Two Notre Dame baseball players earn All-ACC honors
Just ahead of conference tournaments, two Notre Dame baseball (33-13, 16-10 ACC) players were named to the 2022 All-ACC team: pitcher John Michael Bertrand (first team) and outfielder Ryan Cole (third team). Both players are graduate students.
Bertrand, a sixth-year pitcher who began his career at Furman before transferring to Notre Dame, is 7-2 in 13 starts this season. He has pitched 81.2 innings, struck out 86 players, and opponents are batting just .218 against the Irish star. Bertrand’s 2.62 ERA is tied for third in the ACC.
The 6-3, 225-pound Georgia native has been a very reliable Friday night starter for head coach Link Jarrett this season. Bertrand went longer than six innings in nine of his 13 starts this year, and he held opponents to fewer than three runs in 10 of those starts.
Bertrand was a first team All-ACC player in 2021 as well and is the first Irish player to earn all-conference first team honors in back-to-back years since Aaron Heilman did so in three consecutive seasons from 1999-2001. Notre Dame was a member of the Big East at the time.
Additionally, the pitcher has been stacking up the awards this season, as he earned numerous weekly honors in the ACC and took home two O.S.C.A.R.S. awards for Notre Dame athletics. Bertrand won the Byron V. Kanaley Award and the Community Champion Award. The Kanaley Award recognizes senior monogram winners who are “the most exemplary as student-athletes and leaders.” The Community Champion award goes to student-athletes who “made significant contributions to the university community and the community at large.”
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Cole, a 6-0, 175-pound Northern California native, is on the All-ACC team for the first time in his five-year Irish career. He has started all 46 games this year for Notre Dame — one of just four Irish players to do so — leads the team in stolen bases (18), and ranks second in both home runs (nine) and hits (53). He ranks fourth in the ACC in the stolen bases category. Cole is batting .308 with a .529 slugging percentage.
The graduate student is a member of an Irish team that leads the ACC in fielding percentage, and Cole’s mark this year is .976.
Cole has very clearly built upon his 2021 success. Last season he made 38 starts and led the team with a .336 batting average. Entering 2021, the outfielder had just 26 career starts for Notre Dame.
Fourth-seeded Notre Dame begins play in the ACC Tournament on Thursday afternoon in a 3 p.m. ET contest against No. 9 seed Florida State. The Irish swept the Seminoles in their regular season matchups earlier this spring.
