Vanderbilt baseball pitcher Drake Fellows makes the VandySports 100 at No. 73.
Honors and awards: 2017 Southeastern Conference Freshman of the Week
2018 All-Clemson Regional
2019 second-team All-American (Collegiate Baseball, NCBWA)
2019 SEC Pitcher of the Week (Weeks 6 and 13)
2019 All-Nashville Regional
In the VU record book: Single-season wins: tied-third (13, 2019)
Career strikeouts: sixth (308)
Career wins: tied-seventh (23)
Before VU: Was a second-team All-American by Rawlings-Perfect Game while pitching for Illinois' Joliet Catholic Academy. Was conference Pitcher of the Year twice. Team won a state title and finished ranked 25th in America.
Freshman (2017): Appeared 16 times, including 10 starts, for a 35-25-1 (15-13-1 SEC) squad that made it to the Corvallis Super Regional. Held opponents to a .226 average and turned in five quality starts. Had a 6.23 ERA and an 0-2 record in 26 SEC innings, with 29 strikeouts to 12 walks. Took a loss in the Clemson Regional despite striking out seven over 6 2/3 innings and allowing just two runs. Pitched eight innings of one-run ball to beat St. Mary's. Allowed two runs in seven innings, striking out nine, in a no-decision vs. Illinois-Chicago. Started the season's first weekend, throwing six scoreless innings with five walks to beat San Diego.
Sophomore (2018): Was the Friday night starter for a 35-28 (16-14) squad that lost in the Nashville Super Regional. Went at least five innings in 14 of his 16 starts. Threw 62 2/3 SEC innings, with a 4-4 record and a 4.31 ERA in league regular-season play. Led the team with 107 strikeouts and opponents hit just .217 against him. Pitched seven scoreless innings with eight strikeouts to beat St. John's in VU's NCAA tournament opener. Gave up seven runs (six earned) in 4 1/3 innings in an NCAA super regional loss to Mississipi State. Struck out eight men against both UMass-Lowell and Sam Houston St. Struck out nine against UCLA and gave up three runs in seven innings. Shut out Mississippi State while allowing just three hits over six innings in a road win. Struck out eight and got a win in seven innings against Tennessee. Three-hit Kentucky over 7 1/3 innings.
Junior (2019): Was again the Friday night starter for a 59-12 team that won the College World Series, as well as SEC and SEC tournament titles. Tied for the national lead in victories and placed eighth in strikeouts (133). Went 7-0 with a 4.00 ERA in 63 SEC regular-season innings, with 58 strikeouts to 13 walks. Threw seven innings of one-run ball in VU's CWS-opening win over Louisville. Gave up four runs in 5 2/3 innings in a CWS loss to Michigan. Struggled against Duke in the Nashville Super Regional, giving up seven runs (five earned) in four innings. Threw a 116-pitch complete game to beat Ohio State, 8-2, in the NCAA tournament opener. Hurled six shutout innings with eight strikeouts in VU's 1-0 SEC tournament win over Mississippi State. Pitched a complete-game, eight-strikeout shutout of Florida on March 21.
Post-VU: The Padres picked Fellows in Round 6 (173rd overall) in the 2019 MLB Draft. Fellows signed with the Padres for $260,000. He hasn't pitched yet due to being treated for lymphoma last fall, from which he has since recovered.
Final thoughts, and why I ranked him where I did: "Consistent, competitive and durable are the words that come to my mind when speaking about Drake," coach Tim Corbin said of Fellows before the 2019 season.
That's an appropriate summary of his career.
There are 23 pitchers in the VandySports 100, and none have a higher career ERA than Fellows's 3.85. He also pitched in a three-year period that depressed run-scoring about 3-4 percent below the rest of our 2003-20 period. That limited how high I could fairly rank him.
On the other hand, there may not have been another pitcher who threw well in as many big games as Fellows, and that's more important than the stats.
The CWS start against Louisville last year--Fellows threw 98 pitches in seven innings on a hot day, leaving with the score tied at 1 before VU got two in the bottom of the inning--was enormous. He came up huge in VU's NCAA tournament openers in both 2018 and '19. Bettering MSU's Ethan Small in a 1-0 SEC tournament win was also a big moment.
Yes, there were times Fellows didn't come through--the '18 super regional start, the Michigan CWS outing were the biggest.
But even when he struggled, he'd grind through outings to save the bullpen. His shortest outing in 2019 was 3 2/3 innings, and he went at least five in 16 of his 19 starts. The previous year, he went at least five in 14 of 16 outings. There aren't many pitchers at VU or anywhere capable of delivering that type of consistent workload.
Doctors also discovered Fellows's lymphoma shortly after his collegiate season was over. I asked Fellows this winter if he'd been pitching with cancer during the 2019 season, and he honestly didn't know. But it's reasonable to believe it was a possibility. That would make what he did remarkable, and his failures late in 2019 more understandable.
Fellows's ERA also took a beating at times due to VU's bullpen and bad luck. I felt VU left Fellows in too long several times, particularly in 2018, when the team's bullpen wasn't as deep and talented as it had normally been. He had a "component" ERA of 3.42, which also suggests he was better than his ERA.
Fellows always suffered by comparison because VU's recent tradition of Friday night starters--David Price, Sonny Gray, Jeremy Sowers, Kyle Wright, Carson Fulmer, etc.--is probably un-matched in all of college baseball. Instead, judge Fellows by the fact that he was a fine pitcher who was great in a lot of key spots, and especially so for a national title team, and deserving of where I've ranked him.
