Buck Taylor

Cord “Buck” Taylor joined Bill Mosiello’s staff in July of 2022. He will serve as the assistant pitching coach and will also work with the catchers. Taylor came to Columbus after spending four seasons as the pitching coach at Kansas State and his staffs set numerous KSU pitching records.

The Wildcats finished the 2022 season with a 29-29 record (8-16 Big 12) and reached the semifinal round of the Big 12 Baseball Championship for the second consecutive season.

The 2021 Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft saw three of Taylor’s pitchers selected within the first 15 rounds, including the program’s first-ever first-round pick in left-hander Jordan Wicks (21st overall by the Chicago Cubs). In less than two and a half seasons, Wicks went on to finish his career as K-State’s all-time strikeout leader with 230 and also broke the Wildcats’ single-season record with 118 strikeouts in 2021.

As a staff in 2021, K-State pitchers combined for 541 strikeouts to shatter the previous mark of 453. The team’s 9.9 strikeout-per-nine innings also set a new program best (8.6 K/9 in 1969). The pitching staff was a chief reason K-State was able to claim series victories over No. 3 Texas Tech and No. 5 TCU on their way to picking up six top-10 wins during the 2021 season.

The 2019 season saw Taylor’s unit tally 448 strikeouts, as he has overseen two of K-State’s top four strikeout seasons in program history.

K-State advanced to the semifinal round of the 2021 Phillips 66 Big 12 Baseball Championship, its longest tournament run since the 2008 season. The Cats finished with a 34-23 record, their highest win total since the 2013 Big 12 championship season.

The 2020 was cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic after just 17 games, with K-State winning seven of its last nine games, including taking three of four during a road series at perennial power Stanford. Over those 17 games, the Wildcat pitching staff ranked sixth in the nation in ERA (2.07), fifth in WHIP (1.01) and fourth in hits per nine innings (5.6). The Cats were one of just two teams in the country to allow only one home run during the season.

In Taylor’s first season in Manhattan, the K-State pitching staff threw the third-most strikeouts in a single season in program history with 448 while the strikeouts-per-nine-innings rate of 7.9 was tied for fourth best in program history. Additionally, Wildcat pitchers limited opponents to a .268 batting average – fourth best in a single season.

K-State finished with a 25-33 record (8-16 Big 12) in 2019 and earned its first bid to the Big 12 Baseball Championship since the 2016 season. In total, the Wildcats picked up seven victories over ranked opponents in 2019, the team’s highest total since the 2011 season and more than the previous three seasons combined (4).

Taylor spent 14 seasons as the head coach at Palomar Community College after originally joining the Palomar staff as the pitching and catching coach in 2001. Taylor compiled a 434-181 (.706) record while at the helm of the Comets, sending 21 pitchers into professional baseball, including current and former Major League pitchers Marcus Hatley (St. Louis), Tim Hill (Kansas City, San Diego), James Hoyt (Houston, Cleveland, Miami) and Nick Vincent (San Diego, Seattle, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Miami).

Palomar became the first Pacific Coast Athletic Conference team in history to land four players on Major League 25-man opening-day rosters in the same season. In addition to pitchers Hill, Hoyt and Vincent, infielder Tyler Saladino began the season with the Chicago White Sox and has since been traded to Milwaukee Brewers.

Taylor was honored as American Baseball Coaches Association/California Community College Athletic Association State Baseball Coach of the Year in 2008 and was named Pacific Coast Athletic Conference Baseball Coach of the Year eight times while he was selected as PCAC Coach of the Year across all men’s sports for both the 2008-09 and 2014-15 academic years. He won eight PCAC titles in his 14 seasons as head coach of Palomar.

His 2018 club won the outright conference title and went on to make an appearance in the Southern California Super Regionals. Perfect Game ranked his 2015 squad No. 2 among the nation’s community colleges at the end of the regular season and went on to finished with a national ranking of No. 9 following the postseason with a record of 36-8.

Taylor played two years at San Francisco State following junior-college stints at Rancho Santiago College (now Santa Ana Community College) and MiraCosta College. Following his collegiate career, he went on to play and manage professionally in Vienna, Austria, for the Vienna Lions, guiding them to a Vienna Baseball League title in 1996.

Prior to his time at Palomar, Taylor was an assistant coach and later co-head coach at his alma mater San Francisco State from 1995-2000.

Taylor graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology in 1995 and later earned his Master of Education in physical education and sports administration from Azusa Pacific in 2001. He also served as Associate Professor in the Department of Kinesiology, Health and Recreation on Palomar’s full-time faculty.

A native of Carlsbad, California, Taylor and his wife, Natasha, have two daughters, Finley and Avery.