Sept. 29, 2005
The Notre Dame baseball team is nearing the final week of its annual fall season, to be capped by the Blue-Gold intrasquad series on Oct. 4-6. Head coach Paul Mainieri – embarking on his 12th season with the Irish – knows all too well how valuable the fall season is in laying the foundation for winter workouts and the ensuing spring season.
The Irish are relatively healthy for the 2005 fall season, in sharp contrast to the previous fall in which many position players and pitchers did not participate (resulting in the 2004 Blue-Gold series being shortened from three games to one).
Two top players are noticeably absent, as sophomore third baseman Brett Lilley is recovering from a back injury suffered at the end of the 2005 spring season while junior righthander Dan Kapala underwent surgery in mid-September to repair a torn labrum in his pitching shoulder that surfaced during the final week of his summer season in the Cape Cod League. The Irish will be hoping for Lilley’s return to action prior to the start of the 2006 spring season. Kapala will miss the 2006 season while continuing with his rehabilitation and ultimately could have the chance to apply for a fifth year of eligibility in 2008.
Coach Mainieri’s comments on the progress of the 2005 fall season follow below:
“The fall has been great. The intensity has been excellent, with great concentration and enthusiasm. It’s been like night and day compared to last fall, primarily because we have more healthy players and can have more competitive scrimmages, with more pitchers that are active.
“Our pitching is really going to take a big step forward. Jeff Manship has been able to be at full speed and he had a great summer in the Cape Cod League. He has shown that he has the capabilities of being a very solid number-one starter and of course we know what Tom Thornton and Jeff Samardzija can do for us. We feel like we are going to have a really good set rotation.
“I don’t think that last spring’s season was a failure, but I think there was something missing from the way we play the game. We did not play fundamentally sound and did not have that passion, hustle and determination. I was determined this fall that we were going to get back to playing baseball the Notre Dame Fighting Irish way. I hope that most people who follow this program always think of a team that never says die, is fundamentally sound and hustles, plays with a great deal of enthusiasm and competes well within the rules.
“I just felt like last spring we were missing something, that spark. It’s easy to figure out why, because we had a difficult fall practice and were never able to set that tone for that mental makeup of the team. We started the spring season with an unproven pitching staff and two freshmen infielders who did not really have to compete for their spots, because we had lost so many guys from the year before.
“It’s not often that a team goes into a season having lost three juniors to the pro draft and all three of them from that 2003 team [Matt Macri, Chris Niesel and Grant Johnson] had been All-America type of players. And then to lose two great leaders like Steve Sollmann and Javi Sanchez, even a great middle-inning bullpen guy like Joe Thaman. I was still proud that we were able to salvage the end of the 2005 season. That team did something special by winning its final four games in the BIG EAST season to qualify for the tournament and then won this program’s fourth straight BIG EAST tournament title before reaching the regional final game at Florida.
“For me, it’s much more important how we play the game: play the game the right way, carry yourself and conduct yourself the right way, in representing the school. If we do that, and if we recruit the right players, the winning is going to take care of itself. I just want to get us back to playing the game the right way and caring about the right things.
“I feel that we’ve made big strides in the first three weeks of fall practice. The fall sets the tone for everything. It’s not a time you worry about stats or big plays. But it is a time for setting in motion the right way to do things, with discipline and hard work and caring about the right things. That’s how you establish the team concept and that’s what we’ve worked hard on this fall.
“Last year we counted on the junior class to be the leaders of the team, because our senior class was so small. And now those guys realize this is their last go-round and how do they want to be remembered as a class? I think those guys are very motivated and inspired to do it the right way this year.
“Matt Edwards was the only position-player loss from our team, so in that respect we have more options. But we also have some guys who have established themselves as good players. The reality is that Greg Lopez is going to be our starting shortstop, Sean Gaston our starting catcher and Alex Nettey the centerfielder. You can pick out certain spots like that. The guys have responded and played the game hard this fall with some very intense and competitive practices.
“We are looking more at Craig Cooper at first base and Matt Bransfield has been moved to left field. They both will do a good job at those spots. Cooper is battling Mike Dury at first base and Bransfield is battling Steve Andres and others in left.
“We can’t say for sure who is going to start at certain positions but we have been doing some experimenting. There are some freshmen who are going to make an impact. Our coaches did a great job in identifying some players who are great fits for our program and they are really good. It’s still early but it looks like we have some freshmen who are really going to help our team, both in the short-term and the long-term.
“I just really like the whole chemistry of it all. The veterans are providing great leadership and the young players are showing that they are ready to contribute, in some cases right away.”