We are officially 3 weeks into the 2025 college baseball season and Vanderbilt has played 13 games thus far. As a reminder, Vanderbilt went 2-1 in their first weekend, beating UCI and Grand Canyon while losing to Nebraska, went on an 8 game winning streak, sweeping Air Force, St. Mary’s, Tennessee Tech, and UCLA, and dropped two straight to USC and UConn. The Vandyboys responded to the disappointing weekend with a 14-1 victory over

So where do things stand? It’s been a very mixed bag thus far. Just about every facet of the team has some major question marks and the only thing people can agree on with this team is that A) Brodie Johnston and RJ Austin are very good at baseball, and B) nobody knows how this team will fare in SEC play. Let’s go step by step to look at the good, the bad, and the ugly in this Vanderbilt Baseball State of the Union.

Now, saying that there is “no other production” may be a bit harsh, as several players outside of the top of the order have had solid seasons thus far. That being said, it feels like the only “threatening” bats in Vanderbilt’s lineup are the top 3 in Austin, Nelson, and Johnston. That trio is batting .400, .370, and .389, respectively and each of them have a home run (comprising nearly half of Vanderbilt’s home run production). That trio has 38 of Vanderbilt’s 90 RBIs and 15 of their 40 extra base hits (Nelson leads with 15 RBIs while Austin has 7 XBHs). Johnston, despite only playing in 8 of 13 games, is third on the team in RBIs and 2nd in XBHs. There’s no question that these three are as good as just about any top 3 in the country, but beyond that it gets ugly.

Illustrating these questions about the production beyond that top three is the fact that Vanderbilt in just 13 games has had FIVE different players batting cleanup. If you can’t even find a consistent top 4 bats then you’ve got a real issue. Now, to give credit where it is due, Jacob Humphrey is on an 11 game hitting streak and has the team’s highest batting average (.417 over 36 ABs), Mac Rose has a .304 average over 23 ABs along with a .514 OBP, and Mike Mancini has a .313 average over 16 ABs with a ridiculous .577 OBP, but 3 productive players out of 6 (one of whom is in and out of the lineup) is just not going to cut it.

One of the perceived strengths of this team was the fact that they had a number of proven veterans that, while they maybe weren’t stars, people assumed would produce well for the team. The biggest names of those veterans were Chris Maldonado, Jayden Davis, and Jonathan Vastine all of whom have batted over .300 in SEC play at one point in their careers, and were viewed as integral parts of the lineup. So far Maldonado is only hitting .111 with 9 Ks in just 18 ABs and has looked like a shell of his pre-injury self. Jayden Davis isn’t doing much better, as after a hot start in Arizona his batting average is now down to .185 over 27 ABs. Vastine is doing the “best” out of the three but is still only hitting .225 with more Ks than hits in 40 ABs. Davis and Maldonado were both in the top of the lineup to start the year yet have the worst and 3rd worst batting averages just a week before SEC play starts. That little production out of two perceived foundational pieces of the lineup is enough to kill just about any offense. Vastine has not been as egregiously bad but everybody expected him to at least be on-par with what he did last year, and he hasn’t even come close to that.

Now, why this has happened to these three is different for each one in my opinion. I’m much more worried about Maldonado long term as he just looks like a shell of his pre-injury self. His bat speed is way down and it seems like he just cannot connect the bat to the ball even on pitches well inside the strike zone. He needs to figure things out before he can be entrusted to start again. With Davis I think he just hit a major slump and then started pushing really hard with Mancini threatening to take his spot in the lineup. I still have hope that he can reset mentally and be ready to come in and produce at a high level in SEC play if someone else is struggling in the lineup. As for Vastine, I’m just really not sure. We all know about his struggles with breaking balls from left handed pitchers but he punished fastballs enough (and played good enough defense) over the last two seasons that everyone overlooked this. Now he has seemingly lost that and is just watching balls come down the middle. I think it’s more mental than anything else, and he needs to figure it out quickly.

Now, this one is interesting, as I think a lot of it has to do with coaching mismanagement, but Colin Barczi and Braden Holcomb have not taken the leaps that many thought they were capable of before the season.

Barczi has not been horrible, his defense behind the plate is strong and he has batted in 11 runs (good enough to be tied for 3rd on the team). His batting average is a bit misleadingly low at .250, as he continually barrels up the ball but the balls just always seem to die on the warning track or go right to a fielder’s glove. That being said, he is striking out more than you would like while barely drawing any walks (he only has one walk on the season). I think that we will start to see the baseball gods smile down on Barczi soon and see his well hit balls find a gap or get over the fence, but that really needs to happen soon.

Braden Holcomb, on the other hand, has not been good. Going into the season I picked Holcomb out as my most improved offensive player and boy has that looked to be foolish thus far. He is batting only .182 in 22 ABs with a 40% strikeout ratio while being in and out of the lineup throughout these first few weeks. Now, with that being said, there was a reason for my selection of him as my MIP, and that’s because he looked great in the spring following an amazing summer in the Cape Cod League. Holcomb is just a streaky hitter who will get hot once he sees a few go his way. His upside far outweighs the few stinkers that he will inevitably have. The fact that Corbin and Jayson King have continually pulled him mid-game after a rough AB and then sat him for multiple days is just egregiously short sighted. This team NEEDS Braden Holcomb, and Holcomb needs belief behind him to keep him going and get out of slumps.

There is also a precedent to my argument: Holcomb starts slow and just needs to get his feet wet before he reliably takes off. Last season, he started 1-21 with a 50% K ratio. After he finally had a multi-hit game against LSU he proceeded to bat over .300 against mostly SEC opponents and have 11 XBHs in under half of a season. In the Cape he started slowly, too, with his batting average sitting around .200 after the first 10 days of games. He then caught fire and was a league all-star and one of the best overall players in the top summer league in the country, finishing with a .333 average with 3 homers. You would think by now that the coaches would be willing to ride out the struggles and help him work through things positively rather than sitting him for half the games. Holcomb made his first appearance in the starting lineup in just under 2 weeks against St. Bonaventure and rewarded the coaches with a 2 hit, multi-RBI game. Maybe that’s what both parties needed to get things going again.

Vanderbilt finds themselves in an all too familiar spot as they are at the bottom of the SEC with just 7 home runs total. This hadn’t come back to bite them too much, but after losing to UConn (in a game where Vandy had 3 more hits but many more LOB) due to the lack of a home run the need for power once again became apparent. Why is this? Well, there are two main reasons that stick out to me.

First, is simply that the biggest power threats have not been playing consistently this season. Johnston missed the first 5 games with injury and did not start until game 7. Braden Holcomb was out of the lineup for over a week and a half. JD Rogers has barely gotten a look since Jacob Humphrey has gotten hot. When your best power guys aren’t playing, you won’t hit for much power. Simple as that. Corbin and King need to start playing their power bats more if they want to have a chance to compete with the big boys of the SEC.

The other reason is that there is a clear effort to prioritize good ABs over power. This is damaging for two reasons. First, is the simple fact that the power bats in Vandy’s lineup (as with most power hitters in the history of baseball) are more prone to have ugly strikeouts than a contact-based hitter whose main goal is to get on base. This makes the system predisposed to harm power hitters because they are more likely to get benched for ugly ABs. The other reason this hurts power is that players are much less likely to take big power swings when they are being told to prioritize taking good swings and working counts instead of just trying to deposit the ball on the other side of the fence. This more or less takes away the power hitters’ most dangerous weapon and causes them to be very hesitant to try and use all of their power.

There is probably more going on than just this, but one thing is for certain: Vanderbilt needs to hit for more power. While they have the personnel to do this (at least in terms of the raw power of position players), they need to see this potential result in production.

JD Thompson and Cody Bowker are starting quality SEC pitchers, no doubt about that. I don’t think anyone would qualify either as an “ace” per se, but both are good enough to make it in the SEC and give Vanderbilt a strong chance to win the games they start. Admittedly, both have had one start that was not quite up to their usual standard thus far, but even those “bad” starts were not anything egregious or would make me worry.

On the other hand, though, Ethan McElvain has all Vandy fans very worried. He has not gotten out of the third inning in a single one of his starts and has continually put pressure on the Vandy bullpen to produce more than they should have to each weekend. It’s the same story with him each time, too. He gets a good number of strikeouts but his command is just not there enough. This results in several walked batters and then a pitch over the middle of the plate that gets pounded for extra bases (and usually scoring a run or two). The scary part is that I don’t know who would start for Vandy other than McElvain. Hawks and Kranzler have been good but neither have starting experience. Brennan Seiber is another option but he is invaluable out of the bullpen and it is clear that the coaches do not want to move him to a starting spot. Either McElvain or the coaching staff have to figure things out quickly, or Vandy is in deep trouble for every SEC matchup that neither Thompson or Bowker start.

"Solid” is just about the best word I can use for the pen thus far. Hawks, Seiber, Fennell, Kranzler, and Green have all come in and impressed, each taking a clear step up from the skill level they were at last year. This represents a vast improvement from the 2024 season, where Green, McElvain, and Seiber were the only semi-consistent pieces out of the bullpen. Beyond those 5, though, things get shaky. The three freshmen getting consistent run have been iffy, with Shorey struggling to start the season (although he has been better of late), Bryan having a bad habit of leaving a pitch over the middle after otherwise strong performances, and Barton just continuing to have difficulty going beyond the first inning. Ryan Ginther may be the missing piece. He has proven that he can compete against high-level competition, but has only played in midweeks thus far. Why this is I am not sure, but he has not given up a run so far this season and could be valuable in weekend series.

Overall, it has been a topsy-turvy start to the Vandyboys season, a trend that is likely to continue through the rest of the year. Whether these looming questions will have answers come to fruition remains to be seen, but if Vanderbilt is going to compete for their goals they need to figure things out badly.