A Brutal Vanderbilt Baseball Season Just Got More Difficult. Column
NASHVILLE—This was supposed to be the year, the run that cemented Austin Nye as a projected first-round draft pick heading into his junior year and platformed him to establish himself as one of the SEC’s best arms.
In another world, Nye is starting every Saturday night for this Vanderbilt team and carving up enough hitters to cover up a number of the miscues generated by the abundance of injuries elsewhere on Vanderbilt’s staff. Everything was lining up for that to be the case.
Nye demonstrated all the physical tools and stuff as a freshman a season ago–in which he posted 3.55 ERA while striking out 58 batters across 50.2 innings, primarily working as Vanderbilt’s midweek starter–and was marred merely by an expected inconsistency for a freshman in the SEC. The leap appeared to be all but natural–and through three starts, Nye appeared to have taken it. Vanderbilt’s standout sophomore had yet to give up a run in his 10 innings pitched this season, walked just two hitters, gave up six hits and struck out 13.
Vanderbilt’s staff appeared to believe that Nye was going to be its best pitcher by the time this was all said and done. Turns out stardom will have to wait, though, and Vanderbilt will have to forge a path forward without it.
Vanderbilt coach Tim Corbin declared on Tuesday night that Nye won’t return this season. Corbin didn’t go into detail, but he said enough.
Nye left Vanderbilt’s eventual loss to Arizona on Feb. 28 after facing four batters and hasn’t returned to the mound since. The injury was termed as back tightness at the time. Corbin always appeared to have some sense of optimism regarding the injury prior to his declaration on Tuesday night and never ruled out Nye returning for Vanderbilt’s series against Mississippi State.
Two days after Vanderbilt went to Starkville and got swept, here it is.
Corbin’s team is 14-12 overall, is 2-4 in the league–which ties it with South Carolina– and is 1-8 between road and neutral sites. Its midweek win over Tennessee Tech appears to be more of an outlier than an indicator of what this group is at this point. The highs have been short lived and the lows have been significant enough for some significant voices around these parts to question whether this is going to be the season that finally snaps the regional streak that has been a staple of this program for so long.
This program under Corbin has always been a long game program and has generally been better late in the season than it’s been early in seasons. This, though. This…might be a big enough sample size and a dire enough situation to all but write off a turnaround.
Vanderbilt’s schedule does get easier later this season, but its pitching staff looks more like an infirmary right now and–while its offense is improved relative to what it’s been in recent memory–it’s got too much pressure on its lineup for it to avoid high variability. Before Tuesday’s game, Vanderbilt’s pitching had allowed 127 earned runs in 25 games. That’s 15 more than LSU, the next closest team.
Connor Fennell looking like he should be in the same role he was a season ago rather than in the Friday night spot isn’t helping, either. Nate Taylor has already been subjected to a bullpen role after starting the season as Vanderbilt’s Sunday starter.
That’s the least of Vanderbilt’s problems in regard to its pitching staff, though. Matthew Shorey, Miller Green, England Bryan, Adria Casoliba, and Aiden Stillman have all missed significant time. Vanderbilt would be lucky if it got more than a few of those arms back before this is all over.
“I just don’t know,” Corbin said a few weeks ago regarding the injuries. “We went into the winter feeling pretty good about the health. We check around everything. I don’t know how these things happen but they do.”
Corbin’s health state of the union from a few weeks ago appears as if it could term this entire run for Vanderbilt baseball up to this point. There appeared to be a real sense of optimism within this program that this was the year in which they had what they needed to finally get over the hump of a regional. It still has the offensive firepower to dream about doing that, but it’s got give everything it has to getting there first.
The abundance of injuries are obviously a factor in how this program got here, but it also should have to answer for the lack of high-profile arms that it recruited out of the transfer portal and the leaps that it expected from a number of members of its pitching staff that haven’t come to fruition. Really dissecting this could indicate that there’s more issues at play than just those obvious bullet points.
This group has an opportunity to push those off for a bit with a series win against Tennessee over the weekend. The series in which it enters means a little too much, though.
_(1)-b3e453dfe426b2dd4b83a12540ebdb37.jpeg "Joey Dwyer")
Joey Dwyer is the lead writer on Vanderbilt Commodores On SI. He found his first love in college sports at nearby Lipscomb University and decided to make a career of telling its best stories. He got his start doing a Notre Dame basketball podcast from his basement as a 14-year-old during COVID and has since aimed to make that 14-year-old proud. Dwyer has covered Vanderbilt sports for three years and previously worked for 247 Sports and Rivals. He contributes to Seth Davis' Hoops HQ, Basket Under Review and Mainstreet Nashville.
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