Link Jarrett details state of Notre Dame baseball
Link Jarrett isn’t slowing down.
Despite unprecedented times in both collegiate athletics and campus life, as well as society in general as the world deals with the global COVID-19 pandemic, Jarrett remains fastidiously focused on the short- and long-term details for his Notre Dame baseball program.
Like many, the Fighting Irish are left to wonder what might have been in Jarrett’s abbreviated debut season after his hiring on July 12, 2019. An 11-2 start, including a sweep of perennial power and Atlantic Coast rival North Carolina on the road, and a No. 24 national ranking serve as momentum into the program’s future.
Jarrett joined Irish Sports Daily for a comprehensive question-and-answer state of the program session on Thursday.
ISD: Obviously, this is a truncated season and unlike anything anyone has experienced, but how and where do you feel you made the most strides in establishing your program through your first eight months?
COACH JARRETT: When I got to Notre Dame, I wanted to make sure that we started fall practice as early as we safely could do so; once pitchers were in shape and stretched out to throw live, I wanted to start practice and compete and scrimmage.
The biggest thing for me is just implementing your system. We’re not changing the game of baseball, but the ways we want to run the bases, communicate with the pitcher, the catcher, run our bullpen, defend bunting, cutoffs and relays. There’s so much you have to try to put into play.
I really felt like fall was the most critical timeframe for me. Knowing our preseason was going to be predominantly indoors, I wanted to be able use that preseason to fine-tune systems and make sure we got guys into proper roles to start the season. I felt at the end of fall, we were 85 to 90% ready to play, but there were things we still needed preseason for. It took a couple of weeks of the season for me to actually see us operate. And I’m not saying we played perfect baseball, but I saw things that we’re trying to put into place in our program show up in games.
When we had to stop playing, I felt like most of our playbook and how we wanted to do things had actually been executed in a game.
ISD: That 85 to 90% that you felt you accomplished in the fall, was that on par with most of your previous seasons or a bit ahead of the norm?
COACH JARRETT: I think that was probably a little bit ahead to be quite honest with you. I’ve moved through six or seven programs, whether I’m only new one or it’s a new staff, I’ve experienced both, and I think we were probably ahead. but as gain experience, putting in system still allows. I didn’t want fall to be an evaluation period for me. Wanted it to be an instructional period. Secondary part is learning personnel as teach. It was teaching first, and trying to put into best position to win. If I looked back 10 to 15 years, probably ahead of that and I wanted to be ahead. Previously, if can feel 70 to 75%, most people probably feel good. But it’s a little easier when you’ve been in a system with players before because some of it teaches itself.
In this case, nobody knew my ins and outs. Not any coaches, players, nobody. I wanted to be sure to push the envelope a little bit on inserting everything. And that goes with recruiting, too. It was a lot. It was nonstop thinking, working, talking, drawing.
ISD: How do you approach building your roster with the NCAA scholarship limitations in terms of division of scholarships? Do you look to go pitching heavy, offense or just a blend?
COACH JARRETT: Well, if you can’t pitch, you’re going to lose. That’s a fact. If you can’t pitch, you’re going to really struggle. You can have a great offense, but you have to build starting on the mound. Then it’s catchers managing the game, receiving and blocking. And that goes right into your defense. There are a lot of interesting stats, whether you play 13 games or five or 50, the averages and statistics start to rank themselves.
One stat that stood out the most, I think we were the first-place team in the ACC in fewest hits allowed. [Notre Dame allowed just 76 hits, 26 fewer than second-place Georgia Tech]
If you read some of my previous info, I wanted us to be a better defensive team than maybe what it’s been in the past few years. That’s partly pitching, but it’s also part defense. How difficult is it for people to score on your team? I thought we made great strides. And that goes right into recruiting; you have to have good arms, good catching, you have to be athletic in the middle of the field and the corner outfielders have to be able to run down and make plays. Then, your first and third basemen have to handle their responsibility.
Then you turn to the batting order and lineup. But we start with pitching and the ability to defend athletically. Designated hitter is one spot where it’s an opening in there that you don’t have to worry about defending. Really, the last piece of any recruitment I would do is like a DH.
ISD: I’d like to ask about your team’s aggressiveness on the base paths. You had 41 steal attempts in 13 games, and I researched and your teams averaged 96 attempts per season in the four years prior to your arrival at Notre Dame. What is it you like about that approach? Why is that an important part of your philosophy?
COACH JARRETT: Well, the more pressure you can put on people, the more tendency you see for them to make mistakes and they’re not comfortable playing against you. I guess that’s my offensive philosophy, that I want enough variety where the guy on the mound, coaching staff, players on the other team, are not really comfortable with what’s coming. I think that lends itself to opening up the playbook.
We do so much base-running in practice settings. We do situational scrimmages. Rarely do we rep out nobody on base in our scrimmages. The base-running and having guys on base, even if you script out innings from the get-go, it makes your defense handle more thinking opportunities and more cuts and relays and more double-plays.
I think style just lends itself to improving overall capabilities. Sometimes good arms, they may not give you a chance to just bang away, but if you have chance to steal third base at a critical moment, that’s huge, and it changes the momentum of the game and allows you a chance to score without necessarily getting hits all the time. We stole home twice in 13 games. That’s pretty unusual. I would say we’re the only team to do it. Some stuff may only come up once a year, but it’s good when you’re prepared to do it and should work if you’re prepared to do it and pick the right moments to do it. I’ve just learned that pushing base-running not only helps conditioning but opens up the entire playbook.
ISD: Notre Dame is such a national and global brand. Is that your philosophy in recruiting, anyone, anywhere, or do you target certain areas? How do you go about that process?
COACH JARRETT: It’s a national quest for the best student-athletes in the country. We’re recruiting such a high-end student who also has to be able to compete at the highest level of amateur baseball. That pool of who you can recruit is limited, therefore your geography must be massive to find the right guys. Notre Dame is such a special institution in so many layers, and it does recruit itself to some degree, but you have to be sure you’re recruiting players who play the way you want it done and have the skills to compete at this level. A lot of those players do have other options, so when you get to that type of athlete, you have to convince them that your program, the degree from Notre Dame, it carries a lot of weight for you down the road. You have to do a complete recruiting job. The visits, when you’re not dealing with a state school or a regional landscape, you have to do a good job of planning and organizing visits. It’s a very, very detailed and early, elaborate, recruiting model that we have to use. Again, we’re recruiting such an elite student-athlete that our pool is smaller than most.
ISD: That recruiting process, with how thorough you are in your explanation, is that an element of building a program that you particularly relish?
COACH JARRETT: There’s no doubt. Each program has a niche with recruiting. You have to know your niche, have a network of people around the country who can help you; people have to trust that once they’ve sent a player to you, you’re going to treat them the right way, you’re going to push them and players are going to get better.
The whole world of recruiting is people have to trust what you’re doing. Rich Wallace, our recruiting coordinator, has built rosters at three private schools. He’s done a phenomenal job and is a phenomenal person. That’s why I hired him. Chuck Ristano, our pitching coach, has done a phenomenal job here at Notre Dame. He’s developed and produced high-level arms. Those two guys carry a lot of the weight.
ISD: With the NCAA moving toward awarding extra years of eligibility to seniors after this season was cancelled due to the virus, how do you manager your roster in 2021?
COACH JARRETT: To be honest, I have no idea right now. I think the NCAA statement was that they would support another year of eligibility. Now it’s up to the conferences to decide if they want to actually implement something like that, which would essentially run all the spring sports. I would be really surprised if the conferences and school presidents go through a sport by sport detailed evaluation on what’s best for the roster of each individual sport. I don’t know if that’s possible. I don’t know if you asked the coaches if you would get any consensus on what the right thing to do is.
My assumption as this has moved along is that spring sports will probably be grouped together in determining what actually happens with eligibility. And nobody knows answer. I think it changes every day. And the (MLB) Draft is another issue. I think the Draft still happens. [Major League Baseball voted late Thursday night to modify but continue with its draft this summer]. Instead of 40 rounds, if it’s 10 rounds, it changes who is actually drafted. Are people able to then sign as free agents more easily? So there are so many unknowns right now that thinking through the roster is really a tough task. And it’s been hard on some of the guys who had high draft expectations and what’s going to happen to signing bonus pools. Not to mention the financial situations in athletics right now with shortening seasons, lost revenue.
ISD: Would you personally support the move to grant the additional year of eligibility for those spring sports athletes who had their seasons this spring halted so suddenly?
COACH JARRETT: I think that’s fair. Is it realistic? I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t know the answer. Some guys got to play a number of games, if you look at it from a redshirting perspective, it would indicate you used your year. It’s just tough. I don’t have a good answer. I don’t know. To think that three years down the road this is still affecting your roster, it’s hard to even process. I can’t imagine being an administrator. I don’t know how to do it.
We have a responsibility to try to push for what we think is fair and right but, again, there are people who have far greater problems they are dealing with right now than in the athletic world. We’re talking about long-term care, loss of jobs, truly tough stuff. We have to keep in perspective because we need the rest of it to reorganize itself and get people healthy to slow this down before we can make a fair assessment on this subject.
ISD: Where are you with your Notre Dame baseball facilities? What goals or improvements are you targeting for your baseball program?
COACH JARRETT: I want to do things first that help the players. Our facility group was very helpful this fall, we redid our cage netting and softball’s cage netting. It really needed to be done, and we modified it a little bit and it made a big difference on the appearance and functionality on our indoor cage.
Our next project is, we’re going to expand our home bullpen so that when you come out of the indoor facility and enter right into an active training area in the left field area. Really, right now we have two mounds and a very narrow corridor-type bullpen. We easily have twice the space of what we’re using. We’ll get that to four mounds, one will be natural clay, but we’ll also have a bunting area with foul lines off one of the plates for bullpen so we can use one of our pitching machines and run through the bullpen. So it will be really good live bunting reps with foul lines, and that’s our next step.
There are things with the stadium that everybody would like to do. Everybody’s got dreams for the stadium; I’ve got it. I think we’d like to add some sort of more updated seating in the main part of the stadium, at least backs to the benches to make those a little more comfortable. That’s something we are trying to do.
But the first thing is that home bullpen area, and it would be a phenomenal teaching and training area. We would turf all of that. You would walk into beautiful pitching area where we can do bunting and stretch, arm care, agilities. That’s top on my priority list and I do have a donor that has helped make that a reality. I just hope that’s something we can pull off in the near future. We did do new signage, two new signs in left and right field. They really, really look good and it just gives the stadium a better experience when you walk in. We needed to freshen it up.
Going through this, my No. 1 priority is helping players. If we can help improve each individual player in skill development, then the product on the field is going to be better. Everybody can make improvements with your facility, but working from the inside out with your players, I think the other stuff will come if you put a good product on the field.
ISD: And is that left field bullpen project on track for the fall?
COACH JARRETT: I’d like to have that in place by the fall. The drawings and the artwork and those things are basically complete. It’s just lining up and getting that done. It’s not a huge endeavor, but those companies that are specialized in the turf and construction have to time it correctly. And we’ve got plenty of time before we play a game, but I’d like to have it rocking and rolling for the fall.
ISD: What are your basic scheduling philosophies moving forward? What do you look for as you construct your schedule and what are some of the challenges that you face?
COACH JARRETT: Some of the neat things are, you’re going to go on the road. So you get to be creative about going to neat places. Next year we’re scheduled to open at LSU in a tournament with Army and Navy. Our tournament in San Antonio is at a neat pro park, and it was my first time ever being in San Antonio this year. Our booster club in San Antonio is very active in helping support and run that program, and so that’s something the second week that we’ve got in place. There are the local teams participating in that that help make it consistent, and then we invite an outside team to travel there with us.
The third week have some flexibility with where you go. We have to stay ahead of, we know we’re going south. So I’m OK with tournaments, but I do enjoy three-game series with one team where you start to learn guys, players, coaches, and tendencies of teams. And I think for our team learning how to function in that series prepares you for your conference season when you have to go back. I like that. I don’t want everything we do to be a tournament.
The midweek stuff, there’s a couple things we have to look at. No. 1 is class attendance. We’re not going to pull these guys out of class an inordinate amount time, especially knowing we have to travel so much the first five weeks. It’s been easier to schedule an earlier end time on Tuesday and Thursday, which helps your travel departure on Thursday.
But it also makes sense for your midweek games to be on Tuesday. So you start to get into the decision of what day off during the week in the season is the best thing. I changed my philosophy years ago, and started to take Wednesday off instead of Mondays, to get guys back on the field and get a little prep, then take Wednesday off midweek and give our guys a chance to recover and academically do things they need to do before we travel or have practice on Thursday.
As I’ve got it now, our midweek games will be on Tuesdays. There may be a couple of times where we do Tuesday and Wednesday, but we’re not built to do that a ton at Notre Dame. We’ve got to keep academics and travel in check. Try to keep them recovered and rested and healthy. I don’t want to travel a whole lot on midweek games; there are people who love to come play at Notre Dame, and I’m going to allow that.
I’ve got our weekends all the way through 2023 done. You have to stay ahead of it. And when you’re traveling, you have to stay way ahead of it because there’s a lot that goes into it when you’re traveling. I’ve got a couple of midweeks left in 2022; that’s really what I worked on (Thursday) morning, the 2022 midweeks. We don’t have our final ACC conference dates; we know who we’re playing but we don’t know when and some of them we don’t know where in 2022. You just have to think through who you’re playing when and when you’re traveling.