3-2-1: No. 17 Notre Dame To Host First Home Series Of Link Jarrett Era

Notre Dame officially announced the hiring of head baseball coach Link Jarrett on July 12, 2019.

At the time, it was impossible to predict the upcoming COVID-19 pandemic, which would cut his inaugural season at Notre Dame short in the spring of 2020 after an 11-2 start.

Because of inclement spring weather in South Bend, the Fighting Irish baseball program typically frontloads its schedule with road games and tournaments held at warm-weather destinations. Thus, Jarrett never got to play a home game at Notre Dame’s Frank Eck Stadium.

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Fast forward to this season and Notre Dame is off to a 7-2 start, with each game played on the road.

Thus, when the Irish host the first game of a weekend ACC series against Duke on Friday, Jarrett will finally get to coach a game at home — 616 days after he publicly accepted the job.

He can’t wait to see his players run out of the dugout and onto the field, as Cathy Richardson’s iconic song “Here Come the Irish” blasts from the sound system.

“That gives me goosebumps every time I hear it,” Jarrett said. “So that'll be cranked up. I'll kind of sit on the side and think about how I'm coaching a game at Notre Dame. I've been looking forward to it. Obviously, it’s been a long time.”

Turning up the heat on offense

Coach Jarrett told BlueandGold.com prior to the series against Virginia that, despite his team's 4-2 ACC start, he wanted more production from his offense. Notre Dame produced an 11-2 record in 2020 and offense led the way, with the Irish hitting .302 as a team and averaging 8.9 runs per game.

But six contests into 2021, Notre Dame was averaging just six runs per game and hitting .245 as a team.

How did Jarrett's players respond? With a three-day display of hard hits and home run power.

In a sweep of the Cavaliers, the Irish hit .365 and crushed seven pitches out of the ballpark.

As a result, Notre Dame averaged 10 runs per game and the Irish are now hitting .288 on the season, the 46th best mark in college baseball.

Two players, second baseman Jared Miller and designated-hitter Carter Putz, are hitting over .400. Each carries a top-five batting average in the ACC.

Senior first baseman Niko Kavadas is also off to a strong start. He's hitting .313 and averaging a walk per game.

More importantly, as Notre Dame's cleanup hitter, Kavadas also hit two more home runs against Virginia, his fourth and fifth of the year. This puts him at 14th in the nation in terms of home runs per game.

Thus far, the Irish defense has been on point

In a 10-5 victory over the Hoos on Friday, shortstop Zack Prajzner and right fielder Jack Zyska committed an error apiece, which ultimately proved to be inconsequential.

This, however, was by far Notre Dame's worst defensive performance of the season, doubling the total number of errors the team has committed in its other eight games combined.

With a fielding percentage of .991, the Irish are fifth in all of college baseball and first in the ACC.

As BlueandGold.com noted last week, this is especially impressive given how little Notre Dame has practiced outside this season. Can the Irish sustain this pace, where they commit an error once every three games?

Given that their .991 fielding percentage would have tied for the MLB lead in 2020, it's unlikely. But Notre Dame is a veteran team that plays with confidence. Such a combination usually leads to sound defense, so expect that to continue even if the Irish commit a few more errors.

Notre Dame’s three ACC opponents are a combined 18-22

At 7-2 on the season and in the ACC, Notre Dame is now ranked in all six college baseball polls.

Now members of the national college baseball media are hopping on the Notre Dame bandwagon and predicting the Irish will play in the College World Series in Omaha, Neb. (just as a few Rockne's Roundtable posters have), which would be the program's first appearance since 2002.

National optimism is exciting, but it also may be a good idea to pump the brakes when it comes to expectations of Omaha in June.

The three ACC opponents Notre Dame has faced this season are a combined 18-22 on the season and 4-16 in conference.

Of course, the season is still young and these records ultimately represent small sample sizes. But it's also possible the perception most people had of Notre Dame's challenging early-season schedule could have been overblown.

For instance, Virginia began the season as a consensus top-15 program picked to finish second in the ACC Coastal. With almost every significant contributor back from 2020, no one expected the Hoos to open conference play with a 2-7 record.

It could be the result of an early-season slump, or perhaps, Virginia is a surprise ACC bottom feeder.

Those following Notre Dame baseball will have a much better idea of how good this team is under Jarrett by the end of the month, with upcoming series against Duke (7-6, 3-3) and No. 8 Louisville (11-5, 4-2).

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How will Notre Dame adjust to the indefinite loss of Friday starter Tommy Sheehan?

In each of the last three seasons, left-handed pitcher Tommy Sheehan had been a reliable starter for the Fighting Irish. Even when the majority of the rotation was struggling, Notre Dame could always count on Sheehan to eat up innings and record outs.

As a freshman in 2018, he was second on the team in terms of innings pitched and then led the team in this statistical category as a Friday starter throughout his sophomore and junior seasons.

The expectation of Sheehan heading into 2021 was that he would continue to be a workhorse and leader for Notre Dame.

But in his two Friday starts against Wake Forest and Clemson, Sheehan allowed six earned runs in a combined eight innings of work for a 6.75 ERA, much worse than the 2.70 ERA he produced in 2020.

Recently, BlueandGold.com learned why Sheehan hasn’t looked like Mr. Reliable: elbow soreness in his left arm. For a pitcher, elbow issues can be serious, and thus he didn't throw this past weekend against Virginia. At this point, the timetable for his return is uncertain.

For the time being, Notre Dame will need to replace Sheehan's production. This comes at a point in the schedule where the Irish start to play Tuesday evening games against regional opponents such as Valparaiso, Butler, Western Michigan and Central Michigan. These are far from the toughest opponents on Notre Dame's schedule, but each game equates to eight or nine extra innings of work a week for the Irish pitching staff.

A pitcher deserving of an increased role is left-hander Joe Sheridan, a graduate transfer from UCF that boasts 23 career college starts. In two relief appearances and eight innings of work for the Irish this season, he's surrendered just three hits, three walks and zero earned runs.

Will Spencer Myers emerge from his slump at the plate?

Last weekend's offensive explosion was an excellent sign, but the everyday player Notre Dame still needs to turn things around is senior center fielder Spencer Myers.

In the three games against Virginia, the switch hitter went two for 15 at the plate, dropping his season average to .171. Thus far, he's reached base on fewer than one-fourth of his 2021 at-bats.

This is not the type of production Notre Dame wants from its leadoff hitter, and it's reasonable to expect more from him. In each of the prior two seasons, Myers led the teams in hitting, with batting averages of .294 in 2019 and .431 in 2020.

His inability to reach base has also inhibited production as a runner. He led the nation in stolen bases in 2020, but has just one attempt this season, which resulted in Virginia throwing him out at second base.

On the bright side, despite his lack of production in 2021, Myers consistently made solid contact against Virginia and often hit hard grounders right at Cavalier's defenders. Eventually, those will turn into line drives, or at the very least, find holes through the infield.

But Notre Dame can't wait much longer for Myers to emerge from his slump, especially since the schedule becomes more challenging at the end of March and throughout April.

The Irish will be 10-3 ahead of its matchup with division-favorite Louisville

Over the next week, Notre Dame will play four games: three games against Duke and a Tuesday evening game at Frank Eck Stadium against Valparaiso.

I expect that Notre Dame will take two out of three games from a solid Blue Devils team and then take care of business against the Crusaders, a team that currently boasts a 3-7 record without having faced a single Power Five opponent.

This will improve Notre Dame's record to 10-3 on the season and catapult them into the top 20 in all six college baseball polls. This will set up an ACC Atlantic matchup with Louisville the following weekend where the series winner would become the odds on favorite to win the division.

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