournament, but the Longhorns posted a tournament-best plus-15 run differential to take the title.

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AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports

Eric Olson, The Associated Press

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