Tennessee baseball clinched the series victory over UAlbany on Saturday afternoon by defeating the Great Danes 21-6 at Lindsey Nelson Stadium on Saturday afternoon.
Following the game, Tennessee coach Tony Vitello discussed the Vols’ explosive offense, Drew Beam’s solid start and much more. Here’s everything Vitello said.
More From RTI: How Tennessee Baseball Defeated UAlbany On Saturday Afternoon
On Dean Curley’s three-run homer sparking the offense
“He’s really strong, but also, he’s got a good, compact swing. I don’t think he’s ever really trying to do too much in there. He just missed one in his first at-bat and made a minor adjustment going into the one that finally got it going for us.”
On how advanced of a hitter Curley is for a freshman to make those adjustments
“Real advanced. Part of it is his makeup. He’s just really sure of himself and also, he’s a hard worker. But then also, SoCal kid that has played a ton of baseball. And then he’s a good enough player, gets invited to a lot of the famous stuff or whatever you want to call those big time events. So he’s got a pretty good baseball background going for him. Good kid from a good family. He’s obviously excited to be out there after having to watch. It’s not fun for any of these guys to have to watch. That’s why we try to mix them all in there like we did today, but he’s showing that he’s been anxious to get out there on the field.”
On the difference in the first three innings compared to the rest of the game
“I think really just — we talked about it for a brief second in the outfield — just keep pressing on. If you’re going to judge it based off just one at-bat or one inning, you’re going to drive yourself crazy. No matter what day you’re playing on, what opponent, what part of the game. So it’s important for the guys to keep pressing forward, whereas a fan might freak out. They want runs right away or if we’re down 1-0 on the scoreboard, they want to see us even it up or take the lead. But it’s nine innings. We’ve talked about that as a team, too. Nine innings is a long time. There’s a lot of different things that can go on. I don’t know the makers of this game, what they had in mind, but the big inning is a big thing and we’ve been fortunate enough to kind of have that as our earmark here, too. And you never know what one thing is going to kickstart it, so you have to keep pressing on whether things are going great or not.”
On how impressive Robin Villeneuve has been at the plate to this point in the season
“More impressive that he’s going to be in this interview you’re about to have with him. I don’t know, I hate to go on a tangent. I travel a lot and I always, people who don’t speak English I kind of guess just go to the google translate. For somebody that’s new to this area and English is actually their second language, he’s just been a remarkable kid in general. In the locker room and in the dugout. But to more directly answer your question and I kind of answer silly there because he’s waiting in the wings, just wants to compete. That sounds real simple and if you ask every athlete to raise their hands on which ones like to compete— they’re all going to raise their hands. But they don’t all go out and do it like that. When it feels good or when things are going good— it’s got an asterisks next to it. He’s one kid that we have that there’s no special circumstances that come with him coming to the park, being fired up, being able to rock-and-roll. It’s why he makes our team better regardless if he’s getting hits or making plays.”
On why this team has had the tendency for big innings
“It’s kind of nature of the beast with the game, but also it’s been a group that kind of feeds off one another and when a couple guys do well or when something goes right. Those positive thoughts get going in the right direction. It brings up the follow up question of what you have to do to be more consistent or as we talk about— spread the butter on the toast a little more evenly. I don’t have those answers either but if you look at the way you break down at-bats. Whether they were beneficial to the team or not or if guys are giving away at-bats. We’ve had an awful lot of good, quality at-bats from our guys. We always tell them the results will come and go but I would focus more on that positive end of that. I think it’s an explosive offense that may just need to get a little bit better at finding some consistency when that big inning isn’t occurring.”
On Drew Beam’s outing
“Good. The usual deal. I think we’re playing a lineup that shows you they don’t care what the score is, they don’t care what the temperature is, they don’t care who we got out there on the mound, they’re going to get in the box and compete. They have good, flat swings. They’re going to be aggressive. They’ve laid off a couple of good pitches off a couple of our guys that had a lot of strikeouts last week. He got in there and did what he did and needed to do. I would like to see him go six innings, but the one inning dragged on a little bit, and we were able to separate ourselves. If we make one more play for him, maybe the statistics are even a little bit better or something to be juiced about, but I’m pretty happy with seeing him go out there. And then you kind of get something around this no matter who we’re playing or what day he throws.”
On if there’s an update on AJ Russell and if he knows who will start Sunday
“No update on AJ [Russell] until tomorrow, and then Zander [Sechrist] will most likely start. I haven’t told him that, but just giving you an honest answer. We’ll probably use him. We’ll definitely use [Nate] Snead. We had Snead about ready to go in this game. Circumstances changed a little bit, but Snead and [Marcus] Phillips are ready to go, and [Andrew] Behnke is a guy we need to get in the game tomorrow. And even though [Derek] Schaefer and [Matthew] Dallas started during the midweek, both of those guys should be ready. We feel good about having everybody we can to throw at those guys.”
On Dalton Bargo
“In January and February, if you were to ask the coaches who swung it the best, he may have gotten more votes than anybody else. I think we had that conversation one day, and there’s about three or four, but he might’ve swung it as well as anybody. We learned Texas Tech’s guy really well, and we decided to go with the lineup that we did. And then all of a sudden, you’re not in there when you’ve been hitting the ball that well. You can pout a little bit, feel sorry for yourself, quit working, he hasn’t done any of those things. And I think when you get one at-bat here, one at-bat there, you have to just keep going and trust that when there’s a big sample size, you’ll see your body of work of how talented you are and how prepared you are. Again, you give that guy 100 at-bats, you guys would all see that. But it’s been kind of here, here, here, and today was nice. He got to start and be out there for almost the duration of the game.”
