Tennessee baseball head coach Tony Vitello met with the media following the Vols’ 13-3 win over Rice in Houston Saturday. Vitello shared his thoughts on Marcus Phillips’ start, Levi Clark’s big home run, another great day from Gavin Kilen and how Brayden Sharp has improved.
You can watch Vitello’s press conference here.
Read the recap of Tennessee’s win here.
See the entire transcript of Vitello’s post-game press conference below.
On Tennessee infielder Gavin Kilen’s play this weekend:
“He’s doing well. I mean, we talked yesterday about how functional his swing is so shout out to Kilen’s cage. I mean, I know he trained at a young age with his dad, and is passionate about hitting, just as well as he is fielding. I mean, we even talked about with some lineup changes. He could have moved over to third base, but he’s so versatile at every position defensively, we’d like to see him chest up on one ball there, but (if) you don’t get it done on defense, you come up to the plate and you knock it around. But he’s done a good job of knocking it around for us the past two days.”
On what he saw from junior RHP Marcus Phillips in his third start of the season, settling in after the first inning:
“Just a more mature Marcus Phillips, to be honest with you. His presence was good throughout the whole first inning, even though it wasn’t ideal. There was a couple things that happened that could have made it go differently, but the bottom line is, he made the best of a bad set of circumstances.
“So to me, that’s a sign of, again, maturity and him growing up, but also him utilizing his stuff, which everyone has said from day one, is pretty electric. And then, you know, that has come along with the maturity too. I mean, his stuff is more advanced and it’s more polished. So there was a lot there as it relates to his progression. But again, all that young stuff is now kind of icing on the cake, or inexperienced. He’s got a lot of it, so you expect a little bit of what he did today.”
On what he likes about freshman Levi Clark hitting fifth:
“The calm, you know, presence for yet a young guy, but the strength. I mean, he’s as strong as a guy like Pete Alonso — or not Pete Alonso now, Pete Alonso in college — or Dean Curley, some of the guys we have on our team. As strong as an upperclassman, is the way to say it, but for a freshman, just has a calm about him, and I think they really all do.
“I mean, (Brayden) Krenzel, the way he finished the game. I mean part of that is, speaking of dads, he can rely on his dad’s sports experience, but there’s some talent in that group, but there’s a unique sense of calm or composure that normally freshmen don’t have. And you know, some of them need to jump on board. (Nic) Abraham showed it today. Most of them have it. So in order to fit in, in that group and get on the field, you need to and the skill sets definitely there.”
On Tennessee redshirt freshman LHP Brayden Sharp:
“He likes to compete. He likes to compete. I wish — if I was a poet, I wish he’d like to eat because he could get a little bit more physical for a kid that’s in his second year. But he’s also a high energy kid that burns a lot of calories running around the outfield. He’s a two-way guy for us, legitimately. I really like his swing, but we know his stuff is there. He was a potential draft pick as a pitcher on the mound out of this city, from The Woodlands High School. They got a proud tradition, and he’s one of the better ones they’ve ever had there.
“So again, that talent has always been there, but he just really likes to compete. And I think some guys can take a page out of his book. Yeah, you got to have some calm and some presence about you, but you got to get out there with some want to and he’s always going to have that.”
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On how Brayden Sharp fits in with the other left-handed bullpen options:
“Well, Kirby [Connell], Zander [Sechrist] and Stam (Chris Stamos) are all gone. So whoever wants to fit in can, but in order to do it, you gotta have a little bit, again, the one-two in the presence combo, if we’re gonna turn it into a thesis on that whole deal. So if you have the presence and the wherewithal to come in like [Dylan] Loy did yesterday and have some composure regardless of what’s going on around you, Wiggy (Tanner Wiggins) did it after they had a good meeting on the mound there. You saw him take a couple deep breaths. So whatever you have to do to get out there and have a little bit of composure about you and then get after it.
“Because all these guys have good enough stuff. But, without naming guys, there’s a couple guys since the season started that aren’t showing their best stuff. So if the ship’s gonna go down, you want it to go down with your best punch, if that’s the best way to say it. As many lefties we want to fit in that are capable, and [Luke] Payne’s the guy we haven’t used here, and again, he’s kinda like Sharp. He’s always gonna compete and think he’s the man for the job, which I like. So, he’ll get an opportunity soon, too. But, we had some good ones. I’m glad we don’t have to listen to Zander or Stam anymore. We don’t have an option with Kirby. But there’s availability.”
On how Tanner Franklin is different from when he got to campus:
“We chatted after everyone walked away here. Some of the other media members just talked about how from one semester, his body changed completely. And I think your body, you don’t have to be a model to get out there and perform, but you gotta be strong enough to have body control, and you gotta be in good enough shape to be able to withstand the amount of effort required over an outing or multiple innings or a whole season. And then two, once you have all that, that great package that I think our nutritionist and our strength coach help with so much, then you gotta let it work. And right now, he’s throwing the ball real free and easy, and certainly, getting him out here, I’ll be honest with you, it’s like, ‘Okay, big league ballpark, a lot of media hype to it, great competition, kind of a regional/Hoover vibe to it, how are guys like [Austin] Breedlove and Franklin gonna handle it?’ And those two handled it.”
On if he has a pitching plan for Sunday:
“Honestly don’t have any. We don’t have any strategy to it. We know Arizona’s good, but it’ll have a little bit more to do with what we’re looking to accomplish and what we have available. So, just more of a conversation as opposed to an all-out strategy meeting. But we honestly came into the weekend and had a scout ask, and laughed at me, I said we were just kind of pretending like Sunday didn’t exist. And that’s kind of who we are right now. It ties into the conversation we were having about, there’s a lot of availability, there’s a lot of options, but there’s gotta be a meeting there. Some guys have shown, hell, we got two guys that have shown they can fully fill that left field void. So it’s nice to have options like that. We want options that we can utilize in the game. We’ll see how it meets in the middle, but we’ll use a bunch of different guys. We’re just looking for guys that want the ball in their hand.“
