Wake up the Echoes, Jeff Samardzija

 

I don’t believe I have mentioned this on Ivy Envy yet, but I am a huge Notre Dame fan.  So you can imagine how excited I was when Jeff Samardzija was drafted by the Cubs.  I am sure the picture above will get us more hits from the HotJocks WordPress Blog that appreciates some of our pictures and sends us some traffic.  They are big fans of Mark Derosa over there…I’m just sayin’.  Well, Jeff Samardzija has worked his way up to Triple A Iowa, though it’s expected he won’t be there long and is just filling in while some of the guys are injured. 

If you’re not familiar with Jeff Samardzija, he was a baseball and football player for the University of Notre Dame.  Obviously, college baseball isn’t as followed as football, so most people knew him as the standout wide receiver for the Irish.  He was pushed down the depth chart by the inept Tyrone Willingham during his Freshmen and Sophomore years.  It took Charlie Weis all of one game to start the 2005 season to show Jeff Samardzija’s skills as he came out of nowhere and with one play, earned his way into the hearts of Notre Dame fans:

 

Samardzija was named an All-American and more impressively, he owns the Notre Dame record for catches in a season (77), receiving yards in a season (1,249) and touchdowns in a season (15). 

The reason I bring up Jeff Samardzija is that he earned his first win in Des Moines on Sunday.  He pitched 6 innings and gave up 1 run on 4 hits.  At the plate, he went 1-2 with and RBI.  Samardzija had been 3-5 with 4.86 ERA in AA Tennessee.  I doubt if he stays in Iowa very long, but it’s good to see him get up there and face some big league caliber players. 

There have been whisperings of Samardzija working his way onto the 40 man roster at the end of this season.  Given his statistics in A and AA last year (6-11, 4.57) I didn’t think it would happen, but I have read that his mechanics have improved greatly and he is becoming a better all-around pitcher.

Congrats Shark, job well done.

Go Irish.