Feb. 27, 2006
Notre Dame senior lefthander Tom Thornton (Middleboro, Mass.) has earned the BIG EAST Conference pitcher-of-the-week award for the fourth time in his career, matching former West Virginia ace Chris Enochs (’96-’97) and former St. John’s standout Keith Stamler (’98-’99) for the second-most weekly pitcher awards in BIG EAST baseball history. Former Notre Dame All-American Aaron Heilman is the runaway leader on that list, with 10 career BIG EAST pitcher-of-the-week awards from 1998-2001.
Thornton picked up the season-opening win over Indiana State on Feb. 23 at the Service Academies Classic in Millington, Tenn., scattering five hits in his seven shutout innings while notching five strikeouts and no walks. The 6-foot-6 lefthander registered his 21st career victory with the Irish and lowered his career walk average to 1.99 per 9.0 innings pitched, good for seventh-best in Notre Dame history.
The economical 76-pitch outing saw Thornton locate 74-percent of his pitches for strikes (56) while registering nine of his outs via groundballs. He held the Sycamores to 0-for-8 batting with runners on base allowed just one hit with 2-outs (1-for-8). Thornton combined with freshman righthander Kyle Weiland to post the first opening-day shutout by the Irish pitching staff since a 6-0 game versus Air Force at the 2000 Service Academies Classic.
Thornton opened the season for Notre Dame with seven shutout innings versus Indiana State, striking out five with no walks while allowing just five hits (none with runners on base, just one with 2-outs).
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Thornton’s 21 career wins are tied with his former teammate Chris Niesel for 12th in the Notre Dame record book and are the fifth-most wins of any pitcher in the Paul Mainieri era (since ’95), behind Heilman (43-7), Darin Schmalz (30-13), J.P. Gagne (25-16) and Alex Shilliday (25-17). The other six all-time Notre Dame pitchers with more than 21 career wins include an impressive collection of early-1990s talent: Tom Price (40-10), Chris Michalak (34-13), David Sinnes (32-8), Alan Walania (30-12), Brian Piotrowicz (27-17) and Pat Leahy (25-7).
The outing versus Indiana State marked Thornton’s third straight strong outing during opening-week action (also at USC in 2004 and at Central Florida in ’05). His combined stats in those three opening-week starts included a 1.00 ERA, 12 Ks, 5 walks and 16 hits allowed in 18 innings.
He is the 11th Notre Dame pitcher ever to log 40-plus career starts while Thornton’s 257.1 career innings pitched leave him 16 shy of that ND top-10 list.
Thornton – who will start Notre Dame’s next game, on March 3 versus Nebraska at the Metrodome, in Minnesota’s annual Dairy Queen Classic – earned his first BIG EAST pitcher-of-the-week award (Feb. 23, 2004) as a sophomore, after the 3-1 win at USC (six-inning complete game due to rain; UER, 4 H, 2 BB, 4 Ks). He then became Notre Dame’s fifth pitcher ever to repeat the BIG EAST honor in the same season (March 15), after shutting down hot-hitting Texas Tech with 8.0 one-hit innings at the Round Rock Classic (3 BB, 7 Ks).
His previous BIG EAST weekly award came as a junior (April 11, 2005), in a 3-2 complete game versus Boston College, held in his home state (Brockton, Mass.; 9 IP, 8 R, R, 5 Ks, 14 groundouts, retired first 11 batters, 60 of 96 pitches for strikes).
Thornton led the way last week for a group of starting pitchers who posted a 1.17 combined ERA in 23 innings of work (3 runs allowed), with those four starters also combining for nearly a 4-to-1 K-to-walk ratio (22/6) and a .182 opponent batting average (14-for-77). The other impressive week-1 starts came from junior righthander Jeff Samardzija (6 IP, 4 H, R, 4 BB, 2 Ks, .211), sophomore LHP Wade Korpi (5 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 7 Ks, .167) and junior RHP Jeff Manship (5 IP, 2 H, 2 R, 2 BB, 8 Ks, .125).
Samardzija and senior leftfielder Matt Bransfield (6-for-16/.375, 6 RBI, 2 R, HR, 2B) were the Notre Dame players named to the Service Academies Classic all-tournament team.