Tennessee baseball head coach Tony Vitello shared his thoughts following the Vols’ 7-6 loss to Alabama in the Sunday rubber match.
Vitello discussed AJ Russell’s start, his biggest takeaways from the weekend, what happened on Gage Miller’s go ahead three-run home run for the Tide in the eighth inning and more.
See everything Vitello said after the game below.
On what happened in the 8th inning:
“Yeah, I mean we’re facing their best hitter (Gage Miller), or arguably their best hitter, other guys in their lineup might take offense to that. They are kind of like our lineup, 1-9 is capable of doing damage. Even got a couple of guys off the bench, but that situation was obviously big. We had a mad scramble there before that with a great catch by Dylan [Dreiling], but we made a poor pitch to a really good hitter, and he made him pay.”
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On AJ Russell’s outing:
“He was good. It was good that we were able to start him based on how well our offense did Friday. And then Saturday, Beam threw well enough that we didn’t have to use him or go to the bullpen. So the fact that he was able to go through his routine, get out there and get to a decent amount of pitches, but at the same time, we didn’t gas him out. I think he was feeling not at 100 percent, so we’re not going to go crazy and send him back out there. But he did everything we wanted him to today.”
On his top takeaways from the series:
“Alabama is good, and they were better than us this weekend. And we need to get better, and there’s a bunch of different situations, whether it’s base-running, hitting with some calm, or pitchers… we’re open for business. [AJ] Russell will continue to build up pitch count, and that will maybe deplete some opportunities for guys. But we’re open for business and looking for guys who can help us in certain situations.”
