Just over a month ago, the Notre Dame baseball team flew back from Boston in rough shape. Still searching for their first return trip to the NCAA Tournament since they made the College World Series and Shawn Stiffler took the reins of the program in 2022, the Irish were 4-14 in Atlantic Coast Conference play. They had dropped all six of their ACC series after coughing up leads of 5-0 and 3-1 to lose two of three at Boston College. Notre Dame also dropped consecutive midweek home games against lowly Western Michigan and Northwestern, spiraling toward a sub-.500 overall record.
Long before that point in mid-April, the Irish started the year off playing good ball. They entered ACC play at 8-1, capturing all eight of those victories a long way from home. But the buzzsaw known as an ACC schedule carved up the Irish quickly as March progressed into April. Their conference slate began with Wake Forest, Clemson, Georgia Tech, Florida State and Virginia Tech – five teams likely bound to play NCAA Tournament innings. Notre Dame couldn’t sustain positive results and quickly found itself in the basement of the ACC.
“We're a young team, so we have a bunch of guys who hadn't experienced something like that, so it's definitely a tough ask to stay calm in those situations amongst the younger guys in the clubhouse,” sophomore catcher Carson Tinney said. “But we just stuck with the plan, stuck with what our approach has been all fall and all spring and just sticking to what we know and what we believe is the way to go.”
The early-season wear and tear of being a northern Indiana program in a southeast-heavy conference also may have caught up to the Irish. They played 20 games, including six against opponents ranked in the national top 15, before finally coming home on March 18.
“We had to understand that [losing is] going to happen sometimes when you're on the road that often, that you just need to take a step back and breathe and take it all in and then flip the page and start the next game,” sophomore starting pitcher Jack Radel added. “There's always another game after the game.”
For Notre Dame, after that April 13 game in Chestnut Hill, there was an eight-game win streak. The Irish came home and knocked off Valparaiso to shake their midweek struggles. They then went to Stanford and pulled the ACC monkey off their back by sweeping a road series. Another conference newcomer lost all three to Notre Dame a week later when Cal came to South Bend. Even after Purdue cut the Irish win streak on the penultimate day of April, they answered with a series defeat of No. 17 Louisville to put both a 30-win season and place an NCAA Tournament berth in realistic view.
Why have the Irish played so much better as of late? Having perhaps the hottest hitter in the country certainly helps.
Tinney has seen beach balls at the plate for the better part of two months. During the Louisville series in early May, the sophomore became the ACC’s leader in slugging percentage and on-base plus slugging (OPS), zooming past Florida State superstar Alex Lodise.
What’s even more ridiculous is that Tinney had no more than 15 days to truly prepare himself for the season. Just as he was breaking out as a freshman last April, he tore his ACL, keeping him away from full-throttle baseball until late January 2025.
“I just have so much love for this game that it never crossed my mind that I wasn’t gonna be back out on the field,” Tinney said. “I'd say it was nine months before I was able to finally get my first at-bats again, and my first at-bats were a week or two before the season started, so it was just kind of a quick turnaround coming back up into the season. But I think as I've continued to see more pitching and adjusting more to the higher-level pitching, I think I've been able to produce better.”
Roughly a 2.000 OPS guy since Notre Dame started its eight-game win streak, Tinney delivered his magnum opus during Easter weekend at Stanford. The catcher launched four home runs, going 9-for-12 with a five-hit game to secure ACC Player of the Week honors.
Only a week later, Notre Dame had the ACC Pitcher of the Week, too.
Radel joined the Irish weekend rotation as a freshman just as league play was starting in 2024. He held his own with a 4.58 earned run average but didn’t have a great finish, learning a few lessons about ACC baseball that informed his offseason.
“It's a tough conference. It's a very hitter-friendly conference,” Radel said. “A lot of guys like to swing, so being able to pitch to certain locations over velocity sometimes is better.”
Heading into the first series of 2025 at North Florida, Stiffler tabbed Radel as Notre Dame’s Friday starter. The 6-foot-5 right-hander fared well in the high-pressure role out of the gate but had trouble missing bats once ACC play began. He kept going out there, though, and eventually found a solution with still two months of season left.
“Just looking at it as a baseball game,” Radel stated. “At the end of the day, we're all doing the same things out there. They might have better stuff than me, I might have better stuff than them, but understanding that things can change really quickly in a game and being able to understand what I need to do in that in that pitch, that game and stuff like that.”
With a few extra ticks on the radar gun, Radel became a different arm after the calendar turned to April. He turned in five straight in-conference quality starts between April 4 and May 1, carving up Cal for 12 strikeouts on April 25 to become the ACC Pitcher of the Week. Radel and junior righty Rory Fox, Notre Dame’s steady Saturday starter, have combined to suddenly form a one-two punch as effective as any in the conference. Throw in graduate closer Tobey McDonough and his sub-2.00 ERA, and Notre Dame has the weapons to outpitch anyone on certain days.
On the lineup card, the Irish offer a productive mix of youth and experience. As of early May, each of Notre Dame’s top four hitters were underclassmen. Sophomore catcher and designated hitter Davis Johnson has been an on-base machine ahead of Tinney. Freshmen Bino Watters and Parker Brzustewicz are advanced beyond their years, combining to walk just as often as they strike out. Watters, along with fellow freshman corner outfielder Jayce Lee, wields a mean power stroke to all fields.
Notre Dame’s infield veterans help give it a top-40 fielding percentage in the country, along with stability at the plate. Graduate second baseman Connor Hincks recently stretched a 17-game hit streak across the entirety of April. Junior shortstop Estevan Moreno has struck out a few times too many but has the upside to become a mass-producer of extra-base hits on any given weekend. Do-it-all graduate transfer Jared Zimbardo has been banged up at times in center field, but senior DM Jefferson has stepped in for him and hit better than the Irish ever could have asked him to.
As the ACC Tournament and its May 20 start date approach, Notre Dame has the legitimate pieces – and the belief – to cause postseason chaos.
“We're tough. We don't give up on our guys,” Radel said. “There's all 40 dudes behind the one dude that's on the mound or one dude at the plate. We're surrounded by best friends every day, and we'll do anything for each other.”
