Offense continues hot play

By Ryan Schulz - Gone are Pedro Alvarez, Ryan Flaherty, David Macias, Alex Feinberg and Dominic de la Osa from the top of Vanderbilt’s lineup, but you wouldn’t know it if you looked at the scoring output Vanderbilt’s lineup has produced in the last few games.

For the first time since the 2007 season, Vanderbilt has plated 10 or more runs in three straight games. In the last five games, the Commodores have scored 55 runs, 38 of which have come the last three games.

With the losses of the aforementioned players, Vanderbilt was supposed to win more games by scoring four runs than 14. So far that hasn’t been the case.

Tuesday, Vanderbilt (6-3) tallied 10 runs on nine hits en route to earning a 10-3 win over 2008 NCAA Tournament participant Lipscomb.

“Our production was pretty good (tonight),” Head Coach Tim Corbin said. “I thought it was slow going at first and we ran into some outs. I thought as the game progressed, we did a good job of punching runs across. I emphasized to the team to have team at bats and I think we’ve had a lot of good team at bats thus far this year.”

Against Lipscomb, Vanderbilt’s offense was led by the top half of the lineup, which produced eight of the team’s nine hits and drove in eight runs. Corbin is happy with how the top of the lineup is performing, but he knows he will need everyone to contribute as the season progresses.

“We’ve been pretty good so far, but we need the rest of the order to come with us a little bit.”

The lineup may not have many household names, but if the team continues to put up production like it has, it will be well on its way to making up for the production that was lost after last season.