A few Notre Dame Baseball Thoughts
Notre Dame will need some help and luck to reach the NCAA Tournament after losing 5-4 to Boston College on Tuesday night.
The Irish likely needed two wins to feel confident about making the Field of 64, which would have included a win over Virginia, a program that is also on the bubble.
There were a few key moments in the loss that Shawn Stiffler and his program will be thinking about until Monday’s selection show.
For Stiffler, it starts in the second inning. The Irish had retired two before Rory Fox gave up a walk and a single before giving up a two-run shot to Kyle Wolff to put Boston College up 3-2.
“Rory threw the ball terrific tonight and pitched out of several jams,” stated Stiffler. “It’s just that one blimp on the screen with two outs and nobody on. I’ll watch that inning for a long time. I’ll replay for a long time.”
Fox did come up big for the Irish despite the three-run shot. He pitched 6.0 innings, giving up four runs, three walks and striking out nine while throwing 109 pitches, a career high.
The decision to start Fox came during the second game in Miami. Notre Dame’s ace, Jack Radel, tallied 7.1 innings at Miami on Thursday, so Stiffler didn’t want to push him on less rest than usual.
Stiffler and Seth Voltz decided to pull Fox early in game two against Miami (Friday) after he gave up four runs and that led to him starting Tuesday in Durham against Boston College.
“I was just not comfortable with Jack Radel throwing 105 pitches at Miami the night before,” explained Stiffler. “When Rory didn’t look great and was a little rough in that first inning in Miami, we decided to shut him down and regroup.
“If you lose that game 8-4 and he throws six innings, I don’t know who we would have pitched today. We were able to do that. Jack Radel wanted the ball really bad and he will probably stare a hole in the back of my head on the plane. I have to think about the next 40 years for them and not just necessarily the next four days. As bad as I wanted that game, I love Jack a lot more.”
In the sixth inning, Fox was starting to have some inconsistent pitches, but Voltz wanted to ride him out with a baserunner on first with no outs. Stiffler opposed, but trusted Voltz and Fox. It proved to be a smart decision as Fox came up with an incredible 1-6-3 double play.
It was a bold decision as Notre Dame’s top arm didn’t see the field in a must-win game, but the Irish had plenty of chances to get runs on the board.
The Irish left 10 runners on base, but the crushing stat is that nine of those runners were in scoring position.
In the sixth, Notre Dame had runners on second and third with one out. Boston College answered with back-to-back strikeouts. The backbreaker came in the bottom of the eighth. Jared Zimbardo started the inning getting hit by a pitch and was moved to second on a sac bunt by Nick DeMarco. Zimbardo was then thrown at third on a ground ball to short with one out. It’s simply a play you can’t have at this level, much less in a game of his magnitude.
“We had baserunning mistakes,” said Stiffler. “We didn’t drive a runner in from third with less than two outs late in the game and couldn’t get a bunt down. We didn’t execute a lot very well tonight.”
The puzzling decision by the staff ended the game and possibly the season for the Irish. With two outs and a runner on first in the bottom of the ninth, Stiffler elected to hit DeMarco, who entered the at-bat batting .167 on year.
DeMarco grounded out to third on a full count to end the game.
It was a similar situation to last year at Louisville where Notre Dame needed to win to secure a spot in the ACC Tournament. Stiffler left Tony Lindwedel (.086) in to hit and he grounded into a double play to essentially end Notre Dame’s season.
Regardless, Stiffler believes Notre Dame has done enough to earn a spot in the Field of 64.
“I told them tonight’s game we got out executed, but over the last six weeks, nobody outplayed us really in the country,” Stiffler said. “We didn’t have the opportunities from the weekend coming in to save anything. We had to ride every really, really hard because we knew where our fate was and where we had to get to and we got there.
““I think we did enough. You have 16 teams in this league and you certainly should be getting more teams in the postseason. This conference is an 11-team bid in my opinion.”
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