Baseball star Will Toffey ranks 45h on the list of 100 best Vanderbilt athletes we've covered.
Honors and awards: 2015 first-team Freshman All-American (Collegiate Baseball; second team by Perfect Game, D1 Baseball and Baseball America)
2015 Freshman All-Southeastern Conference
2015 All-SEC Tournament
2017 Clemson Regional MVP
In the VU record book: Single-season walks: eighth (51 in 2016)
Before VU: Lettered five years in hockey and baseball and one year in golf at Salisbury High in Barnstable, Mass., where his brother, John, was the baseball coach. Named a Louisville Slugger All-American in 2014 and the 2013 and 2014 New England Prep Baseball Player of the Year. Team went 76-1 in his three seasons and won the WNEPSL titles from 2012-14. WNEPSL all-star in hockey for three seasons. Named the top prospect in the Futures League. Drafted in Round 23 by the Yankees; turned down New York, as well as some scholarship hockey offers, to come to Vanderbilt.
Freshman (2015): Played 71 of the team's 72 games for a 51-21 (20-10 SEC) team that finished as the national title runner-up. Was the starting third baseman and fielded .955 in 155 chances, with 106 assists while participating in five double plays. Hit .348/.429/.513 in SEC regular-season games--leading the team in average and on-base percentage--playing all 30 while starting 29, clubbing three home runs while knocking in 25 and scoring 20. Hit in 28-straight SEC games. Knocked in two runs for the second-straight in win over Indiana in the NCAA Tournament. Doubled and drove in two in Game 1 of the College World Series finals vs. Virginia. Scored two runs and drove in two with a pair of hits in NCAA Tournament win over Lipscomb. Named All-SEC Tournament team for hitting .300 with two doubles, a home run and three RBIs. Was 4-for-4 with a home, a double, a walk, a run and an RBI in a 13-3- win over Kentucky. Went 2-for-4 with a homer and three RBIs in a loss to Tennessee. Was 2-for-2 with two walks, a double and three RBIs in a win over Illinois St. Started at third in VU's first game of the season, going 0-for-3 with a run and a walk in a win over Santa Clara.
Sophomore (2016): Manned third, playing all 62 games and starting 61, for a 43-19 (18-12) team that hosted the Nashville Super Regional but fell in two games. Drafted by the Orioles in Round 25 after the season, but didn't sign. Suffered a stress fracture in his foot in the Cape Cod League, but played through it, causing his numbers to plummet as a sophomore. Fielded .947 in 131 chances, with nine double plays, at third. Hit .196/.349/.225, with five RBIs and 15 runs in a win over Georgia. Doubled and drove in three in the NCAA Tournament loss to Washington. Was 3-for-4 with two RBIs in an SEC Tournament win over Texas A&M. Was 3-for-3 with a triple and an RBI in a regular-season win over Georgia. Was 2-for-3 with three RBIs in a win over Illinois-Chicago.
Junior (2017): Played in 56 games, starting them all, for a 35-25-1 (15-13-1) team that lost in the Corvallis Super Regional. Fielded .930 in 115 chances at third and took part in five double plays. Played 26 SEC regular-season games, hitting .326/.482/.570 with five homers, 19 RBIs and 21 runs. Missed six games with a shoulder injury suffered sliding into second vs. Tennessee. Hit .464/.500/.900 across five NCAA Tournament games (30 plate appearances) in the NCAA Tournament and won Clemson Regional MVP after mashing nine hits, three homers and 10 RBIs in three games. Drove in three runs for the third time in five games, blasting a three-run double in a loss to South Carolina at the SEC Tournament. Matched career-highs with four hits and four runs in a win over Alabama, driving in three runs on May 19. The day before, recorded two hits for the fourth-straight game. Broke up a scoreless game with a solo homer as part of a two-hit game in win at Arkansas. Drove in four runs and scored four in win at MTSU, going 2-for-3 with three walks. Ripped his third homer in five games as part of two-hit, three-RBI day against Texas A&M. Had two hits and four RBIs in win over Saint Mary’s.
Post-VU: Oakland picked Toffey in Round 4 of the 2017 MLB Draft. Signed at slot for $482,600. The A's dealt him to the Mets, and he ended 2019 at AA.
Final thoughts, and why I ranked him where I did: There are four offensive players in the countdown who were vastly underrated when they played at VU. Toffey is one and another was Stephen Scott (No. 52 in our countdown), and the other two are coming up later on our list.
To that, the league named two third basemen and two designated hitters to its 2017 All-SEC team. Their average, on-base and slugging percentages are below and they're listed in descending order of OPS, with games played in parenthesis. Guess which one of the five didn't make the team?
Toffey: .354/.475/.602 (56)
Jordan Rogers, Tennessee: .322/.390/.512 (51)
Michael Curry, Georgia: .297/384/.484 (57)
Colby Bortles, Ole Miss: .269/.376/.482 (55)
J.J. Schwarz, Florida: .259/.351/.444 (69)
To be fair, I don't have the stats from the time of the voting. The team was picked before the SEC and NCAA tournaments, where Toffey padded his stats. And Toffey also missed four SEC games with that shoulder injury.
But I remember thinking then how awful an omission it was, because it was clear then that Toffey hands-down had the best hitting campaign of the five, and he wound up lapping the field in the end with an 85-point edge in on-base percentage and a 90-point edge in slugging to his next-closest competitor. There wasn't even an argument to be made, and somehow the voters whiffed anyway.
And just how good was Toffey's season offensively? Adjusted for run-scoring environment across college baseball, Toffey created the fourth-most runs per 27 outs in coach Tim Corbin's tenure. Plus, the best part of that came in the postseason.
Toffey was also a good defender his entire career. If you field .930 or better at third in college baseball, you're doing a fair job there. Even with the shoulder and foot injuries, Toffey never had a single season below that mark.
Toffey's injury-plagued 2016 is what holds him back. Give him a clean bill of health that year and he probably would have landed in our top 30, and maybe the top 20. I never had any reservations ranking him inside the top 50 and he may deserve to be higher.
