Sept. 20, 2011
Following its first-ever trip to the College World Series, Vanderbilt’s baseball team was featured as the cover story of the summer edition of “Vanderbilt Magazine.” Written by former Vanderbilt baseball sports information director Thomas Samuel, the article takes an inside look at the player development process utilized by Head Coach Tim Corbin to create a national powerhouse that wins on the field as well as in the classroom.
The body count was piling up fast. Two hit the ground first. Then three, four and five went down in quick succession. Onlookers soon lost count as the heap of squirming uniformed men just kept growing.
Fortunately, nobody got hurt–it was the Vanderbilt Commodores celebrating their best season in school history. They had just finished a sweep of the Oregon State Beavers to advance from the NCAA Super Regional Tournament to the College World Series. The crowd of 3,000-plus was wild. The players were ecstatic. They were headed where no ‘Dore had gone before.
How did it come to this? Credit Head Baseball Coach Tim Corbin and his staff, who have meticulously prepared Vanderbilt’s baseball program to keep its eye on this prize year in and year out. During his nine years on Jess Neely Drive, Corbin has shaped the Commodores into one of college baseball’s elite teams.
After Corbin’s first Vanderbilt season in 2003, the Commodores had just one player drafted, pitcher Robert Ransom, BS’04, in the 23rd round. This year, in a testament to the upgrade in talent level on campus, 12 Vanderbilt players were selected in major league baseball’s amateur draft–a Southeastern Conference record. Led by junior All-American pitcher Sonny Gray, ’12, the 18th pick of the first round by the Oakland Athletics, Vanderbilt had nine players drafted in the first 10 rounds.
In nine seasons Corbin has watched as 91 players have been drafted, including eight in the first round. Talent has led the program to unprecedented success on the field, but talent alone is not what has brought the program where it is today. Vanderbilt’s ground-up effort of scouting potential players, recruiting them to campus, developing them while here, turning them into professionals–and doing so successfully–has separated Vanderbilt from other teams.
