Vanderbilt baseball got swept at home for just the second time in 13 years. That is the ultimate takeaway from their series against Arkansas no matter which way you spin it.

Vanderbilt got beaten by scores of 9-0, 6-4, and 7-3, falling to 20-8 on the year and 4-5 in-conference. In the most recent D1 Baseball ranking, they fall to number 23 and comfortably out of a position to host a regional in the summer.

There truthfully were no high level standouts from this weekend. The closest that comes to that was Connor Fennell who once again impressed with 5 IP, 2 earned runs, and 10 Ks.

Friday night’s recap will be blissfully short for Vandy fans as there was no back and forth whatsoever and Arkansas dominated the whole game. Arkansas opened the scoring in the 3rd with a triple that was batted in on the next ball in play and never looked back. Former VandyBoy Cam Kozeal absolutely torched the ‘Dores the entire weekend, but his best performance was on Friday. He hit 2 home runs in consecutive ABs along with a 2 rbi single on his way to a 3 hit, 5 RBI night. He had more RBIs in one game than all of Vanderbilt’s batters combined through the first 22 innings played this weekend. Logan Maxwell also hit a home run for Arkansas in this game. For Vandy, JD Thompson pitched 6 innings, allowing 5 runs and 5 hits; Brennan Seiber pitched 1 inning allowing no hits and no runs; Hudson Barton gave up 1 hit and 1 run along with 3 BBs in 0.2 innings; Luke Guth gave up no hits and no runs in 0.1 innings; Ryan Ginther gave up 3 hits, 2 walks, and 3 runs in 1 inning. For Arkansas Zach Root threw 7.3 innings only giving up 3 hits and no runs.

Saturday’s game was a much closer affair. Arkansas got out to another early lead when Cam Kozeal hit his 3rd home run of the weekend driving in 2 runs. Vanderbilt battled back, though, as Colin Barczi hit a single and was driven in by Rustan Rigdon in the 5th; then RJ Austin singled and was driven in by Mac Rose in the 6th, tying the game at 2 a piece. Sawyer Hawks relieved Bowker in the 6th and did an admirable job, only allowing 1 hit and 1 run on a homer in the 7th. Vanderbilt once again responded as Jonathan Vastine drew a walk, was batted over to 3rd with productive outs, and then scored on a wild pitch. The game would go into extra innings as Hawks and Aiden Jiminez pitched outstandingly down the stretch. In the 10th inning Miller Green came in for Vanderbilt. Mike Mancini committed an error to get the leadoff man on for Arkansas and it all unraveled from there. A hit put runners on the corners, another single scored a run, Kozeal bunted home a runner on a play where Miller Green unsuccessfully chose to go home with the ball, and finally yet another bunt scored a runner without an out as Riley Nelson bobbled a ball. This extended Arkansas’ lead to 6-3. In the bottom of the 10th Humphrey and Austin both singled to put runners on the corners with no outs but a strikeout, popup, and groundout shut down any hopes of a comeback.

Sunday’s game was equally difficult to watch, as Arkansas once again got out to a lead early on with a 2 run blast from Charles Dalvan in the 3rd. In the bottom of the 4th, however, Colin Barczi would annihilate a ball and send it over the Monster for a 3 run homer as Vandy took its first lead of the series. The score of 3-2 would hold until the 8th inning as Connor Fennel and Alex Kranzler kept dealing for Vandy and both Landon Beidelschies as well as Ben Bybee settled in. In the top of the 8th inning, however, Kranzler lost his command and Arkansas began to hit him very hard. He gave up consecutive homers to Dalvan (his second of the day) and Maxwell as well as a single to Brent Iredale before being pulled for Ethan McElvain. McElvain walked the first two batters he saw to load the bases before throwing a wild pitch which scored one. On the next batter he faced he gave up a hard hit single off the monster that scored 2 more before the runner was thrown out at 2nd trying to stretch it into a double. This ended the top of the 8th with a score of 7-3 and Vandy had almost no hope of coming back. Vandy only recorded 1 more hit in the next 2 innings as it went out with nothing more than a whimper.

I have always been solidly in the camp of Corbin should not be fired or step down, but after changing hitting coaches and effectively removing the scapegoat of the last 3 seasons it is time to start asking the difficult questions. The development of position players has seemingly dropped off a cliff in the last 3 to 5 years and the offensive strategy employed has become outdated to the point of being archaic. To the first point, some may point at recruiting struggles (not that Vandy can’t land elite players, but they all tend to get drafted) as a reason for the lack of elite players for Vandy but when you look at the few elite position players that get to campus that theory falls flat. Jack Bulger was the 35th best player in the country when he got to campus and despite having all the tools to be great could never take a step up at Vanderbilt and consequently never even got drafted to the MLB – an almost unprecedented falloff. Enrique Bradfield Jr was the 51st overall player in the country when he came to campus and he got progressively worse each year under Tim Corbin’s tutelage (his batting average went down at least .20 each year and he only hit .007 better as a junior in the SEC than he did in AA ball). RJ Austin was the 59th best player in the country and yet as a junior he is on what is undoubtedly the worst stretch of his career and batting under .300. Braden Holcomb was the highest rated position player Vandy had landed since Bulger at 38th in the country and yet he struggles to consistently get in the lineup. You start to see a pattern there. Notably, it’s not the same for pitching. Although his record is not perfect by any means, Scott Brown has continued to have the highly rated prospects produce, improve transfers who come to Vandy, and help some very low-rated pitchers leave Vandy as high draft picks.

Whether it truly is that Corbin has lost the ability to develop star position players OR that other colleges and coaches have just developed new methods that are better than whatever is being done at Vandy, the consequences of maintaining the status quo are clear: Vandy will continue to compete less and less with the “elite” teams and fall into mediocrity.

Aria Gerson put it best on twitter: home runs punish pitchers for just one bad pitch, to string hits together relies on them making multiple mistakes in succession. When you are facing elite pitching squads, they won’t make enough mistakes to string together those hits. Saturday’s game is a great example of that. Connor Fennell and Sawyer Hawks threw maybe 3 or 4 bad pitches in the entire first 9 innings of the ball game, but the 2 home runs hit scored 3 runs off those mistakes. Gaeckle and Jiminez were objectively worse on the mound, giving up way more hard contact and throwing a lot more dangerous pitches, but Vandy was left laboring for runs because they would only capitalize on a few of these mistakes and were unable to drive in a bunch of baserunners. You need to change the approach and development strategy.

Arkansas capitalized on the few mistakes that Vandy’s pitching staff made and put the games out of reach despite their pitching staffs having equivalent or worse performances from a technical standpoint on Saturday and Sunday’s games. Hitting for power is just how you beat elite pitching staffs, and Vandy just does not do it.

This was certainly the worst weekend of the year thus far for Vandy’s pitching staff, and there have naturally been questions about whether there is now need to add this to the list of growing concerns with the roster. My answer is that there are some issues, but that the narrative that this is a below average staff is very overblown and untrue. It is true, this team lacks a true ace, but the rotation of Thompson, Bowker, and Fennell has been very solid all things considered. None of those three are a “below average” starter in the SEC (yes, even Fennell, I’m officially willing to declare that now). I highly, highly doubt Vandy will lose any series and the culprit will be the starting rotation. The bullpen is shallow but Hawks, Kranzler (despite a rough 3rd inning Sunday), and O’Rourke are very good. Green is extremely talented and does well when not in a jam, but there is some concern if your closer can get rattled once a man or two gets on base. Admittedly, Ethan McElvain is a big concern and continues to be arguably the biggest disappointment of the season to me.

While this does not paint the best picture of this staff overall, it does help to contextualize their performance this weekend with how otherworldly awesome Arkansas’ offense has been thus far in SEC play. Coming into this weekend, Arkansas had scored at least 30 runs in both of their SEC series, scoring 35 against South Carolina and scoring no less than 11 runs in any individual game. Against Vandy, they were held to 22 runs (4 of which came against the dregs of the pen while trying to conserve pitching) and hit for their worst average in any SEC series. Believe it or not, I think that when the season is over this will be one of the better pitching performances put up against Arkansas.

Ultimately, this was a shameful weekend for Vandy baseball and is indicative of some real issues within the program as well as some existential questions that need answering. We will have to wait for the offseason to get answers to those questions, but in the coming weeks Vandy will face some tough away games that they need to win in order to keep this season afloat. Whether this team has the talent and mental fortitude to put this sweep behind them and win the games they need to win, we shall see.