For two years, Beau Branton quietly kept his head down.

A freshman starter for the Stanford baseball team, the 2014 Punahou graduate went two entire seasons without starting another game.

In front of his teammates, he was always the one on the top step rooting everybody on from the dugout.

Behind the scenes, he was working in the batting cage every day. He was on the field taking ground balls whenever possible.

But on the inside, he was frustrated. He could feel his dream of playing professional baseball slipping away. He was beginning to plan for his post-undergraduate life away from the baseball field.

Through it all, he never stopped working. Branton never stopped believing, and the No. 2-ranked baseball team in the nation couldn’t be more thankful today.

An injury to returning All-Pac-12 starting second baseman Duke Kinamon provided an opportunity for Branton, who had only five official at-bats as a junior, to compete for playing time.

He got his first start three weeks into the season against Michigan and is hitting a team-best .380 over 23 games with 11 runs scored for the Cardinal, who at 23-5 overall are ranked No. 2 in the nation by USA Today/ESPN and D1Baseball.com and No. 3 by Baseball America.

“Getting to play my senior year means a lot,” Branton said before Tuesday’s nonconference game against UC Davis. “Obviously sophomore year and junior year I’ve not been playing much, but I’ve come to the field every day to work on my swing, field grounders and be patient, knowing I always need to be ready for the team.

“That’s what has kept me sharp and allowed me to do what I’ve done.”

The 1,008 days between starts provided Branton time to reflect on his baseball career.

He started 28 of the 51 games he played in as a freshman but hit just .220 while coaches made changes to his swing from high school, where he was a three-time All-ILH and two-time All-State pick at Punahou.

Those swing changes never came to fruition after he spent the next two seasons on the bench, playing in just 29 games total — mostly as a pinch runner.

Longtime head coach Mark Marquess retired following last season after 41 years on the job, and Stanford alum David Esquer was named head coach in June.

One of the first adjustments Branton made with the new staff was going back to his old swing.

“A lot of changes were made to my swing which I didn’t agree with, which is part of the reason why I didn’t get to live up to my potential,” Branton said. “The new coaching staff has changed my swing a little bit — much more of a relaxed swing like I was used to in high school.”

The Cardinal dropped their first series of the year in Pac-12 play last weekend to UCLA despite Branton setting a career high with four hits in the opener, an 8-4 loss.

Despite the two losses, Stanford remained the highest-ranked Pac-12 team in the nation this week just three years after going 9-21 in league play during Branton’s freshman season.

“I think we had the worst record in Stanford history,” Branton said. “(The turnaround) has been a lot of fun, especially for me and the three other seniors on the team who are in our last year just trying to give it all we got.

“Baseball is such a hit-or-miss sport and you can be really good on paper but things just don’t work out.”

Branton learned that lesson as a senior at Punahou. Despite the team including KJ Harrison (Oregon State) — a third-round pick of the Milwaukee Brewers last summer — Bo Coolen (Ohio State), Dylan Combs (Harvard), Cole Cabrera (Cal Poly), Cole Kanazawa (Pacific), Noah Goss and Easton Takamoto (Hawaii Pacific) and Aaron Fong (Willamette), the Buffanblu went 3-11-1 in the ILH regular season.

“We had all of these D-I guys and were the worst team,” Branton said. “You just never know sometimes. This year we have a really strong pitching staff, which has always been our rock at Stanford, and we have a tight bond among the players.

“I know some people believe in chemistry and some don’t, but I believe that the bond we have has been vital to our success.”