New Vanderbilt Baseball Coaches 'Want Big Leaguers' When Recruiting
This season will mark five years since the last Men's College World Series championship for the Vanderbilt Commodores.
Considering where the program was at not too long ago, that is an eternity.
The past three seasons have ended with Vanderbilt losing in the regional round of the MCWS, totaling a 4-6 record and not winning a single game last year in the Clemson Regional before being eliminated by Coastal Carolina.
Knowing he had to make a change, longtime coach who has the most wins in program history, Tim Corbin, brought in two new assistants who are looking to make their presence felt in Nashville.
First, Jayson King is coming from Dayton, leaving his post as the head coach there to take this assistant coaching job at a program he covets.
Next, Corbin hired away Duke's recruiting coordinator, Ty Blankmeyer, to join the Commodores.
Both men had some eye-opening comments about the state of Vanderbilt baseball and how they are going to assist in getting this program back to the top of the college baseball world after the recent uncharacteristically early exits in the postseason.
King was pretty blunt about what he saw when he faced the Commodores as the head coach of Dayton.
"It wasn't as athletic as I'd seen in the past. It's still Vanderbilt, but we played here (in 2019) in a three-game set, and that was a different team, as far as the pitching and the position guys," he said per Aria Gerson of The Tennessean.
Vanderbilt has put plenty of players into the MLB during Corbin's run, and while that's still the case, they are missing the high-end depth of talent this program once had.
Knowing that, Blankmeyer made his own blunt comment about what he's going to do on the recruiting trail to improve upon that.
"You've got to have the physical ability to play at Vanderbilt. That's the first thing, you have to be a pro potential player to come to Vanderbilt because we want big leaguers. That's it," he said.
That has to be music to the ears of every Commodores fan.
It will take a bit longer for Blankmeyer to have his impact felt on this program, but King is already looking to provide a boost to this lineup by improving their hitting approach, something that would go a long way in helping them compete in the SEC and for championships again.
Vanderbilt and head coach Corbin were aggressive after recognizing this staff needed a change, and the two people brought in could be exactly what this program has been missing as the Commodores look to get back to the top of this sport.
