In 2019, Vanderbilt won a national title on the backs of premier pitching. This was not something new; elite pitching was a staple of Vanderbilt baseball. However, lost in the lore of Kumar Rocker lies a fact that most do not acknowledge: the Vanderbilt offense had serious firepower. The 2019 Vanderbilt Commodores had slugged 100 home runs that year on their way to winning their second national championship.

Let's skip to 2021, the next time the VandyBoys made a College World Series appearance. The history books will remember how Vanderbilt, once again, had dominant pitching. But once again, Vanderbilt also had muscle at the plate. That year, the VandyBoys hit 92 total home runs.

So, in this one, one might argue, "Well, Vanderbilt won ultimately because of their pitching." That is a fine argument, but I would say that Vanderbilt would not have won in 2019 or made it in 2021 without power at the plate. The fact is, you cannot win with just elite pitching or just elite offensive production; you need both. Vanderbilt baseball still has elite pitching, some of the best in the nation, and one could argue the best in the country. That is fine, and that will win you some regular-season games. However, every Vanderbilt fan and Tim Corbin himself know that the standard for VandyBoys baseball is national titles, not a good regular season. For Vanderbilt to get back to Omaha, the player scouting, plate approach, and offensive production need a total overhaul.

If you are not already, I would highly encourage everyone reading this to approach it as if it were an op-ed. I am not the end-all be-all for baseball, but I do know a thing or two about the game that I love. The purpose of this article is to highlight the inefficiency that Vanderbilt is experiencing at the plate. I want this piece to be honest, and I am not trying to pull a "gotcha" over on anybody. That is truly not my intent. Therefore, to show this, I approached the matter from a strictly mathematical sense.

First, I will explain my methodology. I apologize if some of this does not make sense. If it does not, I encourage anyone to reach out, and I will try to explain it in further depth.

I initially collected data from D1baseball.com. This data is readily available and is not behind a paywall. Ultimately, I want to focus on OPS (on-base plus slugging) and home run totals, as OPS is widely regarded as the most insightful statistic that can be used when evaluating offensive production.

I compiled the OPS data from every Vanderbilt team from 2017 to 2025 and analyzed their average OPS. I ran this data through a statistical analysis software that I use regularly. The point of this was to eliminate outliers that might be improperly inflating or deflating actual OPS (ex., a player might have only four plate appearances but an OPS of 1.000, which improperly inflates the team average). It was found that players who had fewer than 20 plate appearances all season long were determined to be outliers and, therefore, removed from the dataset. I then calculated the average OPS of each team, excluding outliers, and created a simple Excel chart to illustrate the trend over the years.

I additionally did the same for home run totals. I want to note that an analysis was conducted on this set of data, but no outliers were identified.

As shown by the data, year after year, Vanderbilt has shown a decline in its offensive performance. Now, why does this matter? It matters because to win championships, you must produce offensively. The era of smallball is over and dead. The new era is extra base hits, home runs, and going through the batting order as much as possible. It is this simple: the more home runs you hit, the more baseball games you will win. This can also be shown by the current group of sixteen super regional teams. I went through and collected the OPS of every single Super Regional team and conducted the same analysis on their OPS. It was still true that players with less than twenty plate appearances were determined to be outliers and thus removed. I then took the average OPS of the Super Regional Teams and compared it to Vanderbilt's 2025 OPS (with outliers removed).

The data shows that the best of the best prioritize power, and the more control you have, the more postseason success you have. So, there is a problem with Vanderbilt baseball, and it is simple. The offense has been struggling and has been on a downward spiral since 2019. If Vanderbilt wants to get back to championship-level baseball, then you have to play the game. Go to the portal, recruit upperclassmen with power, even if that comes at the expense of defense, because prioritizing slapstick hitters with good defense is coming at the expense of championships for Tim Corbin and Vanderbilt.