Tennessee baseball’s 2023 season was on the brink of being over as they entered the weekend series against No. 4 Vanderbilt.
The Vols NCAA Tournament hopes weren’t over but they needed a winning weekend in the worst way. They went out and played their best baseball of the season and swept their instate rival for the second straight year.
Let’s dive into what went right for the Vols and what it means going forward.
What This Means For Tennessee’s NCAA Tournament Chances
We’re working backwards and starting by discussing what this weekend means for Tennessee’s NCAA Tournament hopes. I discussed the Vols’ path to the NCAA Tournament before the series and it included a need to win this weekend’s series.
And getting the series win was huge and kept Tennessee alive in the NCAA Tournament race, but sweeping the series was absolutely massive and even gives the Vols a little bit of leeway ahead of the final four weeks of the regular season.
As a reminder, 14 SEC wins is typically the number you have to reach to make the NCAA Tournament. The Vols leave the weekend 8-10 in SEC play and are in a good spot to make the tournament if they split their final 12 games.
Tennessee still needs to take care of business badly against a shaky Mississippi State team next weekend but if they do that they’ll be sitting in a good spot.
Sweeping Vanderbilt took all the pressure off of winning the weekend series at South Carolina which would have been an incredibly tall task. Now Tennessee can win one game against both South Carolina and Georgia (road) and they still have a realistic path to 14 wins.
The Vols still aren’t a lock to make the NCAA Tournament but they’ve alleviated some pressure and if they play good baseball at Lindsey Nelson Stadium will probably find themselves in a regional.
Transfers Show Up For Tennessee
I wrote a while back that Tennessee’s offense will largely go with how its three transfers — Maui Ahuna, Zane Denton and Griffin Merritt — go. Tennessee turned in its best offensive weekend of the season and it was largely on the backs of those three players.
Merritt played hero Friday night by hitting the walk off homer but was really good again on Sunday when he drove in two runs with a double and hit a solo homer. The outfielder hit .375 over the course of the weekend and while he didn’t start all three games he delivered with huge hits.
The Cincinnati transfer hit one of his two home runs on the weekend off a 99 mph fastball which is a particularly promising sign as he’s struggled making that adjustment in the SEC.
Zane Denton entered the weekend with six home runs and eight hits in SEC play. The Alabama transfer showed that pop again with a solo homer in the series opener but more importantly he consistently got on base all weekend.
The Alabama transfer went five-of-11 at the plate and drove in four runs over the course of the weekend.
Then there’s Maui Ahuna. Ahuna came to Tennessee with the most hype and had been the biggest disappointment entering the weekend. The shortstop was good at the plate against Vanderbilt posting a .273 average and driving in a team-high seven runs.
However, what the Kansas transfer did in the field was just as important. Ahuna was billed as an elite defender and that’s what he was against the Commodores. The shortstop made an over the shoulder catch in left field, got the speedy Enrique Bradfield with a handful of nice plays, made a few spectacular plays and most importantly was consistent.
Ahuna made the spectacular look easy and made the basic look easy. He hasn’t done either consistently all season but he’s full capable of doing both. Tony Vitello said that this was the Ahuna they were expecting following the weekend series.
The Vols’ transfers were fantastic against Vanderbilt. If they can sustain it moving forward than Tennessee’s ceiling changes radically.
More From RTI: Everything Tony Vitello Said After Tennessee Swept Vanderbilt
Tennessee’s Does The Little Things Much Better
Tennessee’s defense wasn’t perfect over the weekend. Blake Burke committed an error in the first inning of the weekend and Zane Denton and Jake Kendro both committed one as the Vols struggled to get out of the seventh and eighth innings Sunday.
But, overall, Tennessee’s defense was significantly better over the course of the weekend. There were really only two extremely poor defensive plays and there were a handful of really nice ones. The Vols could have been better defensively but they were much better than they’ve been there for most of this season.
Tennessee has cracked down on the base running mistakes for much of the last month but didn’t have any against Vanderbilt.
Then the situational hitting was night-and-day different from last week. After totaling just four hits with runners on base last weekend, Tennessee recorded 16 against the Commodores— with all of them coming in the final two games.
After the season opening series I wrote about how Tennessee has to do the little things better this season. For most of the season they haven’t. Against Vanderbilt they did.
Pitching Staff Starting To Find Its Groove
Drew Beam’s struggles and the horrific defense overshadowed it, but Tennessee baseball’s pitching staff started to find its rhythm last week at Arkansas.
It got into a groove against Vanderbilt as Andrew Lindsey turned in a second straight good start, Chase Dollander turned in his best outing of the season and Drew Beam bounced back with a Sunday masterclass.
Those three guys are all pitching well right now and are entrenched as Tennessee’s weekend starters. The Vols should feel good about them too. Lindsey can handle the bright lights and big stage, Dollander is slowly getting better and Beam is, well, he’s Drew Beam— a quarterback on the bump to end the weekend.
But the even bigger story is Chase Burns’ dominance on the bump. Burns pitched much better coming out of the bullpen last week against Arkansas but it wasn’t a close game or pressure moment.
It was a high pressure moment when Burns shoved down Vanderbilt’s throat for three innings Friday night. The sophomore then showed he can do it twice in one weekend when he dominated the ninth inning of the series finale.
On the weekend Burns allowed just one hit, faced the minimum and struck out eight batters in four innings pitched. That’s an elite bullpen arm and a really positive sign for Tennessee’s pitching staff.
If you want to know what the difference has been for Burns coming out of the bullpen, check out the story I wrote on his outing Friday that dove into that question.
