Devin Taylor walked 30 steps from the on-deck circle to the batter’s box, took a couple practice swings and prepared for the moment that etched himself in Indiana baseball history.
It was the bottom of the third inning Saturday afternoon at Bart Kaufman Field in Bloomington. The fans who flocked to the park some two-and-a-half hours earlier had mostly vanished due to a rain delay. Indiana’s 13-run deficit against Maryland didn’t help, either.
But here was Taylor, a program icon who dwarfed the lofty expectations thrust upon him as a freshman, one swing away from the Hoosiers’ home run record. He mashed the 47th of his career in Indiana’s 7-5 loss to Indiana State University on April 15, joining Alex Dickerson, Mike Smith and Mike Sabo in a four-way tie atop the leaderboard.
Then Saturday afternoon, in a gloomy and lifeless 17-4 defeat to Maryland, Taylor stood alone. In the first at-bat back from a 30-minute rain delay, Taylor checked his swing at a high fastball from the Terrapins’ sophomore righty Joey McMannis.
The next offering hung right over the plate. Taylor loaded up, coiling his lower half with a slight raise of his right leg. His swing was short and compact, but with that sweet lefty follow-through just like Seattle Mariners’ legend Ken Griffey Jr., one of Taylor’s favorite players.
Taylor connected perfectly with the pitch. He watched it fly and fly, eventually 413 feet to center field. His 48th home run, and the 12thof his junior season, broke the program record. His mother, Michelle, smiled and recorded her son’s trot around the bases.
He shared a quick embrace with redshirt sophomore outfielder Korbyn Dickerson at home plate before being mobbed in the dugout.
“Just an incredible achievement of consistent, great play,” head coach Jeff Mercer said postgame. “You have to not only be right for a short period of time, or for a season, you have to be right for a long time.”
That time is inching toward three years and likely the last before Taylor enters his name in the MLB Draft, where he’ll almost certainly be selected in the first round. Before arriving at Indiana, Taylor ranked as Ohio’s No. 2 overall prospect and the nation’s 78th in the class of 2022.
He wasn’t always viewed as a power hitter. He was lanky and ran fast enough, threw hard enough and made more than enough contact to be a crucial member of the Hoosiers’ lineup, but there wasn’t always the long ball threat.
Then, with an intensive weight-lifting regimen prior to his debut collegiate campaign, he unleashed his power. Taylor played sparingly at first — it tends to take freshman some time to adjust to college pitching.
“Whoever the coach is that didn’t play him for the first three or four weeks of his freshman year probably slowed him down even more,” Mercer joked.
But his potential became too enticing to ignore. Ultimately, Taylor notched 16 homers in 2023 and tallied 59 RBIs (an Indiana freshman record) en route to Big Ten Freshman of the Year, first-team All-Big Ten and Freshman All-America honors.
His stellar freshman season magnified the whispers of how high his ceiling could be. As a sophomore last season, they grew even louder. Taylor crushed a Big Ten-leading 20 home runs, becoming the first Hoosier since Dickerson in 2010 to reach that mark.
The accolades again rolled in after the season. Expectations continued to mount, with MLB scouts projecting Taylor as high as a top 10-15 pick in the draft. His third season certainly hasn’t been filled with the team success he’d hoped for.
The Hoosiers — now 21-18 and eighth in the conference after Saturday’s blowout loss — are 80th in the NCAA RPI rankings. Pitching has been a cause for concern, and even redshirt senior ace Cole Gilley was shelled in his two-inning start against the Terrapins.
But Taylor hasn’t slowed. Even as he works through swing adjustments, which could’ve conceivably resulted in a dip in power, he’s a threat every time he steps into the batter’s box.
With 16 games left in the regular season, Taylor could very well match his home run production from last season. For a player who so many assumed would be a college star, this success shouldn’t be surprising.
But this good? This consistent? Even Mercer has a hard time grappling with that.
“I thought he’d be a really good player when he came to college,” Mercer said. “I don’t think anybody would have thought he would break the career home run record in less than three years.”
