Bertrand helps Irish make history as ND reaches ACC baseball semis
Five springs ago John Michael Bertrand’s journey as a freshman walk-on pitcher at Furman University ended with him being told he was being removed from the roster because he wasn’t good enough to be a Division I baseball player.
Thanks to a stubborn streak and a second chance, the sixth-year grad senior has been ascending ever since.
On Thursday the ace lefty and former transfer helped take Notre Dame’s program somewhere it had never been before — to the semifinals of the ACC Baseball Championships. The fourth-seeded Irish reserved their spot in Saturday’s semis at Truist Field in Charlotte, N.C., with a 5-3 victory over 9 seed Florida State.
On Saturday at 1 p.m. (EDT) they’ll face the winner of Friday night’s Pool A matchup between top seed Virginia Tech (41-11) and 8 seed North Carolina (35-19). Upstarts Pitt (29-26) and NC State (35-20) meet in a 5 p.m. semifinal, with the Saturday survivors clashing Sunday at noon for the title.
Pitt and NC State are the No. 11 and 10 seeds, respectively, in what started out as a 12-team field with plenty of upsets ensuing.
There were some anxious moments Thursday that the Irish might become part of that trend after Bertrand exited the game. In the bottom of the ninth, the Seminoles pushed across two runs and had the winning run at the plate in Tyler Martin, but Alex Rao got Martin to fly out to left field to preserve the win for the Irish (34-13).
“Notre Dame does a lot of things very well,” said Martin’s father, Mike Martin Jr. — FSU’s head coach. “And when they have Bertrand on the mound, they’re as good as anyone in the country.”
Bertrand went eight innings, giving up five hits, a walk and an unearned run while striking out eight. Two of those strikeouts came back to back in the bottom of the fourth inning after Florida State (33-23) had loaded the bases with no outs and trailing 3-1.
After fanning Isaiah Perry and Alex Toral on a total of seven pitches, Bertrand coaxed a flyout from Logan Lacey to end the threat.
“Coach (Link Jarrett) always talks about starting pitchers need to be a self-contained reliever,” said Bertrand, who nudged his record to 8-2 and lowered his ERA to an ACC-best 2.39. “So that was the first thing on my mind. You’ve got to bring it up a notch.”
He had plenty of company in that regard.
Zack Prajzner, Jack Zyska and Brooks Coetzee all homered off Florida State ace lefty Parker Messick, a top 50 MLB Draft prospect who mowed down the first eight Irish batters to face him. Then No. 9 hitter Prajzner launched a Messick fastball into the left-field seats in the top of the third with two outs in a scoreless game.
Florida State answered in the bottom of the third to tie the game 1-1 on a one-out RBI single by its No. 9 hitter, Colton Vincent, after Toral had earlier reached on a two-base error.
Zyska untied the game in the top of the fourth, golfing a low breaking ball out of the zone over the left-field fence with Carter Putz aboard for a 3-1 Irish lead. Coetzee hit a similar pitch, and to a similar part of the park, in the top of the fifth for a 5-1 ND advantage.
“We spent a lot of time talking about how to attack (Messick),” Jarrett said. “And it’s very difficult. Preparing to hit a fastball and then being in a physical position that allows you to adjust to hit a good secondary pitch is, quite frankly, one of the most difficult things in athletics to do.
“Those pitches were good. They were in the bottom of the zone — if they were in the zone at all. Their ability to get into a position and maintain a path through the zone and out in front of the zone allowed them to still barrel some very difficult secondary pitches.
“Those guys work tirelessly on that sort of thing. And that’s really the art of hitting.”
The Seminoles figured out the art of hitting in the bottom of the ninth against grad senior Austin Temple, typically a starter, though some of Temple’s drama was self-inflicted.
The Irish still led 5-1 with two outs, but a double and two hit batsmen loaded the bases for pinch-hitter Brock Mathis. Mathis, hitting more than 60 points higher than Vincent’s .199, smacked a single to close the gap to 5-3.
Rao then came on to retire Martin and end the game.
Temple would have been a natural to start Saturday, but Jarrett might start a lefty — Aidan Tyrell or Jack Findlay — depending upon who the opponent is. And the 21 pitches he threw Thursday factors in.
Jarrrett also admitted to being perplexed about how to approach Friday’s 11 a.m. pool-play matchup with fifth-seeded Virginia (38-16). Because of pool-play tiebreaker rules, the result of that game is inconsequential on the semifinal field, just as Thursday night’s Virginia Tech 18-6 rout of 12 seed Clemson was.
“It’s unique — we’ll sort it out,” Jarrett said of the Friday morning game. “We’ve never been in this position before.”
And Jarrett can thank Bertrand for that — in his second year at ND after Furman shuttered its baseball program in 2020 because of COVID-19-related financial challenges for the school’s athletic department.
Ironically, the older brother of Notre Dame linebacker JD Bertrand wanted to go to ND as a regular student coming out of high school, but was denied by the admissions office.
“When you have somebody like this that appreciates everything, it gives the whole team a purpose in what we’re trying to do,” Jarrett said of Bertrand. “And he’s helped us rewrite the modern-day record book of the program.
“There have been a lot of talented people here before us, but that’s what he means to us.”
ACC BASEBALL CHAMPIONSHIP SCHEDULE
May 24-29 at Truist Field, Charlotte, N.C.
POOL A – #1 Virginia Tech, #8 North Carolina, #12 Clemson
POOL B – #2 Louisville, #7 Georgia Tech, #11 Pitt
POOL C – #3 Miami, #6 Wake Forest, #10 NC State
POOL D – #4 Notre Dame, #5 Virginia, #9 Florida State
Tuesday, May 24
No. 11 Pitt 12, No. 7 Georgia Tech 6
No. 10 NC State 11, No. 6 Wake Forest 8
No. 8 North Carolina 9, No. 12 Clemson 2
Wednesday, May 25
No. 11 Pitt 6, No. 2 Louisville 5
No. 9 Florida State 13, No. 5 Virginia 3 (8 innings)
No. 10 NC State 9, No. 3 Miami 6
Thursday, May 26
No. 7 Georgia Tech 9, No. 2 Louisville 4
No. 4 Notre Dame 5, No. 9 Florida State 3
No. 1 Virginia Tech 18, No. 12 Clemson 6
Friday, May 27
No. 5 Virginia vs. No. 4 Notre Dame, 11 a.m. (RSN/ACCN Extra)
No. 6 Wake Forest vs. No. 3 Miami, 3 p.m. (RSN/ACCN Extra)
No. 8 North Carolina vs. No. 1 Virginia Tech, 7 p.m. (RSN/ACCN Extra)
Saturday, May 28
Semifinals
Pool A Winner vs. Notre Dame (34-13), 1 p.m. (ACCN/ACCN Extra)
No. 11 Pitt (29-26) vs. No. 10 NC State (35-20), 5 p.m. (ACCN/ACCN Extra)
Sunday, May 29
Championship
Semifinal winners, Noon (ESPN2/ACCN Extra)
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