Following Sunday’s twin bill that resulted in consecutive one-run losses at Boston College, Notre Dame baseball returned to Frank Eck Stadium for a midweek showdown with the Valparaiso Beacons.
In the first base dugout, the Beacons of the Missouri Valley Conference entered play with a disappointing 8-22 overall record and 3-9 conference mark. Despite collecting road wins in the last month over Illinois and Indiana State, two programs that qualified for last season’s NCAA Tournament, Valparaiso came to South Bend having lost 10 of their last 13 games, including a sweep at Missouri State this past weekend.
Freshman right-hander Kellan Klosterman made his third consecutive midweek start on the hill for the Irish. The Cincinnati native turned in 3.1 innings of scoreless baseball, while only allowing one hit. Fellow freshman righty Nick Baffa, who attended Notre Dame College Prep in Chicago, got his first career start for Valparaiso.
Baffa blanked the Irish in the first three frames before running into trouble in the fourth. The inning started with sophomore designated hitter Carson Tinney reaching on a squibber to the left on the mound, before graduate first baseman Connor Hincks launched his third home run of the year over the right field wall to make it 2-0. Freshman infielder Parker Brzustewicz drove in the third run of the inning when he tripled home Estevan Moreno after entering as a defensive replacement in the top half of the inning. The five-spot inning was punctuated by freshman outfielder Jayce Lee’s third home run of the season with a no-doubt blast into the screen beyond the left field wall.
The Notre Dame relief tandem of freshman Brady Koester and junior Xavier Hirsch would keep Valparaiso scoreless until the sixth, when the Beacons scratched across their first run on a two-out error.
The Irish would answer back in the bottom of the seventh, when Tinney homered to left on a 1-1 offering. It was the Colorado native’s sixth home run on the season, and pulled him within one of freshman Bino Watters for the team lead in RBI with 27.
Tinney would tie Watters with 28 during his next trip to the plate, as he induced a bases-loaded walk to plate Brzustewicz for the seventh Irish run of the day. The score would hold at 7-1, with the Irish claiming their first non-conference victory in three weeks since their 9-6 triumph over Michigan State back on March 26.
The Notre Dame bats were hot throughout the night, as the offense tallied 12 hits, with Watters, Tinney, sophomore catcher Davis Johnson and graduate outfielder Jared Zimbardo all recording two hits. Eight of the Irish knocks went for extra bases, including the three roundtrippers, one triple and four two-baggers.
By virtue of entering the game after Klosterman and striking out both batters he faced, Koester earned the victory to move to 2-0 in his freshman campaign. Baffa took the loss for the Beacons, falling to 0-1.
Back to .500 at 17-17 overall, the Irish are on the West Coast this weekend for a conference series at The Farm with Stanford. First pitch for Friday’s game one is set for 9 p.m. with streaming available on ACCNX.
