Should Vanderbilt baseball, Tim Corbin take more transfers? One College World Series team shows how

Vanderbilt baseball has made its name on homegrown talent. Hauling in top recruiting classes every year, the Commodores are known for developing that top talent and then sending those players off to MLB farm systems after three or four years.

But college baseball has changed. Teams like Texas A&M have overhauled their rosters with transfers, building super-experienced squads. Established stars like NC State's Tommy White and Air Force's Paul Skenes — and top draft prospects like Vanderbilt's Christian Little — are now on the move.

After a year in which Vanderbilt finished with its worst SEC record in 13 years after relying heavily on underclassmen, especially in the rotation, there are questions about whether the Commodores' old strategy can still work.

Obstacles to the transfer portal

Like with other elite academic schools, Vanderbilt faces some obstacles to taking transfers. Vanderbilt is notoriously hard to get into, even for athletes. When recruiting transfers, there are some players the Commodores will not be able to take from the start because they won't be admitted.

On top of that, Vanderbilt is stingy with which credits can transfer, meaning undergrad transfers often lose a large amount of progress toward their degree. These hurdles are due to the admissions office, and because of it, Vanderbilt and similar schools have often built strategies around avoiding transfers in roster-building.

Coach Tim Corbin's system isn't necessarily conducive to transfers. Corbin requires complete buy-in from players with some of his unorthodox methods, which include not having access to the locker rooms at the beginning of the season. It's a very different system than the one run by most college coaches, and with his classroom sessions, a large part of his system is focused on development over multiple years as opposed to a one-year plug and play. 

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to reloading through transfers, however, is roster space. In college baseball, teams have 11.7 scholarships to distribute among no more than 35 players. In 2022, the Commodores were significantly over the roster limit; six freshmen and two injured players had to redshirt.

Even with 10 members of the 2022 team in the transfer portal, there are still 32 potential returners plus 18 signees. Vanderbilt would need to lose 16 of those people to the draft, transfer or decommitting in order to have the roster space for transfers. That's not a typical trend for the Commodores, who have seen 65% of their top-100 recruits come to campus over the past five years due to the program's strong MLB Draft record.

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In other sports, many programs have adjusted by simply recruiting fewer high school players, but this is less feasible in baseball where players often commit their freshman year of high school, or sometimes even earlier. According to scouting service Perfect Game, Vanderbilt already has four commits for 2025 and three for 2026.

Despite its recent success, the Commodores may not be seen as an attractive destination for transfers in the next few years due to its roster crunch. Even if there was technically a roster spot, Vanderbilt can make few guarantees of playing time with as much talent as it has. Many of the most high-profile transfers are soon to be draft eligible and looking for a larger role to increase their stock. The Commodores may have trouble offering that, especially for pitchers as Vanderbilt's returning arms include freshman All-Americans in Carter Holton and Devin Futrell.

Would Notre Dame approach work at Vanderbilt?

Ahead of the College World Series, Baseball America did an analysis of how each Omaha team built its roster. Stanford and Notre Dame are also elite private schools with some admissions obstacles and were built primarily on players recruited out of high school.

According to the analysis, all of Stanford's postseason innings and 99% of its postseason at-bats went to players it originally recruited. For Notre Dame, that number was 98% of at-bats and 57% of innings. All of the Irish's innings that did not go to homegrown players went to graduate transfers, and both teams had a small presence of junior college transfers. Both notably lacked any contribution from undergraduate transfers.

This is likely the strategy that would work best for Vanderbilt as well. Corbin has shown an occasional willingness to take junior college (like Javier Vaz) or graduate transfers (like Jack Anderson) if they fill a need and are willing to compete for a spot. Graduate transfers may be easier to attract, as older players are not as sought after in the MLB Draft and thus some grad transfers may not be as insistent on a showcase role on their new team.

While graduate transfers are not as eye-popping as top undergraduates, finding strong graduate transfers in the portal could help add more experienced leadership, fill specific roster holes in any given year and work around some of the roster and admissions issues that come with recruiting undergrad transfers. Notre Dame and Stanford proved that the strategy can still work if executed correctly.

Aria Gerson covers Vanderbilt athletics for The Tennessean. Contact her at agerson@gannett.com or on Twitter @aria_gerson.