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The starting rotation was supposed to be the foundation of this year’s Stanford baseball team as new pitchers settled into bullpen roles and new bats cultivated themselves at the plate.

Sophomore ace Cal Quantrill was coming off of a stellar freshman season and, with a newly-added curveball in hand and his already-plus changeup and fastball ready to go in his arsenal, was expected to make a serious push for first-team All-America consideration this year.

John Hochstatter was coming off of a 10-win season, and Marc Brakeman had a tremendous offseason in the Cape Cod league and earned the Saturday spot in the rotation.

With such depth and talent, what could possibly have gone wrong?

Well, none of them have pitched since the third weekend of the season — the end of February.

“Obviously that’s not how we anticipated the season playing out, having three of our starting pitchers go out, especially three guys like that who were probably the best starting rotation in the Pac-12,” said junior Gabe Cramer.

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