Vitello’s Vols in ‘good spot’ from a pitching view
Winning a Southeastern Conference baseball tournament can come at a cost, especially if some of the victories in the double-elimination format require extra innings.
That cost is pitching. Top-ranked and top-seeded Tennessee will begin SEC tournament play Wednesday afternoon at 5:30 Eastern against eighthseeded Vanderbilt, which beat ninth-seeded Florida 6-3 Tuesday night. The Volunteers closed the regular season with nine consecutive series triumphs to earn a share of the league title, and coach Tony Vitello believes they did so with a collection of arms that is ready for postseason play.
Drew Beam leads the Vols with 80 innings pitched, while AJ Causey has 70 and Nate Snead 57. Those are Tennessee’s only pitchers who threw more than 50 innings during the regular season, with the veteran tandem of Zander Sechrist and Kirby Connell next in line with 49 and 33 innings, respectively.
“If you look at our innings pitched, they’re spread out pretty good,” Vitello said Monday afternoon in a news conference before the team headed to Hoover, Alabama. “Even though certain guys have made a bunch of appearances for us, no one has really maxed out innings. Drew is in a position where he’ll come close to what he did last year.
“I don’t know what the magic number is for each guy, but I do think we have a sense of how much they’ve been asked to do this year and what they’re capable of doing.”
In last weekend’s three-game sweep of South Carolina at Lindsey Nelson Stadium that concluded Tennessee’s 46-10 regular season, Causey threw 87 pitches on Thursday in improving to 10-3, Beam threw 104 pitches on Friday in improving to 8-2, and Sechrist threw 65 pitches on Saturday in improving to 2-1.
Beam, Causey, Snead, Sechrist and Connell are a combined 32-7.
“Hoover is a fun place to be,” Sechrist said. “There is a Dave & Buster’s to the left of the hotel, and I still have my card from my freshman year. It’s connected to a mall, which has a Chick-fil-A and every other option you can think of. It will be fun.”
Sechrist and Connell have long been known to keep the pitching staff loose, and that staff is expected to include AJ Russell at some point this week. Russell started Tennessee’s opening game, a 6-2 downing of Texas Tech in Arlington, Texas, but he hasn’t pitched since March 23 due to injury.
Adding Russell before an NCAA tournament run would certainly be viewed as a plus, but there is the matter of successfully working him back in.
“I would like to have the pitching sorted,” Vitello said. “You want to use a certain number of guys and get them action. You like to keep guys in somewhat of a rhythm, but it’s also an imperfect time of year, so they need to be ready to go at whatever time and take on whatever role, which may be the first time they’ve done it all year.
“I think we’re in a good spot. I don’t want to go crazy, but I think we’re in a good spot.”
On the radar
Dylan Dreiling may not receive the same headlines as teammates Blake Burke or Christian Moore, but the outfielder did receive SEC first-team honors this week and is not overlooked in the eyes of Vitello.
“He’s a draft-eligible sophomore, and I think he’s getting noticed plenty by the people who will take him away from us,” Vitello said. “When his time is done, he’s going to have as many highlights as anybody who’s played here and will have done it in a short amount of time.”
Versatile victories
Tennessee won its last two games of the regular season by 8-3 and 4-1 scores over the Gamecocks.
The Vols scored all eight runs Friday via home runs from Hunter Ensley, Moore and Burke, who collected the team’s 11th grand slam of the season. They used a double and three singles Saturday to drive in Saturday’s runs.
“We always talk about being a complete offense,” senior catcher Cal Stark said. “We didn’t just rely on the long ball. We can do anything at any time. We’ve had one-run wins, and we’ve had run-rule wins. We know we can do it in a lot of different ways.”
Ogumoro commits
The Vols picked up their 10th football commitment for the 2025 signing cycle Tuesday night, receiving a nonbinding pledge from three-star interior offensive lineman Antoni Kade Ogumoro from Elgin, Oklahoma. The 6-foot-4, 320-pounder visited Tennessee, Kansas State and Missouri earlier this month.