As you've likely heard, we don't have any live-action contests to cover at LetsGoPeay.com right now. What we do have is free time; oodles and oodles of free time. Enough free time to swap oodles of emails with various people who would know to create a snapshot of the 10 best players in Austin Peay baseball history. Up next is the hulking slugger by which future generations of Austin Peay mashers will be measured.

We love our big tater-mashing buddy Parker Phillips around these parts. But to limit Parker to "just" a slugger doesn't do justice to his accomplishments.  

Phillips could rake. Absolutely. He could also man two of the tougher positions on the diamond—catcher and third base—with equal aplomb if needed, or play first, or a little bit of outfield as the need arose. That's not the skillset of someone whose only qualification is hitting.

But now, about the hitting. For Austin Peay, for the Ohio Valley Conference, Phillips was everything you could ever dream of in a power hitter. His 56 home runs in just three seasons before being drafted don't tell the entire story, although besting the previous program best by nearly 20 homers certainly says a lot—had Phillips not been drafted following the 2019 season, he almost certainly would have put the OVC record of 62 home runs well behind him.

A career slash line of .321/.437/.679 indicates greatness, and Phillips' greatness was apparent from the start; after an injury cost him his first season in Clarksville, the Collierville native cranked a freshman record 12 home runs in his 2017 redshirt season and slowly built his legacy from there. After equaling Nate Manning's then-record 19 home runs in 2018, Phillips was invited to the Quicken Loans Collegiate Home Run Derby in Omaha before decamping to Cape Cod for the prestigious Cape Cod League that same summer.

His final campaign was his greatest. Anchoring the order, Phillips slugged a program-record 25 home runs, posted a .732 slugging percentage and drove in 64 runs to earn not only first-team All-OVC but second-team All-American honors from Collegiate Baseball. That led to his selection by the Minnesota Twins, for whom he will begin his first full season of pro ball in 2020.