STANFORD-Brett Jackson led off last Saturday's game for the Cal baseball team with a walk, and Brian Guinn followed with a single.

First and second, no outs. And neither one of them scored.

Brett Jackson led off last night's game by being hit by a pitch, and Brian Guinn followed with a single. This time, in the same situation, Michael Brady came through with a two-run double.

In fact, the Bears put a runner in scoring position in the first, fourth and sixth innings on Monday night against Stanford and drove him in every time.

Meanwhile, Kevin Miller pitched 5 1/3 strong innings and gave up just one run, leaving in the sixth with a 4-1 lead.

In other words, Cal did almost everything against the Cardinal that it did not do last weekend against Washington. The Bears got a quality start from Miller. They came at the plate with runners in scoring position.

And they still lost, 14-4, dropping their eighth game in a row.

"It's something that's new for a lot of these guys and we haven't gone through it very much in any of my time here," Cal coach David Esquer said. "We've got to kind of hang in there and stay positive. We can't bury the guys, because that's not where we're at.

"It isn't about effort."

This time, it was a new issue. Relief pitching, arguably the strongest facet of Cal's game for the first half of the season, broke down. Michael Bugary gave up two runs and got one out. Daniel Wolford allowed four runs in an inning.

Just about everything that could go wrong seemingly has, and it's led to a frightening question:

How do you try to fix a problem when you're not quite sure what the problem is?

"(Things are) kind of feeding off each other," Esquer said. "I think we're putting a lot of pressure on our relief pitching to hold them down to zero because we're not scoring late in ballgames. And our starting pitching is putting some pressure on our offense to score early and often."

It's a vicious cycle. And the result is a Cal team that, according to Esquer, hasn't found ways to rebound from recent mistakes.

Monday night, that mistake was a throwing error by shortstop Brian Guinn with the Bears up 4-2 in the bottom of the sixth. With one out and the Cardinal's Adam Gaylord on second base, Guinn fielded a grounder to his right and tried to cut Gaylord down at third rather than throw to first. His throw pulled third baseman Marcus Semien away from the base and Gaylord slid in safely.

By the end of the inning, Stanford had tied the score at 4-4, and the game went downhill from there.

In no way was this loss Guinn's fault.

"If we're playing like we can play, that doesn't decide the game," Esquer said.

But the error gave Stanford a precious window and, with Cal stuck in a funk, the Cardinal exploited it.

Right now, every error, every strikeout with a runner in scoring position, every loss seems magnified. And while the question isn't if the Bears can snap out of this losing streak, with the Pac-10 season already in full swing, the issue of when is a pressing one.

"It's kind of all hit us at once," Esquer said. "We haven't offensed as well as we did early in the year and haven't pitched as well. When both hit at once, they feed off each other and nothing good happens.

"When we can piece it together, we'll play better."

Tags: CAL BASEBALL, DAVID ESQUER