Vanderbilt Baseball Athlete Wins Weekly SEC Award – Sports Illustrated

For the first time during the 2026 season, a Vanderbilt baseball athlete got his first weekly conference award.
Vanderbilt’s Braden Holcomb won the SEC Player of the Week for his performance in the Commodores’ three-game sweep against Marist and a two-game sweep of Eastern Michigan. Holcomb’s bat was red hot all week as he went 11-for-19 at the plate (.579 batting average) and hit three home runs.
Of Holcomb’s 11 hits, five of them were for extra bases and he brought home 10 runs with his hits as well. Holcomb got at least two hits in four of the five Vanderbilt games this past week.
Holcomb’s performance was a microcosm of the improvement Vanderbilt has had offensively thus far. The Commodores bats have been much improved compared to a season ago. Through eight games, Vanderbilt has hit 22 home runs as a team. At this point last season, Vanderbilt had hit just eight home runs.
The offense has been the biggest storyline of the season for Vanderbilt given how much an improvement has happened. It has been more than just moving the right field wall in closer. It has a lot to do with the hiring of hitting coach Jason Esposito over the offseason.
If there is one thing that Vanderbilt’s batting order has learned from Esposito’s coaching in the short time he has been on staff, it is plate discipline. There has been far less of players swinging at pitches far out of the strike zone and noticeably more patience by the players in their at-bats.
"It's being simple and sticking to our plan," Logan Johnstone said after Vanderbilt took down Marist 16-5 Friday. "There's a huge emphasis on sticking to our approach and staying on fastballs."
Holcomb has been one of those guys that has taken Esposito’s coaching to heart and has done a good job of applying it. Through eight games, Holcomb is batting .467 with four home runs and a team-leading 15 RBIs. Holcomb’s batting average is the best on the roster among players that have started in at least five of the eight games.
Vanderbilt’s 5-0 record at home the past week was much needed after it started the season off 1-2 in Arlington, Texas at the Shriner’s Children’s College Showdown. With a 6-2 record now, Vanderbilt looks to add to the win column with a home game Tuesday against Evansville before going to Las Vegas, Nevada for three games at the Live Like Lou Las Vegas College Classic.
Vanderbilt and Evansville are scheduled to begin at 4:30 p.m. CT.
Graham Baakko is a writer for Vanderbilt Commodores On SI, primarily covering football, basketball and baseball. Graham is a recent graduate from the University of Alabama, where he wrote for The Crimson White, WVUA-FM, WVUA 23 as he covered a variety of Crimson Tide sports. He also covered South Carolina athletics as a sportswriting intern for GamecockCentral.
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