The baseball 3-2-1
Tennessee found a way to eek out a win against one of Kumar Rocker and Jack Leiter to give itself a great chance at the series win on Sunday. However, Vanderbilt showed why they’ve played for the national championship three times the last decade, taking the series with a 10-4 win.
Let’s look back at Tennessee surviving the gauntlet and take a look forward as the Vols’ SEC schedule starts to open up a bit.
Three Observations
1 —Tennessee meets its match— Vanderbilt handed Tennessee its first series loss of the season and the fact that it comes in mid April, on the ninth weekend of the season is incredibly impressive.
Vanderbilt was the better team all weekend and has more talent at the plate and on the mound. And that’s not a knock on Tennessee, Vanderbilt is just extremely talented and it’s why they have also only lost one series all year.
Still, when you get to Sunday— the lone game where you have the starting pitching advantage— with a chance to win the series it’s hard to fill like you didn’t let a chance slip away.
Vanderbilt showed why its program has been so good on Sunday, bouncing back from a tough loss and playing a complete baseball game. The Commodores took the life out of Lindsey Nelson Stadium in the middle innings when they tallied, two runs, three runs, two runs, two runs on four straight innings to extend their lead to 10-3.
Against Florida, Tennessee was able to take advantage of a plethora of Gator mistakes. Vanderbilt didn’t make those mistakes this weekend, committing just one error, playing fantastic defense behind its pitchers and walking just 13 batters— six of those were Liam Spence.
Vanderbilt made Tennessee take this series from them and while the Vols showed enough to win on Saturday, they didn’t have enough to take the series over the defending national champions.
Tennessee won’t be alone in that situation this season.
2 —Evan Russell again— After being left out of the starting lineup on Friday night, Evan Russell responded Saturday with his second three home run game in the last three weeks.
Once again Russell entered the matchup hitting under .200 and turned in a historic performance. The senior left fielder took projected top five draft pick Jack Leiter deep twice, with the first one giving Tennessee an early lead and the second keeping the Vols in striking distance.
Leiter had given up just one homer this season going into the game and Russell tripled that number himself. Now the Lexington, Tennessee native has four homers against pitchers projected to go in the top 10 of this year’s MLB Draft (Leiter and LSU’s Hill).
Then with the bases loaded and Tennessee trailing a run, Russell came up trying to get a fly ball deep enough in the outfield to tie the game. Russell did so much more, sending a first pitch breaking ball over the deep left center corner, not only giving the Vols the lead but a comfortable one.
Russell wasn’t done for the weekend, hitting another home run in Sunday’s loss. Now 93 at-bats into the season, the senior has just 21 hits with 10 being homers. Not sure I’ve ever seen a stat like that with a player who gets as many at-bats as Russell.
Now the question is whether he can parlay his weekend success to future success. After the three home run game against LSU Russell was a little better at the plate but there was no major jump.
It completely changes the complexion of the Tennessee lineup if Russell can get back to his first three season .270 batting average while keeping some of the power in his game.
3 —Uncharacteristic weekend for the offense— Tennessee’s offense has itched out an identity of grinding out at-bats, finding ways to get on base and getting opponent’s deep into its bullpen.
That wasn’t the case this weekend as Tennessee worked just 13 walks on the series, a season low.
Tennessee’s contact hitting struggled badly too, as the team batting average was just 154 and only three players with six or more at-bats hit over .100.
Tennessee’s offense wasn’t dormant though, besides Friday night’s game, as a team that hadn’t hit for a lot of power this season hit for a large amount of power.
Obviously the four home runs from Evan Russell go a long way there, but he wasn’t the only one showing the ability to go deep as the Vols hit seven home runs on the weekend. Jake Rucker’s RBI groundout in the eighth inning of Saturday’s game was the only time Tennessee scored on the weekend not via the long ball.
A lot of this can be simply explained by Tennessee facing two of the nation’s best pitchers, and I think you have to credit the Vols for finding different ways to manufacture runs.
I think you’ll likely see Tennessee’s offense return to the grind it out unit that it has been all season, but it will be interesting to see if the Vols can keep some of the pop in the bat while doing it.
You don’t have to hit seven home runs on the weekend but mixing in a couple makes this lineup far more dangerous.
Two Questions
1. How big (and long) is the loss of Connor Pavolony?
The at-bat that loaded the bases for Evan Russell’s go-ahead grand slam was catcher Connor Pavolony getting hit by a 95 MPH fastball in the hand. While it was a huge win for Pavolony to get on base and force the Commodores to pitch to the red hot Russell, it appeared to be a potentially catastrophic injury for the long term potential of this team.
Luckily for Tennessee, the X-Rays came back negative as Pavolony did not fracture his hand. The junior didn’t start on Sunday and while he may not be out for an extended amount of time, it seems possible that Pavolony could miss another weekend.
“It’s a day-to-day thing but it’s going to be incrementally,” Tony Vitello said. “Right now he has a soft cast on … it will be get that thing off, get some repetitions and then get some live action out on the field with our guys and then advance on to face someone else. If it was May, late May, maybe you press the issue and put him out there
when he says ‘I’m good to go’ and we feel like it’s the right situation but for now it will kind of be day-to-day but we have to get to this day before we get on to the next step and get him back in uniform.”
While I wouldn’t rule out Pavolony playing next weekend in College Station I wouldn’t count on it.
So how big is the drop off after Pavolony?
At the plate, I don’t think Jackson Greer is too big a drop off. The ETSU transfer is hitting .300 with a .476 on-base percentage in 30 at-bats this year. The former Central High School standout also looked solid at the plate in his first SEC action, going 1-for-2 with two walks and his first home run of the season.
Behind the plate is where Tennessee will miss Pavolony the most. The junior has been great behind the plate this season, recording a 35% caught stealing percentage.
Pavolony’s absence was felt Sunday too as Vanderbilt stole six bases. Now that stat is a little unfair to Greer as four of those stolen bases came from SEC leader Enrique Bradfield Jr. Still, it’s a big drop off behind the plate and I’d expect SEC opponents to be more aggressive against Tennessee on the base paths until Pavolony returns.
2. Can Drew Gilbert or Jordan Beck get going?
Sophomores Jordan Beck and Drew Gilbert were arguably Tennessee’s two best hitters at the start of the season. Beck started to cool off before SEC play and Gilbert has dropped off in a big way the last three weeks and it’s left a hole in the middle of Tennessee's order.
Gilbert has been entrenched at the four hole while Beck is in the same situation in the five hole. This weekend, both recorded just one hit and in the last two weekends the duo is a combined 7-for-46 at the plate (.152).
Simply put, that’s not a recipe for offensive success.
Beck’s struggles are a bigger concern for me. He’s had some problems for a while and even his solid games don’t seem to produce more than one or two good at-bats. While Gilbert has been struggling just as badly, he has been a product of some bad luck and typically seems to put together more productive at-bats.
Still, one if not both of those guys are going to have to step up for Tennessee’s offense to really get going. I also wonder if Vitello looks at potentially breaking them up in the order, particularly looking at the potential to move Beck down in the lineup.
One Prediction
Tennessee hosts a regional
I said before the season that I thought the next realistic step for Tennessee to take forward would be to host a regional in 2021 for the first time since 2005.
The BaseVols have been better than I ever would have expected before the season and after a 10-5 first half of SEC play I feel confident saying that Tennessee will reach that goal.
We’re just three weeks away from the selection committee selecting its 16 regional hosts and eight super regional hosts. Between then and now Tennessee has weekend series at Texas A&M, vs. Kentucky and at Missouri.
That’s the easiest three week stretch of the SEC season and if Tennessee takes care of business and goes 6-3 over the next three weeks, which I believe they will, they’ll be sitting at 16-8 in SEC play. I don’t care about the negatives Lindsey Nelson Stadium has for hosting a regional, that record will be too good for the committee to say no to. It may just be good enough for them to be a super regional host as well.