‘The Worst Thing To Be Around Big Mike Is A Baseball’: How Michael Anderson Is Rewriting Penn State Baseball’s Record Books
There’s an age-old saying, “Sometimes, you just have to stop and smell the roses”. No matter what trials and tribulations you’re going through in life, you must take time out of your day to appreciate the beauty of the world around you.
There’s a way to extrapolate that to sports. Some teams just don’t win. There are times when, regardless of the pieces and players on a specific team, they can’t come up with the right formula to translate it into wins. Penn State baseball personifies that, as they enter Wednesday’s Dollar Dog Night clash with No. 12 West Virginia with a 12-29 record.
It might be frustrating to watch a team that has been on a steady upward trajectory the last two years struggle, but sometimes, you just have to admire the bright spots. The roses, in this analogy, are designated hitter Michael Anderson, who’s shining through the struggles with a historic season.
The raw numbers themselves tell a story of dominance, even without the overall context. Through 40 games, he’s slashing .364/.481/.795 with 18 home runs, 47 RBIs, 28 extra-base hits, and a strikeout rate of just 12 percent. There are so many components here that so rarely come together. A high batting average coupled with a tremendous slugging ability. A player who so effortlessly puts a charge in the ball, without having an exploitable hole in his swing.
MLB’s top power hitters strike out a lot. MLB’s annual leaders in batting average make a lot of contact. Anderson is blending both.
“He just annihilates everything,” head coach Mike Gambino said about Anderson after his two-homer game on Dollar Dog Night against Bucknell. “Everything he hits is 100 miles an hour.”
This talent evaded Penn State when Anderson came out of Monsignor Bonner High School in Havertown, just outside of Philadelphia, in 2022. Ranked as the No. 4 first baseman and No. 69 player overall in the state, he committed to Rhode Island.
He spent his first two collegiate seasons mashing in the Atlantic 10, slashing .288/.408/.562 across 100 games and earning all-conference and Freshman All-American honors, and even breaking an NCAA record with a 12-RBI game in March 2024.
His numbers earned him big-time recognition, and all his hard work paid off when he transferred to SEC contender Arkansas for 2025. But the consequences of going to a place that’s competing for a College World Series title are that competition is fierce, and Anderson spent much of the season on the bench as the Razorbacks went on a run to a third-place finish at the College World Series, with their prized transfer playing a grand total of four games.
Entering his senior year, he went back in the portal to get another opportunity to play, and he found it when he returned home to Penn State, where he’s threatening to rewrite the record books.
“The guys have had their arms wide open for me when I came in, and that’s all you can really ask for,” Anderson said in early March. “The guys are great, they’re always there for you through ups and downs.”
His numbers gain even more importance when contextualized.
His 18 home runs put him one shy of the program record of 19, set by Ben Heath in 2010, with 11 games left. Penn State is one of just three Big Ten programs (Northwestern, Ohio State) to never have a player mash 20 home runs in a season, but that could very well change soon.
His .795 slugging percentage is only topped by one player in program history: Dave Simononis in 1978. Back then, a college baseball season was extremely truncated, so while Simononis’ numbers on a rate basis are truly jaw-dropping, they don’t compare, as he only played 25 games and took 102 plate appearances. The highest full-season slugging percentage by a player with at least 30 games played? .754 by John Schreiner in 1990.
His 1.276 OPS would currently be the best in Penn State history (min. 30 games). He’s on pace to be just the fourth Nittany Lion in history to drive in 60 runs in a season and one of three to accumulate 150 total bases. He’s on pace to do these things despite Penn State’s long-shot odds of extending their season past the second week of May into the Big Ten Tournament, giving him less of a runway than some of his predecessors.
His stats don’t just stand out on his own team, but in the Big Ten. He’s ninth in batting average, sixth in on-base percentage and RBIs, second in total bases, and he leads the whole conference in home runs and slugging percentage. In a conference that could send as many as six teams to the NCAA Tournament, Anderson has a chance to be Penn State’s first Big Ten Player of the Year in 26 years and their first All-American of any kind in 16 years.
Not even the man himself seems completely aware of where he stacks up in Penn State history as he’s gone through the ebbs and flows of a season.
“That’s actually the first time I’ve heard that,” Anderson told the media when his proximity to the program home run record was brought up. “That’s pretty cool, but I mean, it’s the same mindset, just showing up to the ballpark and giving it my all.”
The formula for Anderson’s breakout senior season has been shown in the past. Gambino has made it a strategy in the transfer portal to bring former Northeast, and particularly Pennsylvania, natives home from the SEC after down seasons and immediately making them fixtures in their lineups. In 2025, Paxton Kling had one of the best all-around seasons in the last 25 years of the program after transferring from LSU.
Kling similarly started the season with a staggering home run pace, but settled into being more of a doubles hitter that led the team with a .358 batting average and was second in stolen bases with 15 while being an elite defender in center field.
A reason for that? Kling’s early power numbers came while feasting on a soft non-conference schedule, but that wasn’t the case for Anderson in 2026. Gambino went out of his way to ensure Penn State would have a challenging schedule start to finish, and while that’s led to a lot more losing than usual, it’s allowed for performances like Anderson to really stand out.
After going homerless in the first four games of the season, he blasted five in his next five games, including his first multi-homer game as a Nittany Lion in the home opener against St. John’s on March 4, driving in seven RBIs.
“He’s a guy you don’t go to the fridge to get a beer when he’s walking to the plate,” said Gambino after that game. “It’s just exciting, the team feeds off that, and you can see he’s just a scary presence in the box.”
There was rarely an opponent that would escape a game with Penn State without an Anderson home run. Starting with the series in the Bahamas against Indiana State, he blasted at least one home run in eight consecutive weekend series, including six straight in the Big Ten.
He’s added multi-homer games against a ranked Nebraska squad and Bucknell in April alone, lighting up the Trackman sensors with exit velocities over 110 miles per hour and frequently clearing 430 feet on his loud pull-side swings.
Anderson will look to follow in Kling’s footsteps and ride a sensational senior season at Penn State into July’s MLB Draft, and while he lacks the speed and athleticism that boosted Kling’s profile, he’ll be a desirable bat for his pure hit and power tools.
When he was held to just 2-for-10 with zero home runs against No. 15 Oregon last weekend in an overall struggle for the Penn State bats, it was shocking to see, but that’ll be the best pitching staff he’ll face in a weekend series for the rest of the season. All three of Penn State’s weekend series to close the regular season are from teams that are in the bottom half of the Big Ten standings.
And if these Nittany Lions do go on a run to close the year and temporarily extend their season in the Big Ten Tournament, they could give Anderson a chance to make more history.
Only 18 players in Big Ten history have ever hit 22 home runs in a season. Just nine have hit 24. Only four have even hit 26. One hot streak could suddenly elevate Anderson from not only the best power hitter in Penn State history but one of the best the conference has ever seen, and with the way he’s produced, it’s not out of the question.
“It’s bonkers,” Gambino said about how easy Anderson makes hitting look. “How hard he consistently hits the baseball, and you can see he’s not fun to pitch to. The worst thing to be when Big Mike is around is a baseball.”
So, if you head to the ballpark for one of Penn State baseball’s final games of the year and hear Ever Since U Left Me by French Montana on the loudspeakers, be sure to sit back and appreciate what could be the best player ever to wear the blue and white in Happy Valley.
Your ad blocker is on.
Please choose an option below.
Purchase a Subscription!
About the Author
A Title: Nathaniel Yerage’s Senior Column
“I still would’ve made great friends, had a great time, and finished without everything figured out. I couldn’t be more happy this is the way things did go, though.”
The Season They Won It All: Penn State Club Track & Field Wins Two National Titles
What’s better than one national title? Two!
From Penn State To ESPN: Hallie Grossman Reflects On Career Journey
“What I’ve learned is to be open, and thay’s true of how I approach stories, too. Have an open mind about where you start and use that to get where you want to finish.”
The Greatest Individual Seasons In Penn State Athletics History
Sometimes you just have to stop and appreciate individual greatness when it comes around.