Tennessee baseball is tweaking its starting rotation of pitchers ahead of the Vols' series at Arkansas this weekend.

The Vols, coming off a fourth-straight SEC series loss, will begin the set on Thursday night. It will run through Saturday as it concludes the 2025 regular season.

Here's who Tennessee has listed as projected starters for the series.

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THURSDAY:

UT - RHP Marcus Phillips(13 GS, 3-4, 3.55 ERA)

ARK - LHP Zach Root (13 GS, 6-3, 3.88 ERA)

FRIDAY:

UT - LHP Liam Doyle (13 GS, 9-2, 2.17 ERA)

ARK - TBA

SATURDAY:

UT - RHP Tegan Kuhns (8 GS, 2-2, 3.78 ERA)

ARK - RHP Gage Wood (6 GS, 1-1, 5.51 ERA)

The new rotation flips Tennessee's typical game one and two starters.

Typically, Doyle has gotten the ball to start series. However, with the series being bumped up to a Thursday starter, the Vols are giving him an extra day of rest to keep him on schedule with his normal week of rest.

This comes after he has battled through a blister that could use a bit of extra time to heal, as well.

In his place, Phillips, the typical game two starter, will get the ball on Thursday. This is a quicker turnaround for him after he pitched this past Saturday.

On Saturday, Kuhns is getting the ball. He has bounced in and out of the game three spots with AJ Russell. Kuhns started last Sunday.

On if Doyle would pitch on Thursday or Friday

"Actually, he’s in there eating with Frank (Anderson). I tried to have a, believe it or not, mature conversation, and those two guys were acting a fool in there. So I said, ‘Let me finish this stuff (press conference) and we’ll get back in there and visit.’ My only concern for Liam in general is just, we’ve asked him to do a lot with the Friday, the Sunday (against Auburn) and then 100 pitches Friday (against Vanderbilt), despite the hand starting to get bloody and things like that. Again, you want to talk about not wanting to do things over again? I would never want to redo things to where we don’t get a year around Liam Doyle, but it is only a year. Whoever drafts him is going to get him for a long time, unless they decide to trade him or free agent steal or something like that. So, I’m no patron saint, but I want to look out for him a little bit."

On his message to Phillips

"To pitch as confidently as he has at times. I think confidence is a choice, and there’s been times where he’s clearly competing, but there’s times where Q (Quentin Eberhardt) will nudge him about it more than I will, but you can see self-belief at times. To believe in himself. I don’t know what the standings are, but I know Florida is playing better than they were here record-wise, but that lineup’s really good, and he was, they weren’t going to score off him that day. The last time we were on the road, if I’m not mistaken, he helped salvage a weekend that could have been miserable. If he chooses to look back on his highlights in his own mind and call upon that for confidence, that’s fine, but he doesn’t need to do that. He just needs to have the self-belief that he has earned at this point and you know he’s going to go out there and compete."

On if Tegan Kuhns would start on Saturday

"I think so. I mean, I always watch Dana White’s press conference because I like UFC and he always tells them, ‘I’m not going to make,' they’ll ask them who’s fighting next, ‘but I ain’t making decisions now' and so I kind of usually use that cop out. But yeah, I think we’d have to come up with something pretty creative to not do that. And I don’t mind, I say all this stuff to the team too much, and I say it to you all and I think it ends up blowing up in my face a little bit, but I don’t mind having conversations about decisions and stuff like that. And you know, if you look back on Sunday, you could argue, or Tegan, if he was not a great teammate, could say, ‘Hey, you took me out too early.’ But last Sunday lined up exactly the way we wanted it. We just made a few too many mistakes and didn’t score enough to cover up those mistakes. But Tegan threw the ball great the last two times out. I think if anything, the argument is to let him ride a little bit, but you don’t want to say that to yourself and box yourself in because you don’t know what’s going to be going on, more than likely day three of the series, for him."

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