Vanderbilt baseball superstar Austin Martin ranks third in our countdown of the 100-greatest players we've covered. Here's the full list so far.
Honors and awards: 2018 first-team Freshman All-American (Collegiate Baseball; second-team by Baseball America, NCBWA and Perfect Game)
2018 All-Clemson Regional
2019 first-team All-American (D1 and Baseball America; second-team by ABCA and Collegiate Baseball)
2018 Southeastern Conference Freshman of the Week (Week 10)
2019 Golden Spikes Award semifinalist
2019 Dick Howser Trophy semifinalist
2019 first-team All-SEC
2019 All-SEC Defensive Team
2019 All-Nashville Regional
2019 All-College World Series team
2019 SEC Player of the Week (Week 1)
2019 National Hitter of the Week (Week 1)
2020 first-team All-American (Collegiate Baseball)
2020 consensus first-team preseason All-American
2020 DI Baseball Preseason SEC Player of the Year
In the VU record book: Single-season batting average: 10th (.392 in 2019)
Single-season hits: second (104 in 2019)
Single-season runs scored: first (87 in 2019)
Career batting average: fourth (.368)
Before VU: Prepped at Florida's Trinity Christian Academy, where he was a Rawlings/Perfect Game second-team All-American. Was a three-year captain and a member of the state championship team as a sophomore. Drafted in Round 37 by Cleveland.
Freshman (2018): Played 59 games, starting 58, for a 35-27 (16-14 SEC) team that lost in the Nashville Super Regional. Started at six different spots and fielded .988 with two errors. Started all 30 SEC regular-season games and hit .308/.388/.368. Led the SEC with 22 steals. Led the team in on-base percentage in league games. Had 20 multi-hit games and six three-hit games. Hit safely in 47 games. Hit .385/.484/.500 in the NCAA Tournament, with five runs scored. First career hit was a homer vs. Duke on Feb. 18. Was 4-for-5 with a double vs. Presbyterian in his third collegiate game. Reached base eight times in 13 tries vs. Mississippi St. in his first SEC series, with two doubles, three runs and an RBI. Reached base seven times in 12 tries vs. Ole Miss, with two runs and an RBI. Was 8-for14 with two runs scored and two steals in the Missouri series. Was 4-for-10 with four walks and seven runs scored vs. Kentucky. Was 3-for-4 with a walk vs. Texas A&M in the SEC Tournament.
Sophomore (2019): Played in 65 games, starting each, for a 59-12 (23-7) team that won the SEC, the SEC Tournament and the national title. Started 13 games at second and 52 at third, where he won SEC All-Defensive honors. Fielded. 943 for the season, with nine errors, 91 assists and participated in six double plays. Played in 28 SEC regular-season games, hitting .424/.500/.610 in those, with three homers, 22 RBIs, 39 runs scored and eight steals in 11 tries, hitting .423 in 54 at-bats with runners on base. Led the SEC in average, on-base percentage, runs scored and hits per game (1.62). Hit for the highest average of any Commodore since Warner Jones in 2004. Had on-base streaks of 37 and 24 games. Hit .283/.393/.585, with four homers, 10 RBIs and 10 runs scored, in the NCAA Tournament. Hit .188/.524/.250 in the SEC Tournament. Reached base six times in a season-opening win vs. Virginia and five times the next day in a victory over Cal State Fullerton. Was 4-for-5 with two RBIs vs. Evansville. Reached base five times in an extra-inning loss to Austin Peay. Was 6-for-14 with a walk, three RBIs and three runs scored in the Florida series. Homered and doubled twice, driving in two, in a win over WKU. Was 8-for-10 with three walks, a homer, a double, a triple and eight runs scored in the Arkansas series. Reached base eight times in 15 tries in the Auburn series, with three RBIs and four runs scored. Was 7-for-11 vs. South Carolina, reaching base 11 times in the series while scoring seven times and driving in six. Was 6-for-13 with two walks vs. Missouri, adding two runs and two RBIs. Was 6-for-14 with a walk in the Kentucky series that clinched the SEC title, with seven runs scored and two RBIs.
Junior (2020): Played in 16 of 18 games--starting all in which he participated--for a 13-5 team that saw its season ended early due to COVID-19. Suffered from a hamstring injury that held him out of two games and limited him in others. Split time between third and center, fielding .897 with three errors and four assists.Was 2-for-3 with a pair of doubles and a walk in a loss to Cal Poly. Was 3-for-4 with a pair of doubles and a hit-by-pitch in a win over Illinois-Chicago. Was 2-for-3 with a solo homer in a win over Evansville. Bashed two homers and walked twice in a win over St. Louis.
Post-VU: Martin was expected to go second to Baltimore in the 2020 MLB Draft, but the Orioles targeted (and convinced to sign) Arkansas's Heston Kjerstad to an under-slot deal. Martin unexpectedly fell to Toronto at No. 5 overall, and has yet to sign.
Final thoughts, and why I ranked him where I did: Let's start with how good Austin Martin performed at Vanderbilt, which I think is better than most realize. Per plate appearance over his career and adjusted for run-scoring environment, Martin is the most productive hitter in Tim Corbin's tenure at VU by about a half-run per 27 outs over the second-place hitter, J.J. Bleday. He also had the best sophomore season by any Vanderbilt hitter in Corbin's tenure by the same measure.
How about Martin's whole game? Obviously, he was versatile enough to play anywhere outside pitcher or catcher, and he was voted the SEC's best defensive third baseman in 2019.
I have tried to rate players based on a guess of how they'd fare if we could calculate Wins Above Replacement at the college level. By coincidence, D1 Baseball released a podcast the day I write this in which it announced that Driveline Baseball has started to do this. The whole podcast is worth a listen, but if you just want a snippet, start listening around the 16:45 mark. According to Driveline's cWAR estimate--which is adjusted for strength of schedule, ballparks, defense, and anything one can attempt to quantify--Martin's 2019 season was the single-best individual cWAR season for all players in the 2020 draft.
Martin also had an outstanding 2018, too. Adjusted for college baseball's run-scoring environment, it was the 22nd-best offensive season in Corbin's tenure for players who had at least 200 plate appearances, and the third-best by a freshman to Conrad Gregor's 2011 and Pedro Alvarez's 2006. (Gregor also had 63 fewer plate appearances and was a DH.)
IMartin was deprived of roughly 70 percent of what should have been his peak season, and that matters also.
With some exceptions, I generally don't give credit to a player for what he "could" have done due to missed time. Suspensions and injuries are part of who you are as a player; if you can't stay healthy or perform up to on- or off-field standards to be on the field, it reflects on your value as a player.
And in Martin's case, while some of that was an issue--he did miss a handful of games in his two full seasons--,most of it wasn't. Martin had no control over most of 2020 being canceled due to COVID-19, and, it seems unfair not to account for that.
So, what would Martin have done in a full 2020 season? I think he had a decent chance to turn in the best offensive season in Vanderbilt baseball history.
Martin never really looked like he was in a groove early in 2020, then came the hamstring injury. In spite of that, he had a phenomenal 1.167 OPS, plus, he'd walked 10 times to just two strikeouts. When you're making contact in 96 percent of your at-bats, good things are going to happen.
And good things are going to happen especially when you're hitting the ball as hard as Martin generally does. Don't forget, the home-run power that Martin showed at the end of 2019 had started to come. Martin swatted three homers in two games before the hamstring injury hit. In the first game back from the injury, Martin was 3-for-4 with a double against Toledo and then the season ended.
What would Martin's 2020 have looked like? I think .380/.510/.675, with 14-15 homers, was realistic. Maybe with a break or two, he'd have hit .400, or maybe not. But there was no way that barring injury, Martin wasn't going to have a great season, probably an All-American season, and quite possibly, a National Player of the Year campaign.
And if so, what would the finished body of work looked like at VU? Martin would have easily been inside the school's top five for hits and batting average, and been inside the top 10 for runs scored, and maybe in doubles and stolen bases also.
Many have already objected to Martin being this high. But if you look at the evidence of what he did, it's hard to deny him a spot in the top three. f you consider what was likely in store for 2020, it's not hard to imagine he'd have topped everyone else on the list, and perhaps in a way that didn't leave much room for debate.
