After Vanderbilt Baseball’s uncharacteristically early exit in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, Tim Corbin knew that changes needed to be made.
Following a 38-23 season that saw the Commodores crash out of the postseason after regional losses to Coastal Carolina and High Point, Corbin was active in the transfer portal. The stalwart coach went out and secured a handful of veteran commitments, instantly bolstering Vanderbilt’s power potential after the ‘Dores finished second-to-last in the SEC in home runs.
Additionally, Corbin fired assistant coaches Tyler Shewmaker and Mike Baxter and hired Ty Blankmeyer and Jayson King. Blankmeyer is a former assistant coach and recruiting coordinator at Duke, while King comes to Nashville after seven years as the head coach at Dayton.
“Jayson’s got experience. He’s been a head coach for a long period of time — 27 years,” Corbin said. “He’s like a new player who’s just trying to identify the personalities of the guys and see how he fits in, but he’s taking ownership of a lot of things that’s very helpful to myself.”
Corbin echoed similar sentiments about what Blankmeyer brings to the table.
“Although Ty is younger, he brings a lot of experience,” Corbin said. “He’s a very good evaluator. He has a Major League Baseball background, played Division I baseball and has been at two very good schools at Wake and Duke and did a lot of their recruiting as well.”
Along with bringing in an updated staff, the team completely turned over its roster with 14 new first-years and eight new transfers. Four of the team’s best offensive contributors last year are returning — RJ Austin, Jayden Davis, Matthew Polk and Jonathan Vastine — but Corbin mentioned that bolstering offensive depth was a key goal in the offseason.
“Yeah, it’s probably a larger number [of transfers] for us and smaller in comparison to other schools. I think we needed to gain some bolder depth in some spots,” Corbin said. “Whether it was more power, which is certainly something we could look at with Kropf and Mancini and Riley Nelson. But I think it was also their abilities as baseball players to not [just] power, but provide defensive abilities.”
On the pitching side, Vanderbilt also enters the season in a tough position. This year, the team only has one returning starting pitcher, JD Thompson. Corbin has had to effectively rebuild his entire pitching roster by simultaneously finding starters for the spring while developing new talent.
“We’re looking for growth — [to] see who will step up, see who has the ability to get through a lineup once, twice. [We want to see] durability, strength, pull velocity and the ability to use several pitches,” Corbin said. “There’s a lot of development feedback before we start looking at guys and starting positions.”
Fall ball starts next weekend for the team, and the Commodores will host Tennessee Tech on Oct. 4 before heading to Las Vegas to play a neutral site game against Nevada at the Oakland Athletics’ Triple-A stadium. Corbin also discussed the troubles that Vanderbilt faced on the road in 2023, as the team finished with an away record of 4-12 last year.
“Well, we try to [play away] every year. So you know, playing on the road last year was difficult for us, but I think we always try to take them on the road and try to find ways to remove the comfort that you get at home,” Corbin said. “I think it’s just a matter of getting comfortable on the road, being comfortable as a team.”
Senior Jonathan Vastine talked about how the new coaching staff has brought consistency — a big theme for the team — to the new-look Commodores.
“I think all of us are just really trying to work on consistency throughout every top to bottom line, just staying consistent. [We want] power numbers obviously to increase,” Vastine said. “We have a lot of juice throughout the team and we’re going to show it off a little bit.”
Vanderbilt Baseball’s SEC schedule was released two weeks ago — the spring season inches closer and closer as fall ball gets ready to start next week. After an offseason full of change, there’s optimism throughout the Commodores’ clubhouse that their group is ready to return to the pinnacle of baseball.
