NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Vanderbilt baseball is an offseason home for many former Commodores, and Julian Infante likes to take advantage of it.
Infante, a junior first baseman at Vanderbilt, long ago acclimated to the revolving door of pro Commodores who descend upon the program’s facility each winter. Infante often finds himself mingling with former Dores on campus, gleaning bits of advice along the way.
“Just yesterday, during a scrimmage, I was late to a fastball,” Infante said. “John Norwood comes to me and says, ‘You’ve got to be on time and have a simple, clear mindset. If that’s good, everything else will follow.’ Those little things can make such a big difference.”
The little things have helped make Infante one of the most dangerous hitters in the SEC. Entering his junior season, the Miami native is a preseason first-team All-SEC and second-team All-America selection for Vanderbilt, which hopes to return to SEC supremacy in 2018. That begins with a three-game series against No. 25 Duke this weekend at Hawkins Field.
Infante, who hit .315 and drove in a team-leading 66 RBIs last season, returns as a headliner of a vaunted junior class for the Commodores.
“I do think it’s our team,” Infante said of the juniors. “We’re the older guys, so that’s our responsibility. You grow up and you have more expectations given to you. That’s your role. We want that, and that’s why we came here.”
One of two Vanderbilt players to appear in all 62 games in 2017, Infante matched eventual first-round pick Jeren Kendall with a team-leading 25 multi-hit games as a sophomore. In a May 7 win over Missouri, Infante drove in a career-best seven runs, the most by a Commodore since Dominic de la Osa in 2006.
But Infante’s production couldn’t carry Vanderbilt on its own. An inconsistent offense and a shuffling pitching corps limited the Dores to a sixth-place finish in the SEC and a first-round loss to South Carolina in the league tournament.
PODCAST: Corbin previews Vanderbilt baseball’s 2018 season
Vanderbilt reversed its course early in the postseason, disposing of St. John’s and Clemson in the NCAA regional and securing a spot in a Super Regional opposite No. 1 Oregon State in Corvallis. That’s where the top-ranked Beavers ended the Dores’ run with a two-game sweep.
Infante said the 2017 season left the Commodores hungry for more.
“We definitely learned so much last year,” he said. “I would never call it a failure; failure doesn’t exist, it’s just an opportunity to learn and improve. Last year, we learned so much. We played our butts off, and we learned from it.”
Infante and his teammates enter 2018 with a young locker room. Freshmen make up half the roster as part of the country’s No. 1-ranked recruiting class. But head coach Tim Corbin, in his 16th season, said Infante and the Dores’ juniors could determine this team’s success. That group also arrived at Vanderbilt as the nation’s top-ranked class, and the likes of shortstop Connor Kaiser and second baseman Ethan Paul join Infante as impactful juniors. That includes righthander Patrick Raby, who spent the second half of 2017 as the Dores’ Friday starter and will reprise that role this season.
“That class was highly regarded when it came in, and in my opinion it’s still highly regarded because of its skill,” Corbin said. “They’re three years into this. They have an idea of the standards and values of what the program is about. Now it’s about them teaching, too, maybe more so than me.
“Leadership, in my opinion, 70 percent of it happens off the field. Thirty percent of the time, they’re here. But 70 percent of the time, they’re with each other. But when they start selling tickets and turn on the scoreboard, that’s when you find out what kind of leadership you have.”
Infante embraces much of that burden. With the departure of Kendall, who was selected 23rd overall by the Los Angeles Dodgers in last June’s Major League Baseball Draft, Infante returns as the Dores’ most lethal hitter in 2018. Those are big shoes to fill for a preseason top-10 team.
But Infante is ready to step up to the plate.
“My maturity has improved since I first arrived at Vanderbilt,” Infante said. “It’s just all I’ve learned with the emotions that come with baseball, school, life. That’s something a minor-league player might not experience at first. In college, you see and learn how to deal with those things. That’s important.”
Zac Ellis is the Writer and Digital Media Editor for Vanderbilt Athletics.
