Tennessee Baseball projects to have one current player selected in the first round of the 2026 MLB Draft in Kiley McDaniel’s latest mock draft for ESPN.
McDaniel has Tennessee right-handed pitcher Tegan Kuhns going 24th overall to the Seattle Mariners. McDaniel writes that Kuhns is also “a candidate with a hot start to move even higher than this.”
The sophomore from Gettysburg, PA, is coming off a true standout performance last weekend. While leading things off against No. 4 Texas on Friday night, Kuhns racked up 15 total strikeouts in seven innings on the mound. He only allowed four hits while giving up zero runs to the Longhorns. Kuhns’ electric performance helped Tennessee find a 5-1 win over its conference foe.
On the season as a whole, the 6-foot-3 righty has a 3.13 ERA in 13 appearances on the mound. He’s pitched 72 total innings, giving up 64 hits, 27 runs, and 25 earned runs. He’s also struck out 95 batters while allowing just 13 walks.
Kuhns has been heating up as of late. In his last four appearances, Kuhns racked up 10 strikeouts against Ole Miss, nine strikeouts against Alabama, seven strikeouts against Kentucky, and 15 strikeouts against Texas. He’s also going considerably deeper in games lately than he was at the beginning of conference play. He pitched 4.2 innings against Georgia, 3.0 innings against Missouri, 4.1 innings against Vanderbilt, and 4.0 innings against LSU. Since then, he’s averaged more than six innings on the mound in his last five starts.
The mid-20s is a common projection for Kuhns. Earlier in the week, MLB.com and The Athletic had him tagged at No. 24 and No. 27, respectively.
More From RTI: Every Strikeout From Tennessee Baseball’s Tegan Kuhns’ Career Day
The one other interesting note from McDaniel’s mock draft on Thursday is that Tennessee commit Jared Grindlinger, brother of current Vol Trent Grindlinger, is projected at No. 11 to the Washington Nationals.
Grindlinger and was one of the biggest early recruiting wins of Josh Elander’s tenure as head coach. But landing Grindlinger’s commitment was just half of the battle of trying to get the talented California native to campus.
Tennessee views Grindlinger as a true two-way who can both play in the outfield and is a left-handed pitcher.
“Grindlinger has been rumored to this general range of picks and the Nationals since opinions started to roll in after his late reclassification,” McDaniel writes. “And there is enough overall interest that I don’t think Grindlinger lasts into the 20s. He’s a true two-way player, but teams now see him more as a hit-over-power right fielder with a nice secondary skill set on the mound. As a pitcher-only prospect, he’d probably go in the comp to second round.”
