Vanderbilt enters this weekend at 17-12 overall and 5-4 in the conference. Their overall record may be a little bit atypical, but the last couple of years that we’ve caught them, their conference record hasn’t been that impressive… In 2014, they were 8-10 in the league coming into series. In 2016 they were 10-8 and last year were 7-8. So, we can talk about Vanderbilt’s record, but it’s not really uncharted waters for them.
Vandy is coming off of their first league sweep since 2012. Last weekend, the Commodores were winless in Gainesville, the site of their last league sweep six years ago. Vanderbilt began league play by sweeping Miss State in Starkville and taking 2/3 from LSU in Nashville.
Vanderbilt usually fares well in the midweek games given their deep pitching, but they’ve struggled in that area this year, dropping midweek contests to Belmont, Lipscomb, Eastern Kentucky, and Long Beach State (that one is understandable as it was at Long Beach). Most recently, Vandy took a very hard luck loss at Middle Tennessee State.
Tonight, we’ll see Drake Fellows (hate the Drake!), a tall sophomore righty from Plainfield Illinois. Fellows is 4-1 on the year in 7 appearances, all starts, and sports a 2.72 ERA. His 39 2/3 innings lead their staff. He has 48 strikeouts and 18 walks. Opponents are hitting .207 against him. We saw him in relief last year as he picked up the save against us in the last game of the series. This guy beat UCLA out in LA earlier this year with 7 strong innings. He also picked up the win against LSU two weeks ago, although it looks like he wasn’t great that night. He did pitch pretty well against Florida last weekend until the 7th inning, when it looks like things got away from him. Still, in 6 1/3 he had 8 strikeouts (but 3 walks and 2 wild pitches). It looks like Fellows is more of a fly ball pitcher, so hopefully we can elevate a few tonight.
Tomorrow, we’ll see Patrick Raby, a junior righty from Knoxville by way of Farragut HS. Raby really impressed me last year… very good tempo and he threw a lot of strikes. Vanderbilt for awhile seems to want to pitch their best guy on Saturday. We saw Raby in game one last year and Kyle Wright in game two. I remember seeing Tyler Beede on Saturday his sophomore year when he was clearly their best guy. And I think that Raby is better than Fellows, although Fellows is still really good. On the year, Raby is 2-4 in 7 appearances, 4 starts, and has a 2.67 ERA. He’s thrown 30 1/3 innings and has a 29/14 K/BB. Opponents are hitting .259 against him. We didn’t make him work very hard last year, but we’re obviously a working with a different mentality at the plate these days.
Vandy has left things TBA for game three. Mason Hickman, a big freshman righty, got the start for them last Sunday in Gainesville. It didn’t go well for him as he couldn’t get out of the 3rdinning. He didn’t miss a lot of bats from what I watched. They may go back to Hickman, but it wouldn’t shock me if they throw Zach King, who is a big sophomore lefty. Not trying to beat a dead horse here, but the one area where we’ve struggled this year is facing left handed pitching…. And Vanderbilt is obviously well aware of that.
Vanderbilt’s staff ERA of 3.65 is 10th in the conference, although they’re 5th in strikeouts and have allowed the second fewest hits in the league. Walks have been a problem for their staff as only Miss State and South Carolina have allowed more.
Offensively, Vanderbilt is lead by JJ Bleday, but he hasn’t played their loss to Lipscomb on March 27 and I don’t know his status for this weekend.
We should see Austin Martin hitting leadoff. He’s played some 3b and some LF for them. Martin is a freshman from Jacksonville. He’s hitting .341/.474/.451 with 1 HR and 6 RBI on the year. He has 19 strikeouts and has drawn 15 walks and is their leader in steals at 11/15. He’s also been hit by 8 pitches, which easily leads their team as well.
I read an article about Pat DeMarco a few days ago. The freshman is from New York originally, but decided to come south his last two years of high school to get some better exposure (although I think he was already playing on a travel team down here anyway). This was a smart move on DeMarco’s part as Vanderbilt never recruits kids from the Northeast…. On the year, DeMarco is hitting .310/.370/.448 with 2 HRs and 20 RBI. We should see DeMarco in RF in the middle of their order.
We’ll see Ethan Paul most likely at 2B and hitting second. I saw Paul homer in their loss to Florida last Sunday. He’s hitting .259/.382/.472 with a team high 5 HRs and a team high 29 RBIs. Don’t be fooled by this average, he can really swing it.
Julian Infante is off to a terrible start on the year at .165/.243/.231 with 1 HR. Still, he was their cleanup hitter the last two games against Florida and started all three down there. Infante is a put together junior from Miami who hit .315 and homered 11 times last year. If I’ve said it once I’ve said it 100 times, I hate seeing guys like with those kinds of numbers, because you know they’re going to come up eventually.
Vanderbilt has hit 24 HRs as a team, although nobody has more than 5. They’re 9th in the league in that category and only Tennessee has fewer hits on the season than Vanderbilt. They’re hitting .269 as a team, the third worst in the league and their .381 team OBP is 9th in the league (although their game notes point out they have a .497 OBP at home and average nearly 9 runs a game in Nashville).
Vanderbilt leads the SEC with a whopping 52 stolen bases (in 62 attempts). We’ve done a great job controlling the run game this year, but this will easily be our biggest test on that front. Vanderbilt is fielding a sterling .985 with only 15 errors on the season. To put that in context, we’ve been playing great defense and have 25 errors. Arkansas has 35 and Texas A&M has 34 on the year.
I remember going up there in 2012…. Vanderbilt didn’t look good on paper, at all. They’d been swept by Florida the weekend before. I got into the stadium early on Friday night and watched them take infield… I remember thinking that they just looked awful. They were so good in 2011 (I still think that group was better than their 2014 national championship team), but lost a lot of players, and I’m sitting there before the first game in ’12 thinking that it really looked like a mismatch. But then, we scored 1 run on a Curt Powell solo HR and that was the only hit we had all night until Brandon Stephens hit a ball through in the infield with 2 outs in the 9th. We made it stand up and won 1-0. The next day we had something like 17 hits, but only scored 4 runs and let a late lead get away from us. Had a lead Sunday too and couldn’t hold onto it. All of a sudden, that overmatched looking Vanderbilt team had taken the series and wound up getting into a regional. It occurred to me that it was probably foolish to think that Vanderbilt would be a mismatch that season. They had a lot of talent and they have a very strong culture. Same thing this year…. They don’t look like a juggernaut on paper, but they’ve got a very talented roster and excellent coaching up there… No player in their program has been part of a three game sweep, until last weekend. Think about that…. I imagine they’re going to play with their hair on fire this weekend.
We haven’t beaten Vanderbilt in a series since 2008. We haven’t won a game in Nashville since that 1-0 game in 2012 and are 1-11 against Vanderbilt the last four seasons. Winning the series this weekend would be a hell of an accomplishment. Wish I could be there. Even with the cold weather and what not, that’s still such a great trip and I think this is going to be an extremely interesting series to see unfold.
Vandy is coming off of their first league sweep since 2012. Last weekend, the Commodores were winless in Gainesville, the site of their last league sweep six years ago. Vanderbilt began league play by sweeping Miss State in Starkville and taking 2/3 from LSU in Nashville.
Vanderbilt usually fares well in the midweek games given their deep pitching, but they’ve struggled in that area this year, dropping midweek contests to Belmont, Lipscomb, Eastern Kentucky, and Long Beach State (that one is understandable as it was at Long Beach). Most recently, Vandy took a very hard luck loss at Middle Tennessee State.
Tonight, we’ll see Drake Fellows (hate the Drake!), a tall sophomore righty from Plainfield Illinois. Fellows is 4-1 on the year in 7 appearances, all starts, and sports a 2.72 ERA. His 39 2/3 innings lead their staff. He has 48 strikeouts and 18 walks. Opponents are hitting .207 against him. We saw him in relief last year as he picked up the save against us in the last game of the series. This guy beat UCLA out in LA earlier this year with 7 strong innings. He also picked up the win against LSU two weeks ago, although it looks like he wasn’t great that night. He did pitch pretty well against Florida last weekend until the 7th inning, when it looks like things got away from him. Still, in 6 1/3 he had 8 strikeouts (but 3 walks and 2 wild pitches). It looks like Fellows is more of a fly ball pitcher, so hopefully we can elevate a few tonight.
Tomorrow, we’ll see Patrick Raby, a junior righty from Knoxville by way of Farragut HS. Raby really impressed me last year… very good tempo and he threw a lot of strikes. Vanderbilt for awhile seems to want to pitch their best guy on Saturday. We saw Raby in game one last year and Kyle Wright in game two. I remember seeing Tyler Beede on Saturday his sophomore year when he was clearly their best guy. And I think that Raby is better than Fellows, although Fellows is still really good. On the year, Raby is 2-4 in 7 appearances, 4 starts, and has a 2.67 ERA. He’s thrown 30 1/3 innings and has a 29/14 K/BB. Opponents are hitting .259 against him. We didn’t make him work very hard last year, but we’re obviously a working with a different mentality at the plate these days.
Vandy has left things TBA for game three. Mason Hickman, a big freshman righty, got the start for them last Sunday in Gainesville. It didn’t go well for him as he couldn’t get out of the 3rdinning. He didn’t miss a lot of bats from what I watched. They may go back to Hickman, but it wouldn’t shock me if they throw Zach King, who is a big sophomore lefty. Not trying to beat a dead horse here, but the one area where we’ve struggled this year is facing left handed pitching…. And Vanderbilt is obviously well aware of that.
Vanderbilt’s staff ERA of 3.65 is 10th in the conference, although they’re 5th in strikeouts and have allowed the second fewest hits in the league. Walks have been a problem for their staff as only Miss State and South Carolina have allowed more.
Offensively, Vanderbilt is lead by JJ Bleday, but he hasn’t played their loss to Lipscomb on March 27 and I don’t know his status for this weekend.
We should see Austin Martin hitting leadoff. He’s played some 3b and some LF for them. Martin is a freshman from Jacksonville. He’s hitting .341/.474/.451 with 1 HR and 6 RBI on the year. He has 19 strikeouts and has drawn 15 walks and is their leader in steals at 11/15. He’s also been hit by 8 pitches, which easily leads their team as well.
I read an article about Pat DeMarco a few days ago. The freshman is from New York originally, but decided to come south his last two years of high school to get some better exposure (although I think he was already playing on a travel team down here anyway). This was a smart move on DeMarco’s part as Vanderbilt never recruits kids from the Northeast…. On the year, DeMarco is hitting .310/.370/.448 with 2 HRs and 20 RBI. We should see DeMarco in RF in the middle of their order.
We’ll see Ethan Paul most likely at 2B and hitting second. I saw Paul homer in their loss to Florida last Sunday. He’s hitting .259/.382/.472 with a team high 5 HRs and a team high 29 RBIs. Don’t be fooled by this average, he can really swing it.
Julian Infante is off to a terrible start on the year at .165/.243/.231 with 1 HR. Still, he was their cleanup hitter the last two games against Florida and started all three down there. Infante is a put together junior from Miami who hit .315 and homered 11 times last year. If I’ve said it once I’ve said it 100 times, I hate seeing guys like with those kinds of numbers, because you know they’re going to come up eventually.
Vanderbilt has hit 24 HRs as a team, although nobody has more than 5. They’re 9th in the league in that category and only Tennessee has fewer hits on the season than Vanderbilt. They’re hitting .269 as a team, the third worst in the league and their .381 team OBP is 9th in the league (although their game notes point out they have a .497 OBP at home and average nearly 9 runs a game in Nashville).
Vanderbilt leads the SEC with a whopping 52 stolen bases (in 62 attempts). We’ve done a great job controlling the run game this year, but this will easily be our biggest test on that front. Vanderbilt is fielding a sterling .985 with only 15 errors on the season. To put that in context, we’ve been playing great defense and have 25 errors. Arkansas has 35 and Texas A&M has 34 on the year.
I remember going up there in 2012…. Vanderbilt didn’t look good on paper, at all. They’d been swept by Florida the weekend before. I got into the stadium early on Friday night and watched them take infield… I remember thinking that they just looked awful. They were so good in 2011 (I still think that group was better than their 2014 national championship team), but lost a lot of players, and I’m sitting there before the first game in ’12 thinking that it really looked like a mismatch. But then, we scored 1 run on a Curt Powell solo HR and that was the only hit we had all night until Brandon Stephens hit a ball through in the infield with 2 outs in the 9th. We made it stand up and won 1-0. The next day we had something like 17 hits, but only scored 4 runs and let a late lead get away from us. Had a lead Sunday too and couldn’t hold onto it. All of a sudden, that overmatched looking Vanderbilt team had taken the series and wound up getting into a regional. It occurred to me that it was probably foolish to think that Vanderbilt would be a mismatch that season. They had a lot of talent and they have a very strong culture. Same thing this year…. They don’t look like a juggernaut on paper, but they’ve got a very talented roster and excellent coaching up there… No player in their program has been part of a three game sweep, until last weekend. Think about that…. I imagine they’re going to play with their hair on fire this weekend.
We haven’t beaten Vanderbilt in a series since 2008. We haven’t won a game in Nashville since that 1-0 game in 2012 and are 1-11 against Vanderbilt the last four seasons. Winning the series this weekend would be a hell of an accomplishment. Wish I could be there. Even with the cold weather and what not, that’s still such a great trip and I think this is going to be an extremely interesting series to see unfold.
