One of the biggest needs for the Clemson baseball team was finding a productive third baseman in the portal, and landing Toledo transfer Troy Sudbrook fills that need in a very big way.
Not only did his 32 doubles lead the nation, but he’s also a veteran defender over at the hot corner. No one on the Clemson team had more 14 doubles last season, and third base was also an area that was, at times, a weak link defensively.
Sudbrook quietly entered the portal following his fourth season with Toledo. He redshirted in 2024 after suffering an injury. There was no public declaration announcing his departure. He just wanted to quietly find the place where he could finish his collegiate career.
He first visited Michigan, thinking he wanted to stay up north. Then he visited Clemson the first week of June, which ironically coincided with Dabo Swinney’s high school camp. He committed during the visit, and canceled all remaining visits.
See, growing up, Sudbrook was a huge fan of the Tigers’ football team. So much so that is where he wanted to play baseball after high school. Knowing that, while Sudbrook was on his visit, head coach Erik Bakich made sure to take one of his top portal targets over to the indoor facility to meet his favorite head coach, Dabo Swinney.
“He surprised me by taking me over to the football practice facility,” Sudbrook told The Clemson Insider. “I was telling him on my first recruiting call that I was a big Clemson football fan growing up. That we watched Dabo, Deshaun Watson, Trevor Lawrence and Sammy Watkins, and he was like, ‘Oh really? I have got a surprise for you.’ So, he really knocked it out of the park with that one.”
“It was amazing. If he is not the best current college football coach, he is one of the top ones in the country right now. Being able to meet him was a surreal moment. It was kind of funny, as soon as we walked over, I introduced myself and the first thing he said is, ‘Troy Sudbrook, the nation’s leader in doubles, how you doing?’ It was really cool that was how he started it and how he introduced himself. Very cool moment.”
Bakich’s longtime assistant Nick Schnabel was the first coach on the staff to reach out, and the connection was almost immediate. That relationship played a crucial part in Sudbrook’s decision.
“He is a great dude,” Sudbrook said. “My family was talking, and he actually reminds us of Toledo’s old hitting coach whose name was Nick McIntyre, and that is right where we hit it off right away. Have really enjoyed our conversations. When I was in high school, all I wanted was, who can I build the best relationship with? And the hitting coach at Toledo was that person. As soon as I started talking to coach Schnabel, the conversation just flowed effortlessly. He picked my whole family up from the airport in Greenville, drove us over an hour to campus, and getting to know him has been great.”
“The relationship aspect and going somewhere I feel like I am wanted and somewhere I feel like I am joining a second home, a home away from home if you would call it that, is something that was high on my priority list. So, right away, as soon as I talked to him, he made me feel comfortable. Talking about baseball was easy, but talking about life outside of baseball was easy, as well. He made a great first impression on me and my family.”
Last season, Sudbrook slashed .373/.467/.665 with 88 hits, 32 doubles, 11 home runs, 71 RBI, 65 runs scored, 30 walks and 13 stolen bases. He led Toledo with 30 multi-hit games and 20 multi-RBI games. He set two single-season records with his doubles and RBI totals and finished in the top 10 of five different program single-season statistics. For his efforts, he was named a third-team All-American by two different publications.
For his career, he is a .305 hitter with 21 home runs and 139 runs driven in.
Sudbrook never envisioned ending up at a school so far from his hometown in Ohio. However, Bakich and Schnabel made him feel like he was at home on the visit. Not to mention, he’d always dreamed of playing for Clemson.
“In high school, Clemson was my dream school,” Sudbrook said. “But I never got the looks, was never good enough to go there. This was back before coach Bakich got the job. Ended up staying close to home, and when I entered the portal, one of the things I really wanted to do was stay close to home. I wanted my last year to be somewhere my parents could watch me play. I had a visit with Michigan, and I had other visits lined up after Clemson, but I committed, so I had to cancel those visits. But one thing about going down south and meeting coach Bakich and coach Schnabel, they made it feel like home. It was my dream school, and once I visited there, it was something I could not pass up no matter what.
“The campus was absolutely gorgeous. Never really been down south in my life before, so this will be the furthest I have ventured down on my own. We have taken vacations and whatnot, but have never been down south on my own. It just felt like somewhere I could start a career and something I felt like I would regret if I passed it up. So the close-to-home thing went out the window.”
Clemson, coming off an extremely disappointing 2026 season that saw the Tigers miss the NCAA Tournament for the first time during the Bakich era, didn’t give Sudbrook any pause about joining the program. In fact, part of Bakich’s pitch was what kind of impact the All-American could have on getting the program turned back around. That is something Sudbrook found appealing, as did some of the changes Bakich is implementing to ensure there is no repeat next year.
“Clemson was my dream school, so that was not really a factor,” Sudbrook said. “But I did see all the changes coach Bakich made to the program. He saw that last year was not the year that they wanted. Everything involved was not up to his standard and the Clemson baseball standard. That was really what he kind of honed in on during the recruiting pitch, and that I could potentially help make an impact to help change that. And he said we were here to focus on baseball. What I really respected about him was he was very attentive to detail. Whether that was how they stood for the national anthem, to respect those veterans or military people, or whether it was how they are going to attack practice, how they clean their cleats after every practice, put your glove in a certain spot after practice… everything was organized, and everything was set in stone with how he wants it.”
“There is a standard for the program. Yes, playing baseball is important, but it is all the little steps to make sure you are doing the right things each and every day that lead to that end result. That is what I really took a deep dive into, and I knew he never wants last year to happen again. That honestly was one of the things that stood out most to me.”
