Two teams desperate for their first SEC series win are coming face to face in Nashville this weekend after dropping their conference openers in disappointing fashion.
Vanderbilt sits at 15-4 (1-2 SEC) on the year while A&M is at 11-9 (0-3 SEC). The preseason number 1 team is 0-5 against power conference teams and has tumbled out of the rankings and is no longer even receiving votes to be in the top-25 – an unprecedented fall for a program everyone thought was going to dominate this year.
In their first SEC series A&M got swept by Alabama, only scoring 6 runs over 3 games. They bounced back with a run rule win over A&M Corpus Christie in their midweek game, though.
Team Analysis
This Texas A&M team, so far, has been one of the biggest disappointments in college baseball history. It is almost unprecedented to see a consensus number 1 team fall out of the rankings before conference play even starts and then get swept to start it. The reason as to why they have faltered so much is their offense.
A&M’s offense has been arguably the worst in the conference. They rank last, by far, in batting average at only .265 (the next lowest is Ole Miss at .280); have the second lowest number of runs scored in the SEC at 137, only 2 more than the lowest ranking Missouri; have the lowest slugging percentage in the SEC; and the worst on base percentage in the conference. The only statistics that they rank above the bottom 2 in the SEC are home runs hit (they sit 10th with 26) and number of strikeouts (they are 5th best with only 141).
Only two players on A&M are hitting above .300: superstar freshman Terrence Kiel II and Wyatt Hensler, who are batting .415 and .329, respectively. 2024 CWS hero sophomore Kaeden Kent is their best overall hitter so far, hitting .296 with 6 home runs and 5 doubles. He leads all starters in OPS at 1.070 and is walking twice as much as he strikes out. Formerly projected first overall pick Jace Laviolette is having arguably the toughest stretch of his career as he is batting just .268 with 5 home runs and has struck out 19 times in 71 ABs. He went just 2-11 against Alabama and his average was at .214 before a 4 hit night against Corpus Christie re-inflated his batting average. None of the other starters are batting over .250.
While the offense has been putrid for A&M, they can thank their pitching staff for giving them a chance in every single game they play. While the offense has been extremely disappointing, the pitching has exceeded all expectations this season. The entire staff has a collective ERA of just 2.98 and the starters have a collective 2.1 ERA. Ryan Prager has been otherworldly with a 1.48 ERA and 0.89 WHIP through 30.1 innings this year. Saturday and Sunday starters Justin Lamkin and Myles Patton are not far behind with just 2.2 and 2.15 ERAs, respectively. In just about every game versus good teams this year both teams have only scored 1 or 2 runs in the first 7 innings and then the opposing team manages to get one run off of a bullpen arm that wins them the game.
A&M has a ton of good bullpen arms, too. Moss Weston, Luke Jackson, and Brad Rudis lead the aggies in IP out of the pen and all of them have ERAs below 3. That’s ridiculous. While getting into those elite starters is, of course, valuable, there is not much drop off between those three and the next arms out of the pen.
Predictions
While I know everyone’s eyes will be on the Vandy offense and whether they can produce, this series will be won or lost by Vanderbilt’s pitching. Simply put, A&M’s staff is too dominant to think you can score more than 4 or 5 runs in any given game. Vandy’s staff will have to prevent A&M’s talented offense from breaking out. The best chance Vandy has of winning this series is to replicate the results of A&M’s other power conference games: get one or two runs on the starters and then hope to pull away in the late innings in a very low-scoring affair. If A&M scores 6 or more runs it will be almost impossible for ANY team to beat them, so Vanderbilt cannot allow this to happen.
While recognizing that A&M’s offense is, on paper, one of the most talented in the country, there is simply no evidence to the fact that they will produce against Vanderbilt in a pitcher friendly park and a team that has been absolutely lights-out at home and has seen a major power surge in recent weeks. I think A&M’s staff is good enough to steal them a game (most likely Friday night that has a starting pitching matchup of Connor Fennell vs Ryan Prager), but unless their offense gets going they will lose the series. I predict Vanderbilt wins the series 2-1 to move to 3-3 in SEC play.
