The VandySports 100: No. 84, Tyler Beede

All-American pitcher Tyler Beede makes the VandySports 100 at No. 84.

Honors and awards: 2012 Freshman All-Southeastern Conference

2012 All-Raleigh Regional

2013 second team All-SEC

2013 All-American

2013 Golden Spikes finalist

Member of 2013 USA National Team

2014 Nashville Regional MVP

In the VU record book: Single-season wins: tied-1st (14, 2013)

Single-season innings pitched: 10th (113 1/3, 2014)

Single-season ERA: 10th (2.32, 2013)

Single-season strikeouts: 10th (116, 2014)

Career wins: tied-7th (23)

Career strikeouts: tied-10th (287)

Before VU: Drafted 21st overall by Toronto, but didn't sign. First-team All-American at Lawrence Academy (Mass.) as a senior by seven outlets. Named 2011 New England Mr. Baseball. Played football for three years and basketball for one.

Freshman (2012): Made 16 appearances with 11 starts for an NCAA tournament team. Made nine starts in SEC play, pitching 48 2/3 innings with a 1-2 record and a 3.51 ERA, with 45 strikeouts, 21 walks and seven hit batsmen. Named to the All-Raleigh Regional after pitching 5 1/3 relief innings with eight strikeouts and three earned runs. Got his first collegiate win vs. South Carolina, hurling six innings with seven strikeouts and just one run allowed. Had a rough collegiate debut vs. Stanford, giving up nine runs (five earned) in 4 1/3 in a start on the season's first weekend.

Sophomore (2013): Made 17 appearances (all starts) for VU's historic team that went 26-3 in the SEC, won the league, and bowed out unexpectedly in the Nashville Super Regional. Opponents hit .187 off him for the season and he gave up just 13 extra-base hits (three home runs). Had a 9-0 record with a 2.77 ERA in 61 2/3 innings in SEC regular-season play, with 62 strikeouts and 36 walks, but just a .193 average against. Earned first- or second-team All-American by numerous media outlets. Set school record with his 14th win, that coming in 71/3 innings vs. Texas A&M in the SEC tournament, in which he gave up no runs and fanned eight. Had 10 strikeouts vs. Missouri, and didn't walk anyone in that start. Lost a no-hitter in the seventh inning vs. Auburn, ending that with 6 2/3 shutout frames. Went at least five innings in all four non-conference starts.

Junior (2014): Made 19 appearances, all starts, on VU's national championship squad. Had a 4.40 ERA in 59 1/3 SEC weekend innings, with 31 walks against 55 strikeouts. Had 11 strikeouts in six innings a win over Illinois-Chicago. Pitched eight innings in a win at Tennessee, allowing four earned runs. Threw 8 1/3 innings in a loss to South Carolina, allowing three earned runs. Set a career high with 14 strikeouts in eight shutout innings in a win over Xavier in the Nashville Regional opener.

Post-VU: The Giants took Beede with the 14th pick of the first round in the 2014 MLB Draft. Beede made his MLB debut in 2018, then, posted a 5-10 mark with a 5.08 ERA in 2019 over 117 innings. Beede was battling for a rotation spot this year, but hurt his arm in spring training and underwent Tommy John surgery, which means he won't pitch this year. He was hitting 98 on radar guns this spring.

Final thoughts, and why I ranked him where I did: The best of Beede came during in 2013, when he was almost un-hittable all season and set a school record for wins in a season. Beede also had a dominating performance against Xavier in Vanderbilt's NCAA tournament opener, setting the stage for an eventual national title.

The problem with Beede was that, even when teams couldn't hit him, he rarely pounded the strike zone with consistency. There are 23 pitchers in the VandySports 100; Beede's 15.1 free pass rate (that's walks plus hit batsmen, divided by batters faced) is 0.4 percent worse than the next-worse mark on the list. Control problems in his remaining 2014 postseason games limited him to 4 2/3 innings vs. Stanford (four walks, three hit batsmen, six earned runs), 3 2/3 vs UC Irvine (three walks, three hit batsmen, four runs) and 6 2/3 vs. Virginia (only three walks, but 10 hits and six earned runs). Before that, he walked or hit 18 men in his last three starts vs. SEC teams.

Beede also pitched in the three lowest-scoring years across college baseball since 2005. He had a 3.56 ERA at VU, but, if you "normalize" that to a typical run-scoring environment in that period, it's 4.01. The latter is the worst ERA among the 23 pitchers in the VS 100, and his 1.48 runners per inning is .07 worst than the next-worst of those 23. In Beede's defense, he also pitched on weekends right away, and that was responsible for some of the damage; even as many arms as VU's had, you can count the number of players who've done that under Corbin on one hand.

Beede was outstanding for one year on one of VU's best teams ever, and had his moments for a national title team, too. On balance, 84th seemed about right.