How Connor Fennell Has Navigated Tipping, Struggle and His 2026 Season As A Whole For Vanderbilt Baseball – Sports Illustrated

NASHVILLE—Connor Fennell says he’d never been through a situation in which he had to figure out how to navigate tipping his pitches, but that reality was dramatic and unavoidable as he struggled to figure it out earlier this season. 
Fennell admits that he’s bad at knowing when he’s tipping pitches, but says Vanderbilt pitching coach Scott Brown picks it up well and was able to help Fennell navigate the process of eliminating his tips. 
The experience was jarring, but it was inevitable. 
“It’s crazy,” Fennell said. “People do it, so it's part of the game and it's on me to not tip. So, if I'm doing it, then they get it, then that's on me.” 
And for some time there, opposing teams did pick up what Fennell was doing and adjusted accordingly. When they did it, they really did it. Fennell was beat up as he gave up nine runs against Texas and seven against LSU. Outings like that didn’t happen a year ago, but they’ve been an unavoidable part of the story of Fennell’s season. 
After a debut season at Vanderbilt in which Fennell posted a 2.53 ERA and 6-0 record, he’s regressed to a 5.09 ERA and a 2-3 mark. It’s not as if Fennell has lost his abilities, but the level of consistency he’s performed with and the ruthlessness in which he operated with hasn’t always been on the mound with him. 
This 2026 season has been a challenge for Fennell, and he’s not running from that. 
“It's definitely not been perfect in my eyes,” Fennell said in regard to his individual season. “I set my goals and standards pretty high for myself, but I've learned a lot about myself this year, and this has definitely been. probably the most important year of my baseball career so far, just because of how much I've learned about myself and how much I've learned as a whole.”
Fennell began the season as a featured player in a number of national stories, a candidate to be one of the SEC’s best Friday-night guys and was operating in the aftermath of a viral video that highlighted how quickly he works. 
He was all but playing with house money a season ago, but now his book is out. There’s been expectation. There’s been pressure. Fennell acts as if he hasn’t felt it, but his coach is indirectly calling his bluff. 
“When you pitch on Friday night, it's a different responsibility,” Corbin said. “It's completely different. 
I mean, you got a target on your front. You got a target on your back. Everyone scouts you at a rate that they don't scout any other pitcher. 
He's learning that. But he's getting better because of it, too. And I think, from mid-season on, he's probably wondering at certain points how he's getting hit, but I think he's done a good job of reinventing some pitches, adding some pitches, keeping the disparity between velocities, I think that's helped him.”
Fennell appeared to have done that in Vanderbilt’s Thursday-night win over South Carolina. For a second there, this looked like the Fennell of 2025. 
While a South Carolina hitter walked around the back of the batters’ box and eventually stepped in, Fennell was standing there ready to pitch with his glove covering the bottom half of his face. It’s a posture that Fennell went viral for this time a year ago as his ruthless nature led to him generating a strikeout against Tennessee. It’s the pose that Fennell will be most remembered for when his Vanderbilt career ultimately ends. 
Fennell was ruthless. He was dialed in. He was Connor Fennell, and nobody within Hawkins Field could help but take that for granted. 
Thursday night, Fennell put together the type of outing that he generated consistently a year ago. He went 6.1 innings, gave up just four hits, a run and struck out seven. Fennell hasn’t left that type of outing in his past, but nowadays there’s a question of whether this version of Fennell will show up. 
For the second-consecutive week, though, he’s been dominant. Perhaps he wouldn’t have been that way so demonstratively had he flown through this season seamlessly. He believes he’s better for what he’s been through. 
Corbin says Fennell is growing in motion and that the mentality he’s carried hasn’t changed, he says that Vanderbilt’s players also still feel good about things when Fennell is throwing. Perhaps the version of him that sparked those feelings in the first place is coming back into play. 
“I've learned how to deal with struggle,” Fennell said. “This is the first year that in competition, I've actually dealt with struggles, dealt with tipping, dealt with pitching mechanics to work on throughout the year. So it's been good to learn myself.”
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Joey Dwyer is the lead writer on Vanderbilt Commodores On SI. He found his first love in college sports at nearby Lipscomb University and decided to make a career of telling its best stories. He got his start doing a Notre Dame basketball podcast from his basement as a 14-year-old during COVID and has since aimed to make that 14-year-old proud. Dwyer has covered Vanderbilt sports for three years and previously worked for 247 Sports and Rivals. He contributes to Seth Davis' Hoops HQ, Basket Under Review and Mainstreet Nashville.
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