Vanderbilt baseball outfielder Stephen Scott enters the countdown of the best we've covered at No. 52. You may view a running list of our countdown here.
Honors and awards: 2018 National Player of the Week (May 14, May 21)
2019 Southeastern Conference Player of the Week (Week 14)
In the VU record book: Single-season runs scored: 10th (68 in 2019)
Before VU: Attended Cardinal Gibbons High in Cary, N.C., where he was ranked the No. 483 player in the Class of 2015. Lettered four years in baseball and three in football. All-conference player for three years and all-state as a senior. Captained the football team as a senior.
Freshman (2016): Played 18 games, starting one (MTSU). Drove in his first career run vs. Radford.
Sophomore (2017): Played in 38 games, starting 32, for a 36-25-1 (15-13-1) team that fell in the Corvallis Super Regional. Most of his playing time came at DH. Hit .197/.287/.303 across 24 SEC regular-season games, with 19 starts. Had two hits, including his first career home run, vs. Ole Miss. Had two hits and two runs vs. UT-Martin. Had three runs in a win at MTSU.
Junior (2018): Split time between catcher and left, playing 53 games (with 47 starts) for a 35-27 (16-14) team that lost in the Nashville Super Regional. Started the last 10 games behind the plate, and 13 of the final 14. Fielded .988 in 343 chances and threw out 12 of 34 runners who tried to steal. Played 27 SEC games, starting 25 and hitting .207/.369/.537, with a team-leading eight home runs, 19 RBIs and 15 runs scored. Ranked seventh in the SEC in home runs in all games. His career took off on as soon as May came around; Scott was 24-for-68 with 10 home runs, 20 RBIs, for a .353/.482/.868 across 19 games, including a two-homer game in the deciding contest of the Clemson Regional. VU won five of its last regular-season conference games in that time. Before that, doubled and homered and knocked in four in a win over Georgia. Also had a homer, a single and four RBIs in a win over UMass-Lowell, and a homer and two RBIs in an 8-7 win over Ole Miss.
Senior (2019): The Marlins drafted Scott in Round 31 the previous summer, but Scott returned for his senior year. Played in 69 games, starting all of them, for a 59-12 (23-7) team that won the SEC, the SEC Tournament and the College World Series. Fielded .985, most of his defensive action coming in left field. Had four four-RBI games (which led the team) and 13 multi-RBI games. Played in 29 SEC games, starting them all, while hitting .352/.457/.620, with seven homers, 24 RBIs and 30 runs scored. Hit .279/.385/.605 in 52 plate appearances in the NCAA Tournament. Had two homers and four RBIs in a win over Mississippi State at the College World Series, and hit .200/.304./550 in Omaha. Was 4-for-9 with a homer, two RBIs and three runs in VU's series win over Duke in the Nashville Super Regional. Tripled, doubled and walked in VU's NCAA Tournament-opening win over Ohio St. Hit .333/.474/.533 in four games to help Vanderbilt win the SEC Tournament. Had three homers and six RBIs in the Kentucky series that clinched the SEC regular-season title. Added a homer and two RBIs in a win over MTSU the game before that. Had a double and a grand slam in a win over Florida.
Post-VU: The Red Sox picked Scott in Round 10 of the 2019 MLB Draft. Scott had a solid stint at Single-A last summer and remains in the organization.
Final thoughts, and why I ranked him where I did: I believe Scott is one of the four most underrated players in coach Tim Corbin's time at VU. (The others are ranked ahead of Scott and I'll reveal them later.) Scott was deserving of first-team All-SEC honors as a senior and instead, didn't make either the first or second team. By the runs-created-per-27-outs formula I use, Scott's 2017 was the seventh-best offensive season in coach Tim Corbin's tenure once an adjustment is made for college baseball's run-scoring environment.
And there was nothing cheap about Scott's senior season. He was outstanding in league play and in the SEC Tournament, and excellent in the NCAA Tournament with an OPS that fell just short of 1.000. All that contributed towards the greatest season in Vanderbilt baseball history, if not in the history of all the school's athletics programs.
Scott's junior year was also important. The Commodores were 11-13 in the SEC heading into the last two weekends of conference play in 2018, and in grave danger of missing the NCAA Tournament. Scott doesn't get all the credit for that run--J.J. Bleday came back on May 8 and also had a lot to do with it--but Scott was certainly the best player on the team in that stretch, and for two weeks during that time, the best player in the country. The confidence the team gained certainly helped seed the historic 2019 to follow, and without Scott, I don't think VU makes the NCAAs in 2018.
The fact Scott didn't contribute as a freshman, and was just average as a sophomore, are marks against him. And as good as his junior year was, there wasn't much to it until that May run. As for defense, I'm not sure how valuable his was, but I don't think he hurt the team either. He sometimes looked awkward in left, but it didn't much affect his performance (five career errors) and played respectably behind the plate in 2018. Scott was also versatile enough that he could have played first in a pinch, too.
Scott only had an impact for about 1 1/3 of his four seasons on campus, and for that reason, someone can argue that a few others in the 50s could have gone ahead of him. But because of the strength of that impact, and what it meant for Vanderbilt, I can also make an easy defense of ranking him where I did.
