Tennessee baseball players have been back on campus for two weeks and the start of the 2024 season in just over three weeks away. But Zane Denton’s status with the Vols remains unclear.
Denton, who announced that he was returning to Tennessee for his super senior season in August, was not with the team during fall practice as he dealt with some personal things.
The third baseman is not currently going through individual workouts with the team but his status for the upcoming season isn’t crystal clear.
“I don’t really have any expectations because I don’t have complete answers,” Tennessee coach Tony Vitello said on Thursday. “There’s nothing crazy going on. And I don’t think you all will be provided an aha moment. Like this is a straight conclusion. It’s not that easy. There’s a lot of factors to it. I just visited with him recently, we hang out. He’s in a good place. We’re in a good place. Just trying to figure out what he’s going do with his future.”
Denton transferred to Tennessee from Alabama ahead of the 2023 season and planned on playing one season in Knoxville before moving on to professional baseball. Despite producing at the plate as Tennessee’s starting third baseman last season, Denton went undrafted in the 20-round MLB Draft last July.
That threw Denton’s plans influx and now the Brentwood, Tennessee native is trying to decide what his best course is moving forward. As Vitello stated on Thursday, there’s a number of moving pieces that make Denton’s circumstances complicated and make a definitive long term resolution in the immediate future unlikely.
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“He came here last year with a plan of getting to Omaha, which he did and was a major factor,” Vitello said. “And the other part of that plan was getting his opportunity in pro baseball, and for whatever reason it just didn’t work out. And when your plans get derailed a little bit, you sit back and you assess how do you want to move forward, which again, he’s doing in the classroom and as a person, and certainly, like I said, we hang out and talk so we’ll figure out what’s best, but, that that’ll come when the time is right. Like I said, it’s not as easy as just going this way or going that way. There’s other factors like classes and things involved.”
Denton was certainly a major factor in Tennessee’s path to the College World Series last season. The Vols were down to their last strike against Clemson before Denton’s three-run homer propelled Tennessee ahead. Leading by one-run in game three of the Hattiesburg Super Regional, Denton hit another three-run homer which gave Tennessee the breathing room needed to punch its ticket to Omaha for the second time in three seasons.
“You can’t take away from that moment in time he had against Clemson, but really just his whole time here and his college career to this point,” Vitello said. “So he’s going to add on to that story that you can’t erase, it’s just a matter of how he’s going to add on to it.”
Over the course of the 2023 season, Denton hit .269 with 16 home runs, 25 extra-base hits and a team-high 59 runs batted in. Tennessee has plenty of options at infield if Denton isn’t with the team this season. The Vols added Clemson corner infielder Billy Amick out of the transfer portal this offseason— a reigning All-ACC bat.
Tennessee begins its 2024 season on Feb. 16 at the Shriner’s Children Hospital Classic in Dallas against Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Baylor. The Vols also face Illinois in a weekend series before beginning a challenging SEC schedule that includes matchups against LSU, Florida and Vanderbilt.
