NASHVILLE, Tn — In the seven seasons before Tony Vitello took over as Tennessee’s 25th baseball coach the Vols failed to win 10 conference games four times. Drew Beam’s masterful Sunday outing pushed Tennessee to a 9-0 start in SEC play — its best ever.
The Vols failed to win nine conference games four times in the seven years prior to Vitello’s arrival. If Tennessee sweeps Missouri next week, they’ll have won as many SEC games in the first four series of the 2022 season then they did in any of the 10 years prior to the fifth-year head coach’s arrival.
It’s hard to quantify just how miraculous the turnaround of the Tennessee baseball program has been and it’s just as hard to quantify how impressive these Vols have been in their first three SEC series.
It starts with the weekend pitching rotation. The trio of underclassmen pitchers that hadn’t started an SEC game entering this season refuse to blink.
The starters just got better as the weekend series progressed. Chase Burns turned in a ho-hum 5.1 inning, two-run performance on Friday night before Chase Dollander posted an eight inning, two-run performance that was his best in a Volunteer uniform.
“In our best dreams or whatever, I don’t know that you’re going to see an outing like that out of any of our guys,” Tennessee head coach Tony Vitello said Saturday night. “He put it together.”
It took less than 24 hours for Tennessee to get a better outing. Murfreesboro native Drew Beam posted the Vols’ first complete-game shutout since Garrett Stallings did it twice in 2019.
The freshman got better as the game went on, allowing just two baserunners all afternoon while retiring the final 16 Commodores he faced.
“I felt like I had good control today,” Beam said. “The last few weeks I’ve been commanding the offspeed and fastball pretty well and I think tonight we just mixed it up really well and continuing to show good things.”
Tennessee was fortunate that Burns didn’t head to the professional ranks out of high school, and the Vols beat out national powers Arkansas and TCU for the transfer Dollander last offseason.
Beam, however, came to Knoxville with little fanfare, missing his junior season of high school due to the COVID-19 pandemic and his senior season due to surgery repairing a partial tear in his UCL.
The former two-sport star at Blackman High School has been just as good if not better than the Chase’s and has been the biggest surprise of the season.
“I think when we recruited him we saw the guy we saw today,” Vitello said. “Three pitch mix was definitely something at a young age he kind of already had going on. … He kind of had all the makings of a weekend starter at some point, but sometimes guys make up their own timeline or own grid there with work ethic and also presence.”
Tennessee’s pitching was so dominant this weekend that the Vols recorded more runs (16) than Vanderbilt did hits (11).
Aside from the illegal bat drama Friday night, it was an average weekend for Tennessee’s bats. Facing the best pitching they’d seen all season, the Vols didn’t have any offensive outbursts but kept steady pressure on the Commodores all weekend.
The go-to bats delivered with three-through-five hitters — Jordan Beck, Drew Gilbert and Trey Lipscomb — combining for 10 RBIs on the weekend.
Gilbert provided the final nail in Vanderbilt’s coffin on the weekend, roping a two-out, two-run double to extend Tennessee’s lead to 5-0 in the ninth inning Sunday. The Vanderbilt fans who rained boos and “cheater” comments as Tennessee throughout the weekend flooded for the exits.
“For sure, you definitely notice that,” Tennessee outfielder Drew Gilbert said of the decreasing noise from the Vanderbilt fans throughout the weekend. “When you’re stomping on someone’s throat they tend to get a little quieter.”
On paper, Tennessee has played its two hardest weekend series three weeks into the conference slate. The Vols are 9-0 and appear as unbeatable as any baseball team can.
Still, the group that never shines away from antics or being villains showed an unquestioned maturity this weekend, playing with a focus and edge you’d expect from a team trying to take down the No. 1 Vols.
Even amidst the postgame celebration Sunday, Tennessee was quick to point out they have plenty of improvement to do and that none of its goals can be achieved in April or are related to the number in front of their name.
“Being ranked No. 1 is cool and all but our end goal has nothing to do with a ranking,” Gilbert said. “Trying to play our best baseball every single day and trying to improve every single day. If we keep doing that we’ll be in a good spot at the end of the year.”
Tennessee heads home to Lindsey Nelson Stadium next weekend needing a series-opening win over Missouri to tie the best start in conference play in SEC history.
The Vols are a long way from winning double-digit conference games in good years.
