Baseball star Casey Weathers makes our VandySports 100 at No. 76.
Honors and awards: 2007 first-team All-American (ABCA, BA, CB, NCBWA, Rivals)
2007 first-team All-Southeastern Conference
2006 Team USA member
In the VU record book: Single-season wins: tied-fifth (12, 2007)
Career ERA: fourth (2.71)
Before VU: Was a two-time all-league pick at Laguna Creek High School, earning all-city honors from the Sacramento Bee in 2003. Spent two years at Sacramento City College, going 1-2 with a 3.83 ERA, 36 strikeouts and 23 walks in 42 1/3 innings.
Junior (2006): Appeared 21 times, all in relief. Opponents batted .228 against him, with six extra-base hits. Went 1-1 with a 5.06 ERA in nine appearances in SEC games, with 13 strikeouts and 10 walks in 10 2/3 innings. Picked up a save with two innings against Michigan in the Atlanta Regional, allowing one unearned run on three hits and three strikeouts. Struck out two in an hitless relief inning vs. Georgia in the SEC tournament. Had a save with 1 2/3 innings of scoreless relief and three strikeouts against South Carolina. Registered first save with 1 1/3 innings of one-hit relief vs. MTSU. Struck out six in 3 1/3 relief innings vs. Austin Peay. Picked by Detroit in Round 25 of the 2007 MLB Draft, but didn't sign.
Senior (2007): Pitched in 31 games--all in relief--for a team that went 54-13 (22-8 SEC) and won the conference's regular-season and tournament titles before falling to Michigan in the finals of the Nashville Regional. Went 6-2 with five saves, 35 strikeouts, 14 walks, five hit batsmen and a 3.29 ERA over 27 1/3 innings of SEC regular-season play. Opponents hit just .189 against him in the league and managed just three extra-base hits (all doubles). Conference regular-season wins came against Ole Miss, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee, Kentucky and Auburn. Picked up the win in Vanderbilt's win over Austin Peay to open the Nashville Regional with two hitless innings.
Post-VU: Weathers was the No. 8 pick of the entire draft by the Colorado Rockies in 2007. He played professional and independent ball from 2007-17 but had an injury-plagued career and never made the Majors.
Final thoughts, and why I ranked him where I did: Weathers had about as meteoric a rise as a Commodore ever had in a two-year span. My memory of his career is that Weathers started 2006 as a run-of-the-mill reliever throwing in the low-90s, then, was pounding the mid-90s by the end of the season. Coach Tim Corbin, coaching Team USA that summer, added Weathers to the roster as a late addition just as his career was starting to take off, which planted him on the national radar.
Weathers about a decade ahead of his time; I'm not certain that anyone at any level of baseball was throwing as hard as Weathers was then, and strikeouts were not as common across the board as they are now. I'll never forget a road trip to Lexington in 2007 in which Weathers, with the temperature in the high-30s, broke 100 on the radar gun as a gaggle of scouts sat behind home plate.
The Rockies took him eighth overall in the 2008 draft. It's hard to justify taking a reliever that high, and if you're going to be taken that high as a reliever--which rarely happens--you're expected to make the Majors quickly.
That alone probably put undue pressure on him. Weathers may have been the most dominant arm the Commodores had--and that on a staff that included David Price--that we glossed over his control troubles. Those struggles never left Weathers in an injury-filled professional career as he walked 214 men in 256 1/3 innings. Weathers hung around trying to make the Majors as late as 2016, and gained notoriety for throwing a ball 108 miles an hour after a moving start.
Weathers probably saw less career playing time than anyone in the VandySports 100, but won or saved a staggering 19 games in the season that showed the world Vanderbilt could be a baseball power. It was a short burst, but a blindingly-spectacular one as few Commodores ever dominated their sports the way Weathers did in 2007.
