Notre Dame baseball seems to have flipped a switch. Just three weeks ago, the Irish came limping home from Boston College at 16-17 overall and 4-14 in Atlantic Coast Conference play. They had lost all six ACC series played and were pretty widely considered the worst team in the conference.
They’ve looked like an entirely different squad since that moment. After sweeping Stanford last weekend and taking care of the accompanying midweek games, Notre Dame stayed hot this past weekend, breaking out the brooms against Cal at home. The Irish have now won eight consecutive games, a feat never before accomplished in the three-year Shawn Stiffler era. They now stand at 24-17 overall and are roaring back toward .500 within conference play at 10-14 against ACC foes.
Friday: Cal 1, Notre Dame 8
Perhaps no development has driven Notre Dame’s recent success more than the turnaround of Friday starter Jack Radel. The sophomore right-hander struggled badly in March but has looked like one of the conference’s best arms since the calendar turned to April. With this past Friday’s masterpiece, which included seven innings of one-run baseball with a career-best 12 strikeouts, Radel has delivered four consecutive quality starts.
Both Radel and the Irish offense overpowered Cal in the series opener, as Notre Dame blasted three home runs to lead the game from wire to wire. Sophomore catcher Davis Johnson started the scoring in the first inning, launching a two-run shot to right field. A few innings later, after Cal pulled a run back on Carl Schmidt’s leadoff home run in the fourth, the Irish struck back with another extra-base hit. With two outs, senior center fielder DM Jefferson lofted a ground-rule double that stretched Notre Dame’s lead back to two.
Golden Bear starting pitcher Austin Turkington pitched well enough to keep Cal in the game, striking out seven across 5.1 innings of three-run baseball. However, the combination of Radel’s dominance and the poor performance of Cal’s bullpen left him with the loss, as Notre Dame pulled away in the late innings. In the sixth, junior shortstop Estevan Moreno tagged a two-run home run. One frame later, Johnson walloped his second long ball of the night, a three-run big fly that brought the game to its final score of 8-1. The backstop finished with five RBIs on the night, accounting for over 60% of Notre Dame’s runs.
Saturday: Cal 0, Notre Dame 10
While Radel has only recently heated up, junior right-hander Rory Fox has been Notre Dame’s consistent arm all season. He turned in another dandy of a start on Saturday afternoon, shutting out the Golden Bears across six innings on two hits while striking out six. Including last week’s shutdown of Stanford, Fox has totaled 13 innings with zero runs conceded across his last two starts, punching out 12 and walking only one during that stretch.
Notre Dame gave him all the run support he needed within the first two innings, hanging eight runs on Cal starter Oliver de la Torre. The action began with two outs in the first, when freshman outfielder Bino Watters singled and freshman first baseman Parker Brzustewicz doubled him home. The Irish then blew it all open with a seven-run second inning, which freshman right fielder Jayce Lee opened with a solo home run. Sophomore catcher Carson Tinney, the reigning ACC Player of the Week, followed a few hitters later with a three-run blast. The hit parade continued with graduate second baseman Connor Hincks and Moreno, who respectively singled and doubled to plate a combined three additional runs.
In a game shortened to seven innings by the run rule, Notre Dame applied the finishing touches with runs in the fifth and sixth frames. Watters and Johnson each collected an RBI, bringing the Irish to 10 runs on 12 hits. Every Notre Dame starter reached base at least once, with all but one man recording a hit.
Sunday: Cal 5, Notre Dame 6
Cal finally stayed in a game for the long haul on Sunday, scoring first on Notre Dame graduate right-hander Jackson Dennies. The Golden Bears opened up a 2-0 lead in the third inning on a Kalen Applefield long ball, forcing Dennies out of the contest with six innings to play. Notre Dame’s bullpen would need a big day to earn a sweep, getting help from the Irish offense via an immediate response in the bottom of the third.
Right after Cal went up 2-0, Notre Dame surged back into a 5-2 lead it would not relinquish. The Irish loaded the bases without swinging the bat against Cal starter Cole Tremain, who left the game after plunking a man to pack the bags. Brzustewicz rudely greeted the new reliever with a game-tying double down the line in left, neutralizing the two opening runs Cal pushed across. A throwing error on the Golden Bear infield then moved the Irish into a 4-2 lead before senior third baseman Nick DeMarco singled to complete the five-run frame.
Senior right-hander Ricky Reeth began the long day at work for the Irish bullpen, covering three innings with only a single run allowed. He took over for Dennies in the fourth, inheriting two runners on with nobody out and allowing neither man to score. Cal would finally get to Reeth with a Dominic Smaldino RBI double in the sixth, but he still finished out the inning.
Freshman righty Oisin Lee took over for the seventh, allowing a run that brought Cal within one. However, the Irish got out of trouble with a double play and immediately drew that run back on a Hincks RBI triple in the bottom of the inning. Notre Dame turned to graduate closer Tobey McDonough for the game’s final two innings, and he recorded his sixth save of the season, but not without a little drama. First, Cal closed back within a run on Applefield’s single in the eighth. Then, in the ninth, a HBP and wild pitch helped the tying run get to third base with two outs. However, Schmidt, the man who drove in Cal’s first run of the series, made his team’s final out on a groundout to Moreno.
Now up to 12th in the ACC standings and within only a few games of NCAA Tournament contenders Virginia Tech, Wake Forest and Virginia, the Irish will travel to Purdue for a midweek game at 6 p.m. on Tuesday. After that, they’ll have their hot streak put to the test with a Thursday-Friday-Saturday home series against No. 19 Louisville, a team that swept Notre Dame last May.