What to Make of Vanderbilt Baseball’s Series Loss to Texas A&M

The momentum that Vanderbilt baseball was riding over the past week came to a sudden halt Friday night as the Commodores dropped both games of the double-header against Texas A&M and thereby the series.

Vanderbilt showed a lot of promise it could get its first road series victory after the bats caught fire Thursday in a 14-8 win over the Aggies, but plenty of pitching and fielding mistakes in Friday’s first game combined with Texas A&M jumping on Vanderbilt immediately in the series finale were too much for Vanderbilt to claim the series.

As a result, Vanderbilt moves to 2-10 on the season in neutral site and true road games this season with a 19-14 record and a 6-6 record in SEC play.

So, what is to make of this Vanderbilt team after the Commodores lost both games of the double-header to finish the series?

Perhaps the first thing that comes to mind is that the road concerns are still there and the question of whether this Vanderbilt team has truly turned the corner on the season still has not yet been answered with a resounding “yes.”

The road record has got to concern head coach Tim Corbin and his players as well as the fans. It is one thing for a team to win its home games, especially against teams it is favored against. But it is a totally separate thing for a team to go on the road in the SEC and win a series.

Winning a series on the road during conference play is what separates teams that finish at the top of the conference and teams that are lost in the middle of the pack of the conference. After Vanderbilt took down Belmont 11-3 Tuesday, Corbin acknowledged the road struggles. And at the end of the day, that was the biggest question going into this series.

“We need to establish whether we can win on the road. I mean, we’ve been good on the road in our history here, but history means nothing. We haven’t done anything on the road this year,” Corbin said Tuesday night. “I think that’s a very fair question. Can this team win on the road? We’ll see, we’ll see. I’m interested in finding that answer out, too, as much as you guys are.”

For the time being, Vanderbilt is a team that still has plenty to prove away from home.

Playing-wise though, the biggest concern this team showed in the series was not just the pitching in terms of runs surrendered, but the mistakes it made against Texas A&M batters and the fielding errors that followed.

Vanderbilt’s pitching has been a weakness all season. A lot of that is due to the lack of pitching depth because of the multitude of injuries to Austin Nye, Miller Green and others. Because of that, it has forced Corbin to throw plenty of younger guys into the line of fire.

This series was the most concerning Vanderbilt has looked on the mound and on defense. In each of the three games, Vanderbilt’s pitching gave up eight or more runs. The first game of Friday’s double-header was a struggle finding the strike zone. Starting pitcher Wyatt Nadeau only gave up two hits through 4.2 innings, but he walked eight batters. That turned into five runs, four earned, given up by Nadeau.

It was a similar trend for Jacob Shulz and Nate Schlote, who walked a combined five more batters in the 8-4 loss. Not to mention, the Commodores committed three fielding errors between failed pickoff attempts and missed throws to first base. In the the third game, Aiden Stillman could not get anything going in his first appearance in a Vanderbilt uniform, neither could Nate Taylor, Luke Guth or Alex Kranzler in the 12-0 loss in Friday's second game. The four pitchers combined for eight strikeouts, but allowed 13 hits with the 12 runs.

Will those amounts runs, walks or errors continue at that rate? Probably not, but the pitching has continued to be a red flag for the Commodores. Corbin is looking for strike throwers and Vanderbilt was simply not that in this series.

The main takeaway is that Vanderbilt’s pitching just simply has to get better all around. While a lot of the pitchers Vanderbilt is putting on the mound need more experience and time to develop, the bottom line is that it needs to severely cut down its pitching numbers if it wants a chance to truly turn a corner on the season. Obviously, the runs allowed have to be cut down, but the free passes the Commodores allowed this series cannot continue going forward. Otherwise, Vanderbilt will need to try and outscore its opponents the rest of the way, which is not a sustainable method of winning.

There was promise shown from the offense. In the first two games of the series, Vanderbilt hit nine home runs as a team with 18 combined runs in those games. One of the biggest storylines of the season has been how much of a revelation the offense has been.

A lot of that is a credit to hitting coach Jason Esposito coaching the guys in the batting lineup to be more disciplined in their approaches at the plate. In the first game of the series, Colin Barczi hit three home runs. He became the first Vanderbilt player to have multiple games in a career with three home runs. Barczi has done it twice this season.

While Vanderbilt did not have much of any offense to show in the series finale, it does not take away how far it has come since a year ago. Given the large sample size of Vanderbilt’s offense this season, there is not a ton of concern overall for the batting order.

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