Vols Baseball Needs to…
Become Relevant Again
Tennessee’s baseball team hasn’t finished better than fourtth in the SEC East since 2005. They finished second in the division that season. Since then, they’ve finished fourth once, fifth three times, and sixth eight times including the last three seasons.
Tony Vitello was hired as the Vols’ baseball coach this offseason after Dave Serrano stepped down after six years on the job. Vitello is the Vols’ fourth head baseball coach in the last decade, and he inherits a young team with talent but no winning pedigree.
Don’t expect Vitello to work miracles in his first year on the job and get Tennessee back to the NCAA Tournament. But there needs to be marked improvement in the fundamentals under him. Fundamentals and sound, mental baseball was surprisingly lacking under Serrano, and the Vols committed far too many errors under his leadership.
If Vitello can eliminate some of those mistakes and get some pop back in Tennessee’s bats, then this team could have some promise. The Vols don’t need to make it back to the NCAA Tournament to be relevant, but they need to get out of the basement of the SEC. They had just seven conference victories last season after having only nine in 2016.
The SEC in baseball is as tough if not tougher than it is in football. Vitello doesn’t have an easy task ahead of him, but he needs to make the Vols much less of a pushover in 2018 to show that he knows what he’s doing as a first time head coach.
