Notre Dame baseball could return important lineup piece for Knoxville Super Regional vs. No. 1 Tennessee
Jared Miller stepping on home plate to score the winning run in a 3-2 Statesboro Regional-opening victory for Notre Dame last weekend might have been a sign of things to come for the Fighting Irish. The graduate student second basemen could return to the Notre Dame lineup for the first time since May 14 this weekend.
Miller hasn’t swung a bat in competition for almost a month because of a dislocated shoulder suffered diving for a ball against Pittsburgh in the second game of Notre Dame’s final regular season series. He entered last Friday’s game against Texas Tech as a pinch runner in the bottom of the eighth inning. He stole third and took home on a wild pitch.
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Notre Dame head coach Link Jarrett was elated. Miller has been there every step of the way with him since he took the job ahead of the abbreviated 2020 season.
“I want Jared Miller to play,” Jarrett said. “I didn’t feel good about it in the Regional. I talked to him about it, and it was tough because he wants to play. I didn’t feel like he was at a point physically where he was quite ready. I didn’t want to jeopardize anything else with him by putting him out there until I saw with my own eyes what I know Jared Miller looks like when he’s right.”
Jarrett saw it in practice Wednesday.
“If things continue to progress, I want to play him,” Jarrett said. “I mean, the guy is our captain. He’s as savvy a baseball player as there is in the country. I want him to have a chance to go do this.”
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Miller has played in 176 games with 159 starts across five seasons at Notre Dame. He started all 38 games he appeared in this season before the injury. He’s hitting a career-best .258 with 22 RBI and three home runs.
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Above all, Miller has been a mainstay of the Irish’s middle infield for nearly half a decade. Notre Dame hangs its hat on defense, and Miller’s playmaking prowess at second base has been a catalyst for that. He had a .995 fielding percentage in 2021. This year, it’s only slightly fallen to .975. His career mark is .956.
Just two weeks before the injury, Miller hit his first ever grand slam. He’s not counted on to swing a big bat, but there’d be no better way for a fifth-year senior to leave a legacy than to help the program he’s invested so much into reach the College World Series for the third time ever. By beating the No. 1 team in the country, no less, just like the last CWS-bound Notre Dame team did against Florida State in 2002.
“I wanted to win last week, but it was hard to realize that here’s one of your guys that’s sitting here telling you he’s ready to go and I didn’t feel like it was the right thing,” Jarrett said. “So if I continue to feel the way I feel, then Jared will play.”
The Knoxville Super Regional starts Friday at 6 p.m. Graduate senior Austin Temple (4-1, 3.46 ERA) takes the mound for Notre Dame against Tennessee’s Blade Tidwell (3-1, 2.00). Irish ace John Michael Bertrand (9-2, 2.27) faces Vols righty Chase Dollander (9-0, 2.38) at 2 p.m. Saturday.
