Tennessee baseball coach Josh Elander provided a positive injury update on catcher Stone Lawless Tuesday night following the Vols’ 12-6 win over Northern Kentucky. Lawless is starting to move in the right direction after being hit-by a pitch in the face in the Vols’ series finale loss against Vanderbilt.
“He actually looks a lot better,” Elander said. “Was pretty scary there for the first few days. I mean, the eye was essentially swollen shut, and he’s going through the process and the prognosis was, ‘hey, we’ll kind of wait and see,’ and we’re still a little bit there, but little bit more cautiously optimistic than we were.
“But any sort of definitive timeline, we’re going to have to let it play out a little bit more. But if you saw him today, it looks just kind of like a bruise on his eye, and it’s good to see him looking normal again at this point.”
Tennessee is still uncertain on what a timeline for Lawless to return to the field could be. Elander said the week before that Lawless would miss an extended amount of time due to the injury.
The next step for the catcher is to have surgery to repair his broken nose. Lawless may need another surgery past that but things are still uncertain on that front at this time.
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“The first thing will be, have to get that nose fixed,” Elander said. “The way it hit him, and the orbital bone, and then it basically went two different directions right there. So that’ll be the first thing. We’ll have to get that box checked. But we got great people in the room and in the building that’ll get him taken care of. I know he’s chomping at the bit to get back out there.”
The incident occurred against Vanderbilt 89 mph fastball hit Lawless in the face. He immediately fell to the ground and had to be helped off the field. Tennessee took him to the hospital during the game and Josh Elander said after the game that the pitch hit him in the orbital socket.
In nine SEC games played, Lawless is slashing .222/.313/.556 with two home runs and three doubles. Even when not starting behind the plate in conference play, Lawless has been Tennessee’s designated hitter.
Tennessee has used both catchers Garrett Wright and Levi Clark since Lawless suffered his injury. Clark started two games behind the plate last week against LSU while Wright started one game. Both players started in games they did not catch with Wright playing centerfield and Clark playing first base.
Freshman Trent Grindlinger can also catch but Elander said that would be more likely in midweek games while Wright and Clark split duties in weekend games.
The Vols are back in action this weekend when they travel to Starkville to face No. 9 Mississippi State in a three-game series at Dudy Noble Field.
