Series Snapshot: LSU at Vanderbilt

By Hunt Palmer

It’s time to start the race.

All 16 SEC teams take the field Friday evening in game one of 30. Those 30 go a long, long way in deciding how June looks. Neither LSU nor Vanderbilt played the way they wanted in the first month of the season. A lot of that goes away with two or three wins this weekend. These games carry so much weight, and the strength of the conference makes it a complete grind start to finish.

Last year, Vanderbilt was the top overall seed in the NCAA Tournament and failed to emerge from its regional. LSU, of course, won the national title. Some of the pieces from those teams remain, but both rosters look a lot different.

One of Vanderbilt’s key cogs, right-hander Austin Nye, is questionable for the weekend. He’s the Commodores’ most electric arm who allowed no earned runs in his first 10 innings of the season with 13 punchouts. He’s missed time with biceps discomfort and may not be available.

FRIDAY FIRST

Casan Evans and Connor Fennell will get the ball Friday night as they have all season. Aside from being right-handed and being huge contributors last season, they couldn’t be more different.

Fennell is 6-foot-1 and rail thin. He has a long, lanky windup and doesn’t throw anything straight. His tailing fastball will be 89-90 mph and works off a 78 mph changeup that rarely creeps above the knees. His breaking ball is slow, slow at 69 mph. He won’t remind anyone of David Price, Tyler Beede, Walker Beuhler, Kumar Rocker or Jack Leiter. He’s not the typical Vanderbilt first rounder ace. But he’s effective.

Connor Fennell punches out 40% (D1 top 1%) with an 88 mph FB.. but why???

4.5 release height (top 4%)
6.7 extension (top 4%)
-4.31 FB in zone VAA (top 1%)

Velocity isn’t the separator.. leverage & deception are

Another factor -> he acts like he throws 100.. ZERO fear pic.twitter.com/VlH3tCDtOB

— Tyler Herb (@TylerHerb) February 17, 2026

Last season Fennell went 4-0 with a 3.21 ERA in SEC games. He struck out 67 and walked nine in 42 innings with a .178 batting average allowed. This season he’s struck out 30 and walked three with another sub-.200 opponent batting average.

Evans is coming off of his best start of the season when he was perfect through five innings. It’s all about fastball command for the Tiger right-hander. The matchup to watch here is Vanderbilt’s new-found power against Evans’s track record. The Commodores, who didn’t hit for much power at all last season, just 40 for the season without a player reaching nine, are second in the SEC with 44 already. Evans has not allowed a home run in his LSU career through 72 innings.

SUPER SLUGGERS

Braden Holcomb and Jake Brown have taken the next step.

Last season, Holcomb hit .275 with nine home runs. Brown hit .320 with eight homers. They both had really nice years for good teams. This season, they’re leading the way for these teams and are SEC Player of the Year candidates.

Holcomb is a former high-level high school football player with a 6-foot-5, 245-pound build. He’s already smashed 10 homers before conference play including three in Vandy’s last four games. He’s hitting .353 for the season with an OPS of 1.278.

Brown is up to nine homers himself. He’s hitting .413 with a 1.335 OPS.

Both lineups are capable 1-9, but these to have emerged as “the guy.” We’ll see how much they get to hit this weekend in a Hawkins Field with newly shortened dimensions this season.

WHICH WALKS

Free bases are going to be huge this weekend.

Vanderbilt has walked the second most hitters in the SEC, and that’s with a Friday night ace who doesn’t walk anyone. Once Fennell exits, the staff is extremely vulnerable to walks. When LSU was going its best, the Tigers were drawing a ton of walks. Through the first nine games of the year, LSU was drawing seven walks per game and scoring 11.4 runs per game. In the last nine, they’re averaging less than five walks per game and scoring 5.6 runs. Walks are in part due to pitching. You can’t fully control it, but Vanderbilt has been charitable from the mound. LSU would do well to put runners on base via the free pass.

That said, LSU has walked too many hitters, too. And Vanderbilt is fifth in the SEC in drawing walks. LSU mirrors that by issuing the fifth most. Cooper Moore and William Schmidt have been excellent in that department, but Evans has had his issues, and arms like Mavrick Rizy, Ethan Plog and Deven Sheerin have struggled with the zone here and there.