Vanderbilt baseball catcher Philip Clarke makes the VandySports 100 at No. 62. Track our countdown to the No. 1 player here.
Honors and awards: 2018 first-team Freshman All-American (Collegiate Baseball)
2018 All-Clemson Regional team
2019 first-team All-Southeastern Conference
2019 third-team All-American (American Baseball Coaches' Association)
2019 College World Series all-tournament team
In the VU record book: Single-season RBIs: tied-sixth (70, 2019)
Before VU: Starred at Nashville's Christ Presbyterian Academy, where he led the team to a state title and was The Tennessean's Baseball Player of the Year as a senior, and was the state's Class 2-A Mr. Baseball. Ranked as the No. 64 prospect in the Class of 2017, according to Perfect Game.
Freshman (2018): Fielded 1.000 in 126 chances, throwing out just two of the 17 men who tried to steal against him. Started 36 games as the DH, and 13 at catcher. Played in all 30 regular-season SEC games, starting 28, and hitting .302/.357/.474, with two homers, 16 RBIs and 19 runs scored in them. Led the team with 16 doubles. Drove in three runs in three of his first four games. Had two doubles, two runs and three RBIs in a game against Ole Miss. Had three hits, three RBIs and two doubles against Kentucky.
Sophomore (2019): Played (and started) in 70 of VU's 71 games, and was the team's primary catcher. Ranked third in the SEC in RBIs. Fielded .990, with five errors, while throwing out 12 of the 41 runners who tried to steal against him. Started all 30 SEC regular-season games, hitting .336/.406/.517, with three homers, 29 RBIS and 18 runs scored. Led the team with a .360 average in 25 College World Series at-bats. Was 6-for-13 vs. Michigan, including a big home run in Game 2 and three hits in Game 3. Homered and tripled in a 12-1 win over Indiana State that clinched the Nashville Regional. Capped VU's comeback win against Ole Miss with a walk-off single to win the SEC Tournament. Had nine consecutive multi-hit games between April 14-30. Was 3-for-4 with six RBIs in a game against Arkansas. Had a grand slam and five RBIs vs. Cal State Fullerton.
Post-VU: Toronto took Clarke, a draft-eligible sophomore, in Round 9 (pick 267) of the 2019 MLB Draft and signed him. He played 37 games of short-season A-ball last year.
Final thoughts, and why I ranked him where I did: Clarke only had two years to rack up numbers, and I made some allowance for that. If he wasn't as good a pro prospect and there was a full 2020 college baseball season, Clarke might have been a first-team All-American.
As it was, he had an excellent freshman season and a terrific sophomore year. And in that sophomore year, he was huge in VU's two elimination games against Michigan, had that home run against Indiana State in the middle innings when it was still a contested game and had a huge hit to win the SEC Tournament. Of course, Clarke was also a decent defender at a high impact position, too.
It wasn't a huge body of work and for that reason it's hard to put him higher. But taking into account that Clarke left meat on the bone because he was good enough to leave after two years, I'm comfortable slotting him about here.
* "RC/ARC-27" are how many runs a player "created" per 27 outs, according to a Bill James formula. The first is a player's raw total for that season, and the second is the same number adjusted to an average run-scoring environment from 2003-19.
