Former Serra pitcher Drew Dowd’s first Stanford start was a wild one

But the 6-foot-2 southpaw never got an out in the fourth inning, surrendering three runs before giving way to the bullpen. USF went on to rally for 11 runs in the frame to tie it before Stanford ultimately prevailed 15-13.

“Overall, I wasn’t really happy with the way I pitched,” Dowd said. “I could have done better to stay in the game, especially with an 11-0 game.”

The Cardinal have high expectations for Dowd, though, who committed to Stanford after a sophomore year at Serra and just a month of varsity baseball experience.

It was Dowd’s performance in the 2018 Central Coast Section Open Division semifinals, a 2-1 loss to Los Gatos, that caught the eye of Stanford pitching coach Thomas Eager. Eager was there scouting another Stanford recruit, Los Gatos infielder Tommy Troy, who now bats leadoff for the Cardinal.

Dowd worked five innings in relief of another Serra left-hander, Nick Lopez, also now on the pitching staff at Stanford. For Dowd, the CCS outing marked just the sixth appearance of his varsity career.

“The one thing I noticed about him was this is a super competitive kid,” Eager said. “He looked a little undersized, but he could spin a breaking ball. And I really liked him.”

It has been quite a baseball odyssey for Dowd since that May 22, 2018 game. He returned as a junior having made a verbal commitment to Stanford in the offseason but pitched in just three games for the Padres before an injury to the ulnar collateral ligament of his pitching arm forced him to shut it down for the remainder of the 2019 season.

The injury did not require surgery, and he returned to Serra in 2020, but pitched in just three games, totaling three innings, his senior year before the season was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“I was kind of building up to get into full shape and then the season got canceled,” Dowd said. “The way I was pitching then, I think there was no question I would have been back to form.”

Now, Dowd is pitching on a staff that includes not just his former Serra teammate, Lopez, but a former middle school classmate as well in right-hander Nate Fleischli. The two attended Sacred Heart middle school in Atherton for two years, and even commuted together on the train.

When Dowd arrived at Stanford this season, though, no more was he the scrawny kid with a skinny whip for a left arm.

“He was looking me in the eye; he’s just got huge,” Eager said. “He just kept growing and growing. I almost didn’t recognize him.”

Eager said the task of harnessing Dowd’s talent now lies in two old pitching adages: Thinking less and throwing more.

Dowd is a fairly cerebral baseball player, but sometimes gets too much in his own head, Eager said. Stanford’s fourth-year pitching coach also said Dowd is working toward building the arm strength necessary to compete at the collegiate level by playing catch every day. Taking days off, Eager said, is the way pitchers get hurt.

“He’s working on it,” Eager said. “Hey, we have high expectations for him. He shows the ability to be a legit starter in the Pac-12 and I think the biggest thing we’re running into, especially with our freshmen, is they just haven’t competed. … We knew, the coaching staff, there’s going to be a learning curve.”

Dowd got the nod as Stanford’s Sunday starter partly because the Cardinal pitching staff is still getting back to full strength to start the year. But during preseason inter-squads, the left-hander was taking regular starts.

“In inter-squads, I started every time, but at the same time I don’t think I’ve earned it yet,” Dowd said. “I think I’m good to go either way. Either way, I need to prove myself as a reliever or as a starter. I’ve got to prove I can be reliable.”

Before the wheels came off for Stanford in the fourth inning Sunday, Dowd saw mixed results through the first three frames. He pitched through a pair of walks in the first. Then the leadoff hitter in each the second and third innings reached base, but Dowd buckled down to induce double play grounders both times.

“There wasn’t really much nerves,” Dowd said. “It was just about finding comfortability on the mound. It was a little tough to throw strikes on a consistent basis, but I was kind of working on that throughout the game. I think the good thing, I was still able to get outs when I needed to.”

The fourth inning went south in a hurry with a hit batsman and back-to-back doubles for USF, knocking Dowd out of the game. Fleischli entered in relief but lasted just 1/3 of an inning after walking two, hitting one batter, and allowing three runs.

But Dowd’s future remains bright in the eyes of Eager, who said the freshman figures into Stanford’s future — and the future, for Dowd, could be as soon as now.

“We see something in there,” Eager said. “Because the outcome, I think, is going to be sooner rather than later.”