The VandySports 100: No. 63, Zander Wiel

Vanderbilt baseball first baseman Zander Wiel is No. 63 on our list of 100 greatest players we've covered at VU. Track our countdown to No. 1 here.

Honors and awards: 2013 Southeastern Conference All-Freshman team

2015 SEC Hitter of the Week (Weeks 3, 7 and 11)

2015 National Player of the Week

2015 All-SEC Tournament

2015 All-Nashville Regional

2015 All-College World Series

In the VU record book: Single-season at-bats: tied-ninth (275, 2015)

Single-season RBIs: tied-eighth (68, 2015)

Before VU: The son of former MTSU basketball coach Randy Wiel, Zander Wiel started at Murfreesboro's Blackman High, where he was a first-team all-district and all-region player from 2009-11, and all-misstate as a senior. Also lettered one year in basketball.

Freshman (2013): After a redshirt year, Wiel grabbed a starting job late in the season as the designated hitter, playing sparingly at first. VU went 54-12 and 26-3 in the SEC regular season, falling in the Nashville Super Regional to Louisville. Played 13 SEC conference regular-season games, starting 11, hitting .326/.400/.628 in them. Went 3-for-3 with two home runs, a double, four runs scored and five RBIs in a win at Georgia on April 20; that was his first career start as he became a regular from that point on. Hit a solo homer to account for VU's only run in a super regional loss to Louisville. Had three singles and knocked in a run in an NCAA Tournament win over Illinois. Drove in three runs in a win at Kentucky. Had three singles and two RBIs in a win over South Carolina. Doubled in two runs vs. Mississippi St., stretching his string of games with an RBI to six. Hit his third home run of the season against Louisville.

Sophomore (2014): Played 68 games, starting 66, as the regular first-baseman on the national title-winning team that went 51-21 (17-13). Missed a week of action due to an arm injury suffered vs. Tennessee. Fielded .993 with four errors. Successful on 13 of 17 stolen base attempts. Played 27 regular-season SEC games, starting 26 and hitting .242/.303/.384, with two home runs and 17 RBIs in them. Was 2-for-4 with two RBIs in a College World Series win over UC Irvine. Had three hits, two runs, three RBIs and a steal against Stanford in the Nashville Super Regional. Walked twice and scored a run in the win over Oregon that advanced VU to a super regional. Had his third-straight game with two hits, and his fifth with an RBI, in a loss to South Carolina. Had a homer, three RBIs and two runs in another game vs. the Gamecocks, and doubled and stole two bases in another game that series. Was 2-for-3 with a homer vs. Louisville in the regular season.

Junior (2015): Played in all 72 games, starting 71, for a 51-21 (20-10) team that finished second in the CWS. Stole 13 bases in 16 tries. Fielded .987 with eight errors. Started all 30 regular-season SEC games, hitting .294/.360/.587. Led the team in slugging percentage and tied for the home-run lead (eight) in SEC games. Went 4-for-6 with a home run and six RBIs in a 21-0 rout of Radford in the Nashville Regional title game. Hit .263 with a homer, six RBIs and five runs scored in the SEC Tournament. Went 3-for-5 with four RBIs in a regular-season game vs. Alabama. Doubled and homered, driving in two, in a win over Kentucky. Homered three straight days in VU's sweep of Missouri, going 7-for-15 on the week, driving in eight runs and earning National Player of the Week. Had four hits, including a homer and a double, driving in four and scoring three in a win over Tennessee. Homered and drove in three in a win over Auburn. Had three hits and a walk in a loss to Southern Cal. Had two grand slams and 11 RBIs between Western Kentucky and the Illinois State series, earning co-SEC Player of the Week.

Post-VU: Drafted in Round 12 (pick No. 350) by the Twins in 2015. Wiel is still active in the Minors with Minnesota, and mashed 24 home runs at AAA last season.

Final thoughts, and why I ranked him where I did: Coach Tim Corbin has said many times that often, the coaches don't even know what a player can do until given a chance. Few players have proven that more demonstrably than Wiel.

The morning of April 20, 2013, there was little reason to believe Wiel's career was going to amount to anything. Thirty-eight games had been played that season. Wiel was 1-for-8 in his career in his second season on campus and still hadn't started a game. I was in Athens that day as second-ranked VU lost the first game of a doubleheader, and Corbin was clearly unhappy with the effort of a player or players in Game 1.

So on came Wiel to start for Conrad Gregor at first. It wasn't just the two home runs and the double in Game 2 that got my attention; Wiel was hitting everything hard, including a ball or two that went foul. He'd be a lineup regular for the remainder of his career.

Wiel was a better hitter than meets the eye. A .292/.394/.503 career line is good in any era, but, the 2012-14 seasons were the three or the four lowest-scoring seasons in college baseball since Corbin's been at Vandy, with run scoring down about 11 percent on average across that span. Wiel's most productive season on a per-plate-appearance basis was his abbreviated 2013 season; what might have been if he'd been inserted earlier?

Wiel worked at his craft. After not attempting a steal in '13, he swiped 26 bases the next two seasons and did it efficiently, getting caught just seven times and never getting picked off. I don't remember Wiel as a great fielder, but, Corbin puts a premium on defense, and Wiel played the position respectably enough to hold down first his final two years.

Because Wiel is one of the more underrated players under Corbin, some could balk at my having him this high on the list. But per players with at least 500 at-bats, Wiel had the ninth-best career in terms of runs created per plate appearance, with that measure adjusted for run-scoring context. Because first base isn't a high-impact defensive position, it's hard to elevate him a lot higher, but I feel he produced enough to deserve his ranking above several more highly-decorated Commodores.

* "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.