One of the most esteemed teachers in collegiate baseball, Scott Brown was appointed Vanderbilt’s pitching coach on Nov. 13, 2012, and added the role of associate head coach ahead of the 2017 season.
Alongside head coach Tim Corbin, a fellow Northeasterner, Brown has helped the Commodores win two national championships and advance to four College World Series finals appearances and six NCAA Super Regionals, in addition to extending the NCAA’s longest active streak of consecutive regional appearances (19).
Under Brown’s acclaimed mentorship, 44 Commodore pitchers have been selected in the MLB Draft, including 13 in the first three rounds. He has also helped 13 Vanderbilt pitchers earn All-America honors and developed 2015 SEC Pitcher of the Year and consensus National Pitcher of the Year Carson Fulmer, 2021 Baseball America National Player of the Year Kumar Rocker and 2021 Golden Spikes Award finalists Rocker and Jack Leiter.
Entering the 2025 season, in just over a decade with the program, he has coached three of the top seven pitchers in career wins, including all-time Vanderbilt leader Patrick Raby, five of the top 10 in career strikeouts and seven of the top 10 in career ERA.
The story of the VandyBoys can’t be written without understanding Brown’s influence.
- En route to the program’s second consecutive CWS finals in 2021, Brown’s pitching staff smashed records and wowed the nation. Kumar Rocker and Jack Leiter tied for the national lead in strikeouts (179), the first teammates to lead the country in strikeouts in at least 30 seasons. Both were finalists for the Golden Spikes Award and Dick Howser Trophy, the third Vanderbilt duo to do so in the same season.
- Rocker and Leiter were selected in the top 10 of the 2021 MLB Draft, marking the second time that Vanderbilt has had multiple top-10 picks since Brown’s arrival.
- As the backbone of Vanderbilt’s run to the 2019 national championship, all six draft-eligible pitchers were selected in the subsequent MLB Draft that summer. Drake Fellows led the nation with 13 wins and three Dores finished in the top 15 nationally in wins.
- Bursting into the spotlight, Rocker was voted College World Series Most Outstanding Player and Baseball America and D1Baseball.com Freshman of the Year. He threw Vanderbilt’s first individual no-hitter since 1971 against Duke in a super regional and broke David Price’s program postseason record with 19 strikeouts.
- Brown’s fourth season, 2016 also marked the fourth consecutive season that a Vanderbilt pitcher earned Freshman All-America honors, Patrick Raby following Kyle Wright (2015), Hayden Stone (2014) and Carson Fulmer (2013). A master of the transition from high school to college, Brown has helped a total of 11 Vanderbilt pitchers earn first-team Freshman All-America honors through the 2024 season.
- Vanderbilt just missed out on back-to-back titles in 2015, but Brown’s pitchers continued to pile up honors. Fulmer was the consensus National Pitcher of the Year and a first team All-American. He was also named SEC Pitcher of the Year after winning the pitching triple crown by leading the league in wins, ERA and strikeouts.
- Brown helped Vanderbilt win its first national title in just his second season. His pitching staff set the school record for strikeouts, surpassing the epic 2007 staff that included David Price and Casey Weathers. Fulmer’s 1.98 ERA was the fifth-lowest in school history and lowest since 1973, as he led the team with 10 saves before seamlessly transitioning to the starting rotation on the way to earning All-SEC honors.
- The Commodores posted one of the best pitching years in Vanderbilt history in Brown’s first season, going 54-12 with 24 saves and a 2.76 team ERA in 2013. Tyler Beede, Kevin Ziomek and Brian Miller each earned All-America honors.
Brown is also a key part of Vanderbilt’s proud history with USA Baseball. He served as Team USA pitching coach on the 2022 USA Baseball Collegiate National Team that won a bronze medal at Honkbalweek Haarlem (Haarlem Baseball Week), an annual invitational in the Netherlands. His pitching staff allowed just five earned runs across 49.2 innings.
Background
Brown joined the Commodores after nine successful seasons as St. John’s pitching coach. In eight seasons with the Red Storm, he mentored 15 pitchers who signed professional contracts. Pitchers Rob Delaney, Craig Hansen, Anthony Varvaro and Scott Barnes eventually reached Major League Baseball, with Hansen the first player in Boston Red Sox history to debut the same year he was drafted.
In 2010, his pitching staff recorded the second-most strikeouts in school history to that point and helped the Red Storm win what remains a school record 43 games. St. John’s repeatedly ranked in the top 10 nationally in team ERA during Brown’s tenure.
Prior to St. John’s, Brown spent four years an assistant coach at the State University of New York at Cortland, his alma mater.
From 2002-04, he also served as the head coach of the Sanford Mainers of the New England Collegiate Baseball League, one of the top summer wooden-bat leagues in the nation. He was honored as the league’s manager of the year in 2004.
Brown first entered the coaching ranks after a stellar three-year pitching career at Cortland, highlighted by second-team All-America honors in 1999 after going 9-1 with a 2.03 ERA. He finished his time on the mound tied for the fifth-most wins in school history.
Brown and his wife Mary have one son, Nolan, and three daughters, Emma and twins Kelsey and Riley.