Tony Vitello addresses Tennessee’s pitching plan for Clemson Regional

Tennessee baseball will be heading to the Clemson Regional, coming in as a two-seed. On3’s Jonathan Wagner has listed the Volunteers as a sleeper to make a run to Omaha, taking down host Clemson along the way. But before getting there, head coach Tony Vitello must figure out the pitching plan for the weekend.

Nothing has been decided by Vitello yet but he does not plan on making too many changes compared to the regular season. There is a trick he might be able to use in the regional — making everybody available in the bullpen. At some point or anything, Vitello believes every pitcher on staff has come in for relief.

Once things get tight, that could be a massive asset for Tennessee in big moments.

“That would just be based off we haven’t completed today’s practice schedule,” Vitello said. “Which includes some bullpens and things like that. I don’t think we plan to reinvent the wheel or anything. We started to have a feel for what roles our guys were going to have… Whether it be (Seth) Holverson or Zander (Sechrist), we know we got a couple of extra guys in our back pocket. About everybody on our team has relieved at some point of time in this program.”

Rain has played a huge factor for Tennessee over the final two weeks of the regular season but actually in a positive way. Vitello says the Vols have been able to sort out the rotation due to weather against Kentucky and then a series to close out the regular season against South Carolina.

“The rain delay against Kentucky created a situation we had patiently waited for all year long with Holverson,” Vitello said. “And then again, rain has followed us everywhere. At South Carolina — it made no sense to push Lindsey. The tournament starts Tuesday, a lot of those guys throw Thursday and then Tuesday. It made no sense to do that with Lindsey. So Holverson got a start out of the deal.”

But now, all focus for Tennessee is advancing out of the Clemson Regional. While there is plenty of talk about a potential matchup with the Tigers, Lipscomb is first on the schedule for Vitello. If they are not able to take care of business in Game 1, there will be no high-level matchup.

Sorting out the pitching so the Volunteers can attack both games will be key moving forward.

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