Tennessee baseball knocked off Baylor 11-5 in Globe Life Field in Arlington Sunday night. The Vols’ offense caught fire early and often, scoring eight runs in the first four innings. While pitching was shaky to start, Wichita State transfer RHP Nate Snead settled in and delivered a great performance in extended relief (5.0 IP, 85 pitches).
With the win, Tennessee improves to 2-1 after beating Texas Tech and Baylor while losing to Oklahoma in the Shriners Children’s College Showdown.
Following the game, head coach Tony Vitello met with the media to discuss a wide-range of topics regarding Tennessee’s win. Vitello discussed the offensive explosion, focusing primarily on Christian Moore, Kavares Tears and Billy Amick. Additionally, Vitello shared his thoughts on Nate Snead’s outing and how his team responded after a loss the night before.
Everything the Vols’ skipper said following the game is below.
On Kavares Tears’ three-run home run:
“It was a good adjustment by him. Coach E (Associate HC Josh Elander) got him in the cage and kept his direction going in the right way. He’s like all of them – not just the players on our team – college baseball has grown into this amazing thing, and all these guys have all this energy bottled up and they want to come out of the gates and do big things, and with that, you see some guys get outside of themselves a little bit. But I think that [hit] kind of kept him centered, and that moment encapsulated everything we wanted today to be about.
“It was 1-1 going into Sunday. You want to come out with a series win. And then also, anytime you lose or take one on the chin, you want to respond the right way. And he responded after we took one on the chin. We’re down 2-0 after losing last night, and again, you saw his preparation and his focus like a lot of the other guys. Ready to go. I mean I’m rambling, but I’m just going over the weekend in my head. It was very obvious what our team’s approach was before the game on Friday. Saturday, I wasn’t quite sure what was going on. And maybe I was overthinking it, but it was a different vibe from our guys. And then today, I wasn’t sure how it was going to go because they seemed angry a little bit and determined, I guess, now that I see how we played. They didn’t like that last night went on. I didn’t either. And they came out and responded the right way.”
On Nate Snead’s relief outing:
“I don’t say this facetiously, any start – obviously Zander [Sechrist] goes out and throws the first pitch of the game – but any start where you can at least calm the storm a little bit and have the chance to win, and some games are 2-1, some games are 10-9, and without KT’s (Kavares Tears) blast, it’s not so good for Zander. But, he gets us a few outs, and every out is important, especially on Sunday. You saw that with how long the games were going today. But then Nate Snead came in and did incredibly well. He did what you do. The message I got was, ‘You should’ve put me in the game last night.’ And that’s what you do as a young athlete. You control what you can control, and when you get your opportunity, you put your best foot forward. I think he and [Chris] Stamos did that. Stamos made a record-setting play last night, and we decided to go to the back end of the game with our guy, and maybe we did that a little too early, too. Stamos was the same way. Had a little more conviction to him today, and that’s a good sign for both of those guys and ultimately for us that we get to use them.”
On what makes Billy Amick such a good hitter:
“He’s really strong, first of all. He reminded us when we were recruiting him of Trevor Story, who is from this area, and it took Trevor a while, having seen him, to get as physical as Billy is right now. And I mentioned in one interview or another, Q (strength coach Quentin Eberhardt) and he got hooked up, and he’s really taken well to his conditioning. And I think it’s affecting his defense and base-running as much as the hitting, but he’s always hit. I think my comment was, ‘I’m glad he’s wearing our color orange.’ And that’s no disrespect to anybody, I mean we are fortunate to have him, but when we saw him across the way and were scouting him, we weren’t very comfortable when he was in the box. So, he’s someone who has always hit, but he seems to be progressing in a lot of areas, and that includes hitting.”
More From RTI: Three Takeaways: Hot Bats Propel Tennessee Baseball to Convincing Win Over Baylor in Arlington
“Yeah, I think he’s matured a lot since his first day on our campus. I think that applies in a lot of different ways, but one is in accepting the fact that he’ll do whatever he needs to do to help the team. I think he’ll still play a variety of positions before the year is over with, but more than anything, yeah, he’s a guy who thrives under a challenge. If it’s easy, you kind of lose him a little bit, attention-span wise. But if it’s an important topic you’re discussing or it’s a true challenge regardless of what it is, that’s when you’ve got his full focus.
“He just wanted to come out and have a good weekend. He knows he’s not hiding anymore. He’s a junior. Like a few other guys — Billy (Amick) included — this is his team and I think he’s taken pride in everything he’s doing out there. Had a really good weekend all around. I think he could have scored on a passed ball, other than that, I don’t know that he did much wrong up there. You see some good pitching, you’re not going to get a hit every time up.”
On moving Dylan Dreiling up to the two-hole and moving Blake Burke down to the six-hole:
“Yeah, we’ve tried that lineup with Dreiling in the two-hole a little bit. And he’s always aggressive at the plate and swinging the bat. Burke has probably been over-aggressive and I think sometimes guys look for that permission to be confident or that permission to relax and play a little bit, and last year he took the world by storm coming out of the gates — that’s Blake Burke I’m referring to. And then today, he kind of gets a flare, a strange hit to left field there, whatever you want to call it. And in the next at-bat, he looked more relaxed than he’d been the whole year. And I think if I’m guessing right, it was a byproduct of that. Just to kind of — to be honest with you, backtracking to being in the hotel room, make him and (Cannon Peebles) a little angry. ‘Cause anybody could raise their hand and say I deserve to be two, three or four or up in the top-half of the order. But maybe get their attention a little bit. But whatever it was, I think both of those guys were really focused and we were really good one through nine today.”
What he thought about how Zander Sechrist pitched:
“You know, a couple times with two strikes, trying to be too fine or trying to strike a guy out. You know, Baylor is like us. They were taking really good swings, too. It’s the last day, you don’t want to leave anything on the table and he left a couple pitches, that were not only over the middle of the plate, but a couple of them were bleeding back into righties and these guys aren’t going to miss. I mean they took really good swings off of Nate Snead and that’s probably as good as Snead’s pitched. He can throw the thing up to 100, but that’s as good as he’s pitched and they put good swings on him. He was just really, really good and we made a couple of plays behind him as well.”
