Tennessee baseball’s offseason movement has begun to slow down with the transfer portal becoming sparse and the MLB Draft nearly two weeks in the rearview mirror.
Tennessee head coach Tony Vitello went on Fox Sports Knoxville’s The Chase on Friday afternoon and discussed a number of offseason topics while on the road scouting summer high school tournaments. Vitello discussed Reese Chapman returning for his senior year, the new roster limits and much more. Here’s everything Vitello said.
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On the amount of change in college baseball with new roster limits, normal offseason turnover
“What’s really frustrating is there’s not a lot of transparency or, I guess better said is, there’s just a lot of grey areas. What can you do? What are you going to be able to do? Then one person will tweet something out that, they want clicks so they make it seem profound, but the bottom line is there’s been a lot of back-and-forth with stuff and not everyone has the exact answers. Then you throw in the fact that our draft date is way too late in the summer. It just kind of makes you feel like things were better when I first started doing this. But when the actual season starts, you talk about the media coverage, the fanbases and the talent that’s on the field, the coaching— college baseball is better than it’s ever been. So maybe that makes it even more frustrating that our summers or our rules are a little bit out of whack.”
On the significance of getting Reese Chapman back for 2026
“Probably where it’s biggest is we get to spend more time around a kid that we love and I know as a coach you’re supposed to say that but if you’ve ever been around Reese, he’s just an incredibly impressive person. Just how he goes about his business. He’s a great worker too. I’ve always said the word intense. Who is the hardest worker is a hard thing to judge but he works as hard with the most intent of any of our players at what he’s trying to do. All those things are great. Excited to hang around him.
“But probably where it’s biggest is you look at next year’s roster, there’s not that big brother factor that we really had in ‘24. We’ve had in other years. Last year, we had with Ensley. You would have liked to have it with a few more guys on last year’s team but without Reese it would have been almost a brand new roster with a bunch of sophomores you’re looking to lead your team. So there’s a real sense of Reese and Arv or some other guys, like they’ll be able to lead our guys.”
On Rick Barnes dealing with extreme turnover, if they’ve talked about it any, who else you turn to leadership wise
“You look to Stone (Lawless), he’ll be in his third year but it’s almost like his fourth year based on his accelerated workload. He’s always working his butt off. He’s everybody’s favorite, I’ve said that a million times.
“But some of those sophomores, they’re going to have to step up a little bit. Some of them, like Jay Abernathy, are eager to do so. Levi Clark is in that category too. But in college sports, anybody can lead. I don’t think you have many Peyton Mannings or anything like that. The days of you having a roster like Coach Barnes had when he had Admiral and those guys, I’d go to those games and Rick I definitely think every college basketball coach that truly knows the game— a lot of them would say he’s the best coach in the country. So he clearly can coach but with that Admiral team, you’d go and the players coached themselves almost more than the coaches did. I don’t know, with the portal or anything else if I’ll be able to have a team like that or be around a team like that. Or he’ll have a team like that again. So I think you have to make every guy on the team eligible to lead, even if he’s a freshman. Dean Curley starts everyday as a freshman for us in ‘24 and he was a leader to some extent.”
On recruiting culture, what characteristics you’re looking at
“I think you’re looking at, there’s so many games going on right now that you have to take quick snapshots of guys’ movements and kind of how their delivery works or their swing works. Just how they move on the field. But also you can kind of take quick snapshots of how do they interact with their teammates when they come on and off the field, or someone gets a hit, or a coach has something to say to them, or a bad call from an umpire. And then walking around these facilities, basketball is like this too. Coach Barnes has gone to this facility Lakepoint, I’m staring at it, they’ve got a big gym and all these fields. You kind of come across paths with these kids and you see them interact at the concession stand or with their families. How they carry themselves says a lot. I don’t know if I have the conviction that Bob Knight did. I know Bob Knight went on an in home visit and a kid was rude to his mom and he got up and left.
“We all want talent and I’ll be honest, sometimes we make concessions, but if you’re going to make concessions on how a kid acts around other people— especially his teammate— he better be an elite, elite athlete. And in the back of your mind you’re saying ‘we can help this guy develop as a person.’ Kind of movements and presence. Those are the two big words, for what it’s worth to the average listener, when you come to a facility like this— what you’re kind of looking at.”
On how the roster cuts will affect midweek games
“I think what it will really affect are those Monday and Wednesday practices of guys that did not get action at all. Because you kind of shrink your numbers a little bit. But I still think the numbers will be great enough that when the season starts, you typically have 30-35 guys that are active for your team, so I’d like to think our bottom of the depth chart, for lack of a better way to say it, will be stronger with the shrinking of the numbers. I think the quality will go up with the full scholarships. The quality will go up with having to make some tough decisions and cut the rosters again, I think the quality goes up. And hopefully the play does as well. The only way Frank (Anderson) and I don’t see eye-to-eye is he came up from a long time ago when you relied on seven or eight arms. And those were your guys. I came up as a recruiting coordinator. I feel like anyone who puts in the work deserves the opportunity to go out on the mound. How good of an opportunity it is or if it’s an SEC game depends on how well you throw. But it really kind of grinds me that some of those games get shortened on Tuesdays with seven innings. You’ve got two guys that missed out on getting on the mound and they might show you something that earns them a greater role later in the year.”
On if the roster limitations will lead to parity in the postseason
“I definitely see where you’re coming from and I would agree, but only to an extent. I will use this here as an example— everyone felt like Arkansas-LSU meeting game one in Omaha was frustrating because those two should maybe meet in the finals. Of course, we’re all SEC fans and we’re all overly confident in our league. Sometimes for good reason. I just think it would be next team up. God forbid Arkansas loses a couple guys in the super regional to injury against us. They beat us and advance, it’s just next team up, or you could flip it to the other team. I think there’s a core group of teams that are going to be front runners each year. Our sport has more variability than basketball. But if you point to basketball, in this transfer portal and NIL area, which we’re still in, regardless of how big your roster is. You saw four No. 1 seeds that were in the Final Four of March Madness. There wasn’t as much madness as there usually is. In our sport, I do think there’s more variability so you’re still going to have teams like Murray State slide in to Omaha or some upsets in regionals or stuff like that. Or one pitcher dominates. But once you get to who actually gets to hoist that trophy, it’s going to be more than likely one of the better teams from the ACC or a team from the SEC. You have a smaller number of teams that maybe see as eligible— if you lose one of those I think it’s next man up. I don’t really know how to balance out the transfer portal or the NIL but it’s almost getting to be professional sports.
“I know people have said that but the way I mean it is in the NBA, MLB or NFL, if you’re not all in with your finances— especially baseball and basketball— you don’t have a chance of winning a title. You could have one good player but if you’re not going out and signing free agents or you don’t have a high payroll in Major League Baseball, for instance, you don’t really have a chance of hoisting that trophy at the end of the day.”
On preparing freshman to play, SEC play being so different from non conference
“It sounds like you’re conceding but I think how you finished the statement, ‘you just have to go through it’ is a big thing. Because the more you feed the beast by calling attention to it, the more you spur up the idea that it is different baseball. It’s not. It’s just a higher level of scouting, fan participation, coaching and then relentless talent instead of seeing a really good arm from Rice and then you get in the bullpen and it’s a fall off. It’s just arm after arm after arm if you’re a hitter and the scouting report is really good then a guy like Levi needs to really adjust to the whole deal.
“I think it’s a really tough one and for freshmen, the best way to prepare yourself is to take every advantage of every opportunity and recognize somewhere along the line you faced SEC level of competition, so when it comes, it’s just baseball. It’s like Gene Hackman showing his guys in Hoosiers that the basketball court, even though it’s a huge arena that the team in Hoosiers made it to, it’s still the same measurements where the hoop is and the free throw line and all that stuff.”
On his assistant coach retention
“It’s pretty crazy. I think one thing is, we all enjoy working with each other, but if you look at the administration changes we’ve gone through— John Currie hired us and decided to wipe the entire slate clean. Which there was great baseball people working at our place but I think it’s a really tough deal when you’re forced to inherit or keep people because it doesn’t start chemistry off on the right foot. And John allowed us to take our time, and we went way slow on some of those positions because we wanted to take our time and knew how valuable development was going to be at our place as we were a last place type program.
“Then Coach Fulmer comes in and he was the first one to have a feel good about what we were doing. He bumped up our contracts and allowed us to compensate those guys in a way that made them feel appreciated.”
“Then to the nth degree, Danny White came in and everyone knows he runs a tight ship when it comes to finances and where people sit, and he’s smart. He’s really good at it. What that’s allowed us to do with his generosity and Chancellor Plowman’s had a lot to do with is, is keep everyone here. And make it a destination job. Rather than this deal, when I first got hired I talked to a buddy who got hired at another SEC school, and he said let’s both do well at our jobs and go get a better one. It kind of took me off guard a little bit because we have all the ingredients at our place to be one of the best programs in the country. I appreciate you lumping us in with LSU and maybe even Arkansas, but we haven’t done it for as long as those guys have. I think everyone is pretty bitter in our building and we want to prove that we belong in that type of group. The fact that Danny has done what he’s done with compensation, the stadium, the way he’s made everyone feel like this is truly a destination spot, it relieves any conversations of what else is out there? Or who is doing this? We just focus on who we are and like I said, if you’re looking for a theme we’ve got a lot of people that are unhappy. Last year was a great year, the draft was an exclamation point for it being a good year. I think the most guys ever for it being a day one draft. But we all want better, just like the fans do. All we can do is work hard towards it and hopefully we prove it.”
