‘No one is in the same category as him’

With Millersville leading by two runs in the top of the seventh inning and a runner on second base, Mansfield could ill afford to surrender another run. The second baseman lingered close to the bag, limiting Keegan Soltis’ lead off second base. With his ever-relaxed hitting stance – legs straight but ready, hands low and close to his chest with the head of his bat rhythmically ticking like the pendulum of a clock – Bren Taylor eyed the empty expanse on the right side of the infield. It was too easy.

With expert bat control and situational awareness, Taylor guided a fastball precisely where the second baseman should have been, allowing Soltis to score. While it was just one single on another Sunday afternoon at Cooper Park, that hit epitomized the rarity of Taylor’s hitting talent. That ground ball connected Taylor to West Chester’s Matt Cotellese (2005–09) and Millersville’s Chas McCormick (2014–17) as the only players in PSAC history with 300 career hits. Six days later, in a pivotal PSAC divisional game against East Stroudsburg, which trailed Millersville by two games in the standings, Taylor, in typical Taylor fashion, collected his PSAC record-setting 307th hit on a line drive through the left side of the infield as ESU’s shortstop shaded the middle at double-play depth.

Taylor departed Millersville as the only player in program history with four PSAC East titles and two PSAC Championships. He spent his career making the impossibly difficult seem impossibly easy. He totaled 315 career hits – nine more than McCormick in four fewer starts and 24 fewer at bats, all while posting an on-base percentage 50 points higher. Taylor scored a PSAC record 233 runs, set a single-season PSAC record for runs in 2022 and set Millersville records for triples and total bases.

Taylor came to Millersville as an unheralded recruit with average tools. He honed his swing not in the competitive travel ball circuit or with private hitting lessons but as a teenager playing 20-, 30- and 40-year-old men in the York men’s league. No one can figure out where or how Taylor developed his off-the-charts baseball IQ, but everyone agrees: Taylor is a hitting genius. It is his uncanny ability to adjust in a moment, to seemingly telepathically understand the catcher-pitcher’s silent back-and-forth, to see the flick of the pitcher’s hand, the spin of the ball, a late shift by the fielders – all in a blink – and process that and use a baseball bat to redirect a baseball precisely where he wants it to go. Taylor is the most unlikely of record-breaking hitters, and his brilliance in the box can only be understood (even then only somewhat) by the coaches and teammates who’ve seen and marveled at his every swing.

THE STORYTELLERS

• Jon Shehan ‘06, Millersville head coach in his 18th season, who has led the Marauders to more than 600 wins and 12 consecutive NCAA Regional appearances.
• David Baker, Millersville’s longtime assistant coach and recruiting coordinator, who has been a part of the program since 2009.
• Jimmy Losh ‘22, now an assistant coach but once Taylor’s teammate and leadoff hitter whose career records for runs and triples Taylor broke this season.
• Dan DeVinney, Millersville’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes leader and former baseball coach, who attends nearly every practice and has sat in the dugout every game for the last eight years.
• Conor Cook ‘24, a pitcher and teammate of Taylor’s for four years, who has often tried and often failed to retire Taylor in intrasquad scrimmages.
• Evan Rishell ‘25, a Millersville pitcher for the last four seasons and a high school teammate of Taylor’s. Taylor helped Rishell get noticed by Shehan, and Rishell has become an all-region reliever.

‘WHO IS THIS KID?’

Bren Taylor’s first game as a Marauder displayed the skills that brought him to the brink of history. Playing at the Houston Astros’ Minute Maid Park, Taylor worked a full count in his first at bat, doubled and scored his second time through the lineup, then earned a six-pitch walk and scored again. He saw 20 pitches in four plate appearances. He has since recorded at least one hit in 173 of 219 starts and two or more hits 88 times. Taylor, Losh, Luke Trainer (2018–22) and Tyler Orris (2013–16) are the only Marauders to record at least 230 hits and 100 walks. Taylor has the best career batting average among the 17 active Division II players with at least 400 at bats and 160 hits. Across all levels of NCAA baseball, only Augustana’s Jack Hines and Virginia Tech’s Ben Watson totaled more hits, but Taylor played in fewer games and recorded a higher batting average than both. Taylor’s career, from game one, has been the stuff of legend.

Shehan: “His high school coach called me and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got a guy who had one strikeout his junior year, and it was on a foul tip.’ I said, ‘OK, I need to see this kid.’ I asked, ‘What travel team does he play for?’ His coach said, ‘He doesn’t play travel ball. He plays in the men’s league, and he’s been doing it since his freshman year.’ I took my lawn chair, sat in center field, and there were no other coaches there because it’s a men’s league game. He missed one barrel in three games.”

Baker: “He’s the only guy I’ve ever heard of (playing men’s league). Everyone is playing travel ball. He was a junior in high school and came to camp. He showed up in Sperrys and Rec Specs, no shoelaces, and you are just like, ‘Who is this kid?’ It was interesting. Even with the shoes and the glasses, he just barreled everything. You don’t see that kind of bat-to-ball skills.”

Shehan: “There were a bunch of college coaches who missed him at that camp. He ran a 7.1 60. He didn’t throw it great from the outfield, but he squared up every single ball in batting practice. He’s very quiet, so it was a hard read from a recruiting side of things. But when I watched him for a couple of games, I could tell he was really competitive, and that’s why we offered him.”

Baker: “We had an intrasquad at Keystone in the preseason of his freshman year. He was facing Aidan Welch. Aidan made him look really bad on a changeup. The next pitch was a fastball right down the middle, and Bren just took it. The next pitch, Welch went back to the changeup, and Bren hit a line drive that almost knocked his hat off. Bren was setting him up to get back to that changeup.”

Losh: “My first clear memory of him was in Houston at the start of the 2020 season, first weekend of the year. He struck out, came into the dugout and said, ‘That’s the last time I’m striking out the rest of the year.’ Everyone was like, ‘All right, who is this freshman?’ Turns out, he’s one of the best strikeout-rate guys we’ve had in the program.”

‘HE’S BASEBALL BRILLIANT’

Taylor’s career stacks up against the best of the best. Taylor and Cotellese are the only players in PSAC history with two 90-hit seasons. Taylor set the PSAC’s single-season runs record in 2022, and he is one of four players in PSAC history with two seasons of 60 or more runs scored. That group includes West Chester’s Nick Spisak, Nick Ward and Joey Wendle. Ward, who played his final season at West Chester in 2018, is currently playing his eighth season of pro ball. Wendle played nine seasons in Major League Baseball, with an All-Star selection in 2021.

Since 1970, the PSAC has produced six Major League position players. Of that group, only McCormick, Shepherd’s Brenton Doyle (currently the Colorado Rockies’ center fielder) and Slippery Rock’s Matt Adams hit .400 even once as a collegiate hitter. Taylor accomplished the feat twice, batting .426 in 56 games (216 at bats) in 2023 and .425 in 55 games (214 at bats) in 2022. Oh, and Taylor hit .399 as a sophomore in 2021 and is currently hitting .387 after a full year away from the game. Adams hit the mark three times at The Rock before hitting .258 in 10 seasons in the big leagues and playing in two World Series.

Taylor was not blessed with the incredible bat speed and elite athleticism possessed by McCormick and Doyle, or the imposing stature and sheer strength of Adams (listed at 6-3 and 263 pounds on the Baseball Reference website). Taylor was a hitting savant – a baseball detective, solving pitchers using a variety of clues gathered through careful and tedious observation. He analyzes his approach and fixes his swing through countless hours in the cage.

Baker: “It’s his intelligence and the things he sees that others don’t, finding tips off of pitchers. It’s so far more advanced than the other great hitters who have come through here. I’ve been here 15 years, and there is no one in the same category as him when it comes to intelligence, what he sees and how he sees it.”

Shehan: “Baker called Zach Stone ’15 (Millersville alum and former All-American) up and said, ‘This kid’s going to be a .400 hitter. He’s the real deal.’ You could see it early. Most guys who play early have a lot of physical talent. Bren has one of the slowest bats on our team when you look at the raw data. But his mind is so much more advanced than most.”

DeVinney: “He’s baseball brilliant. He’s so even-keeled. He never bangs his helmet. You would never know if he hit a home run or struck out. There are no highs and lows. Very steady.”

Baker: “There was one game where he took two straight curveballs right down the middle. It was 0-2, but the next pitch, he hit it out to right-center because he knew he wouldn’t get the same pitch three times in a row. He was waiting for one pitch the whole at bat and got it.”

DeVinney: “His mental game is amazing. He sets up pitchers by taking pitches, sometimes by swinging and missing so he can use it in a future at bat. He comes back and tells all the hitters what he sees from the pitcher. He is really good at picking up grips. He shares his knowledge with his teammates.”

Losh: “One of the alums talked to the team about passing along information to the next hitter. Bren and I took that and ran with it. We got pretty good at it. We sharpened each other with that. He was looking for how the ball came out of the pitcher’s hand. How the ball was spinning, if the breaking ball pops up, if the fastball is a two-seam or four-seam, if the changeup spins the same as a fastball or if the pitcher pronates it with side spin. He was pretty much the guy who got that rolling.… He helped me grow as a hitter in that aspect. It made me look really closely at what I was seeing.”

Rishell: “He’s really smart, and he’s a huge team guy. So he’s always looking for things that will help the team. I sit with him at the end dugout and talk about what we can pick up from a pitcher or catcher. He does it to help the team.”

‘THOSE ARE THE THINGS THAT MAKE HITTERS GREAT’

For Taylor, hitting is innate. He graduated in 2023 after winning the PSAC East Athlete of the Year award for the second time and worked full-time as an educator. But he had one year of eligibility remaining, and despite already winning a PSAC Championship and NCAA Regional, he had unfinished business. He enrolled in graduate school and joined the team in January. Even after more than a year away from the game, Taylor started 2025 with a 10-game hitting streak and finished his season ranked in the PSAC’s top-10 in hitting. He joined McCormick as the only four-time All-PSAC East selections in Millersville history and became the first Marauder named All-Atlantic Region First Team four times.

Cook: “He’s one of those guys who could not touch a bat for five years, wake up and go find a way to get a hit.”

Losh: “I was little skeptical about how he would come back after a year off. It’s hard when you are away from the game, and even if you are swinging it, it’s getting back into game situations. He came back in training camp, and it was about a day or two before he got right back into it. He was born to hit. You see him in the box, and it doesn’t look like he’s super hitter-ish. But he gets a barrel on everything, and that’s never going to change.”

Baker: “There might have been a weekend where he was a little behind. There’s a grace period of if he’s ready to go, having not seen live pitching in over a year. There was an intrasquad about a week in. I was standing next to Jon in the third-base coaching box. After a couple of barrels in a row, it was like, ‘He’s good to go.’ He can roll out of bed and hit.”

DeVinney: “There was a game recently where Matthew (Williams) was on first base. Matthew gave a fake steal, so the shortstop broke for second. Bren, just like he was playing pool, shot it through the shortstop hole. How did he see that guy breaking? I don’t know. No one can do that.”

Rishell: “You have to have your best when you face him. If it’s the No. 9 hitter, maybe you can get away with throwing a fastball down the middle. But with him, you can’t make one mistake pitch … you have to throw your best at all times. I feel like he’s a guy I should be able to get out, but I feel like I never can. He always finds a way to get a hit.”

Shehan: “He walked off a couple of years ago on a team that was playing him in the six-hole. He went up to the plate with a plan to hit the ball down the left-field line, and he doubled on the first fastball on the outer half. Those are the things that make hitters great.”

‘HE’S THEIR LEAST FAVORITE GUY TO FACE’

On March 28, Millersville trailed Shippensburg 3–2 in the bottom of the seventh inning. Taylor stepped in with the bases loaded and one out. He lined the first pitch from Shippensburg closer Jack Robinson into center field for a walk-off, two-run single and a 4–3 Millersville win. Taylor’s been a menace to the PSAC East and simply outstanding in games that matter most. His career batting average against division opponents is .431. His on-base percentages border on absurdity: .463, .542, .531, .491.

Taylor is clutch, delivering a walk-off hit in each of the last two seasons. He was at his best against the best, producing 47 career postseason hits and hitting over .400 in the postseason. In the 2022 PSAC Tournament, he went 8 for 19, leading Millersville to the championship, and recorded two or more hits in five of the team’s seven postseason games. In 2023, he hit .500 (18 for 36) in nine tournament games, recording five hits against Seton Hill in the NCAA Super Regional and six hits in three games at the Division II World Series.

Cook: “He was always a pain to face. He doesn’t chase any pitches outside the zone. If you throw him a pitch inside the zone, he will hit it hard somewhere. He doesn’t swing and miss. I’ve talked to pitchers from other PSAC teams, and they always say he’s their least favorite guy to face.”

Losh: “A couple of years ago, we were down against Shippensburg. We always have tight games with them, and it can get chippy sometimes. I got hit by a pitch, and I took a little exception to it and had a couple of words with the pitcher. I went to first base, and Bren was chirping from the on-deck circle. He went up, backed me up, and hit a two-run home run to give us the lead. That’s just one of those times where he has my back, talking for me and backing it up with a home run.”

DeVinney: “He rarely hits home runs, and that one was perfect timing. It was almost like he just decided he was going to hit a home run.”

Cook: “You can’t tell it, but he’s super competitive – a gamer. He doesn’t show his emotions, but in a big spot, he’s a guy you want up. Every time he’s up to bat, you feel like he’s going to get a hit, but in those situations where you need to get a run in, move a guy over, there’s nobody better than him. You know he’s going to find a way to hit a ground ball to the right side or hit a fly ball, whatever it needs to be.”

Rishell: “You have 100% confidence in him. The whole team, when he steps in, goes to the front of the dugout. We believe in him.”

Often, the legend outshines reality. Not with Bren Taylor. It’s all true and undeniably documented in cold, unembellished numbers. There is a story in every hit, all 315 of them.