Vols tab Vitello as next baseball coach
Tennessee hired former Arkansas assistant Tony Vitello as its next baseball coach, the university announced Wednesday.
Vitello, who spent four years with the Razorbacks and also coached at TCU and Missouri, replaces Dave Serrano and agreed to a 5-year contract worth $493,000 annually.
"We are thrilled to bring Coach Vitello’s passion for baseball, relationship building and student-athlete development into the Tennessee athletics family,” Tennessee athletics director John Currie said in a statement.
“Proven experience evaluating and recruiting at the highest level and in the grind of the SEC was an absolute prerequisite, and Coach Vitello checks all the boxes. He has a track record of helping to build healthy and competitive programs—from those earliest relationships formed during the recruiting process through the development of young men into major league ballplayers. Coach Vitello has been to a dozen NCAA Tournaments, and he’s been part of a staff that led a team to Omaha. He knows firsthand what it takes to win in the Southeastern Conference, and he has triumphed in recruiting battles for elite prospects in our SEC footprint and other talent-rich areas across the country.
“Throughout this process it has been inspiring to talk to many of the people who are passionate about Volunteer baseball—I believe that Coach Vitello is the right person to build our program into a perennial contender and bring championship baseball back to Knoxville.”
According to the release, Vitello, 38, has 14 years of D-1 coaching experience, signing and developing noted players as Andrew Benintendi, Brandon Finnegan, Kyle Gibson, All-Star Aaron Crow, Gold Glove Award winner and four-time All-Star Ian Kinsler and four-time All-Star and two-time Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer.
Vitello is a native of St. Louis, Mo., and graduated from Mizzou. He served as the recruiting coordinator at Missouri, TCU and Arkansas.
"This is as good of an opportunity as there is in the country,” Vitello said. “I consider myself incredibly blessed to be a part of the athletic department at the University of Tennessee. It’s the ultimate combination of an elite conference, a state school with great in-state players, a phenomenal city and outstanding tradition that exists not just with baseball, but across all sports.
“It’s no coincidence that it’s been a place where so many great coaches have been leaders in their sport. I want to work like crazy to uphold that standard.”
Tennessee will introduce Vitello in a press conference Friday.