Tennessee baseball ranks No. 2 in D1Baseball’s preseason top 25 rankings, the premier college baseball ranking announced Tuesday.
The defending SEC regular season and Tournament Champions are looking to repeat their success of last season when they won 57 games and 25 regular season SEC games— the best in program history.
Tennessee wants to repeat its regular season and SEC Tournament success while finding more in the NCAA Tournament. After being the nation’s No. 1 team for most of the season, Tennessee lost in game three of the super regionals against Notre Dame.
The second-ranked Vols come in behind only SEC foe LSU. The Tigers overachieved in Jay Johnson’s first season, finishing 40-22 before being eliminated by Southern Miss in the Hattiesburg Super Regional.
LSU and Tennessee are two of nine SEC teams in D1Baseball’s preseason top 25, joining No. 4 Ole Miss, No. 5 Texas A&M, No. 7 Florida, No. 8 Arkansas, No. 10 Vanderbilt, No. 20 Alabama and No. 23 South Carolina.
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Tony Vitello’s sixth Tennessee team returns an abundance of production on the mound including all three weekend starters — Chase Burns, Chase Dollander and Drew Beam — from a season ago as well as top bullpen arm Camden Sewell.
The Vols’ stacked pitching staff has them near the top of nearly every preseason rankings and is the undoubted strength of Tennessee’s roster.
Tennessee’s lineup lost an abundance of production including eight starters. However, Tennessee returns young, talented contributors Blake Burke, Christian Moore and Jared Dickey as well as adding the nation’s No. 2 transfer class that includes three potential starting position players.
The Vols open their 2023 season in Arizona on Feb. 7 at the Desert Invitational. Tennessee faces Arizona, Grand Canyon and UC-San Diego in the three-day event.
