The VandySports 100: No. 11, J.J. Bleday

Vanderbilt baseball player J.J. Bleday enters the VandySports 100 at No. 11. Here's a full list of the players we've honored in the VandySports 100 so far.

Honors and awards: 2019 first-team All-American (unanimous)

2019 Golden Spikes Award finalist

2019 first-team All-Southeastern Conference

2019 All-SEC Tournament

2019 SEC Tournament MVP

2019 SEC Player of the Week (Week 17)

2019 All-College World Series team

In the VU record book: Single-season hits: tied-eighth (95 in 2019)

Single-season runs: second (92 in 2019)

Single-season home runs: first (27 in 2019)

Single-season RBIs: fourth (72 in 2019)

Single-season walks: second (61 in 2019)

Before VU: Graduated from A. Crawford Mosley High in Florida's Panama City Beach, where he was a third-team All-American by Rawlings/Perfect Game as a senior. Was first-team all-state as a junior and senior. Before that, attended Pennsylvania's Titusville High, where his teams won the region in back-to-back years. Holds six school swimming records there.

Freshman (2017): Played 48 games, starting 32, for a 36-25-1 (15-13-1) team that lost to Oregon State in the Corvallis Super Regional. Fielded .956, with four errors and four assists, the bulk of that time coming in right. Played 23 SEC games, starting 20, and hitting .200/.286/.267 in those, with one home run, four RBIs and five runs scored. Blasted first career home run vs. Southeastern Louisiana. Was 3-for-4 with a walk and three RBIs in a win over Illinois-Chicago. Was 2-for-5 with a home run in a loss to Ole Miss. Reached base three times in four tries in each of VU's two wins over MTSU.

Sophomore (2018): Played 39 games, starting 35, for a 35-27 (16-14) team that fell to Mississippi St. in the Nashville Super Regional. Was VU's primary right fielder; fielded 1.000 with one assist in 73 chances. Reached base in every game but one. Played 12 SEC games, starting them all, while hitting .391/.472/.478, with five RBIs and seven runs scored. Went 5-for-13 with three walks, a homer and two RBIs in three games in the super regional and hit .346/.452 /.423 in the NCAA Tournament, with a homer, four runs scored and two RBIs. Homered and singled in his only two plate appearances vs. UMass-Lowell. Doubled and reached base four times in five plate appearances in a win at UCLA. Was 6-for-10 and reached base 10 times in the Tennessee series.

Junior (2019): Started all 71 games for a 59-12 (23-7) team that won the SEC, the SEC Tournament and the national title. Played every game in right, fielding .982 with two errors and two assists. Hit .304/.438/.687 in SEC regular-season games, with 13 homers, 30 RBIs and 34 runs scored. Led the country with 27 home runs and total bases (192), while ranking fourth in runs (82), fifth in hits (95) and sixth in walks (61). Had 19 multi-RBI games and drove in five, twice. Ended the season with a 51-game on-base streak. Hit .358 with men on base and .337 with runners in scoring position. Hit .300/.481/.500 in the College World Series and .295/.456/.432 in the NCAA Tournament. Hit .533/.611/.813 in the SEC Tournament, of which he was the MVP. Was 3-for-6 with a run scored and an RBI in the season opener vs. Virginia. Singled, homered and drove in two vs. Cal State Fullerton. Reached base five times in a win over Pepperdine on Feb. 24. Was 3-for-5 with a homer and two RBIs vs. SEMO. Was 3-for-5 with a homer and a double vs. ETSU. Homered twice, had five RBIs and reached base three times vs. Lipscomb. Homered twice and reached base all five times in a win over MTSU. Reached base eight of 12 times in the Arkansas series, which included a home run, five RBIs and seven runs. Was 5-for-14 with two walks, four homers, six RBIs and five runs scored in a three-game sweep of Alabama. Was 6-for-10 with two homers, five walks, four runs and five RBIs in a sweep at South Carolina. Was 5-for-13 and reached base eight times in a three-game sweep of Kentucky, with two homers, three RBIs and five runs scored.

Post-VU: Miami took Bleday fourth overall in the 2019 MLB Draft. He played 38 games of "A" ball last year and is regarded as one of the top prospects in pro baseball.

Final thoughts, and why I ranked him where I did: Per plate appearance, adjusted for run-scoring environment, Bleday is the best hitter in the Tim Corbin era, "creating" 10.49 runs per 27 outs, a figure that climbs another 2-3 percent considering run-scoring was slightly down across his career. Over his last two seasons, he reached base an incredible 97 times in his last 98 games. (The one fail came when Texas A&M's Christian Roa and Bryce Miller shut VU out on March 17, 2019; Bleday stepped to the plate just three times that day.)

The problem with Bleday is playing time. He participated in just 90 of 124 games his first two seasons, with an oblique injury that cost him 22 games of 2018 much to blame. That limited Bleday to 281 SEC regular-season plate appearances in his career; some players in the countdown topped 400. Of the 32 hitters in the VandySports 100, only seven had fewer plate appearances, and four of those were two-year players. That's a lot of missed time in important games and though he was a good right fielder, it's not a high-impact defensive position. That's why he didn't rank higher.

That 2018 season was an interesting one. Bleday became an unquestioned superstar in 2019 the next season but to that point, he was severely underrated as a college player. For seasons over 150 plate appearances, Bleday had the sixth-best runs-created-per-27-outs season in the Corbin era. The Commodores were 8-14 without him in that 22-game span.

What happens if Bleday plays all that season? For starters, the Commodores--who were 25-22 when Bleday returned from injury--probably don't need a hot last two weeks to make the NCAA Tournament (a hot streak that directly coincided with his return). And based on the way Bleday was hitting (a .472 on-base mark in league regular-season games), he likely goes on to one of the best offensive seasons in VU history, and possibly puts himself in the discussion for one overall on this list.

Another what-if: What if Bleday posts his 2019 season in a different year when he's not going up against Oregon State's Adley Rutchmann, who had a season for the ages that year. With Bleday's track record of consistency and a national home-run crown and rising popularity with the professional scouting community, all while playing for an elite team, there's a decent shot that Bleday would have been the National Player of the Year.

There are a lot of what-ifs, but the what-was of Bleday's career is exceptionally strong and I never debated putting him inside the top 15.