Notebook: Tennessee baseball sweeps Mississippi State, continues to regain grip on season

ERIC WOODS Assistant Sports Editor

The Vols completed a second-straight sweep over an SEC foe when they dismantled Mississippi State by a combined score of 33-17. Things finally seem to be coming together for Tennessee baseball at the perfect time when they need to play their best baseball with a month left of play.

“You look at the way they’ve come together the last couple of weeks, it’s been fun to see how they feed off of each other,” head coach Tony Vitello said. “They pick each other up, and it takes some time. If you’re in a new relationship, which obviously, I am no expert, you’ve got to navigate through some waters and figure out some give and take.”

Here are some takeaways from the Vols’ weekend sweep over Mississippi State.

Timely hits return

The theme of the season has been the lack of hits, and more importantly, the lack of timely hits with runners on base and hits with two outs has plagued the Vols all season.

Last weekend, the Vols scored a total of 18 runs — over half of their total — with two outs. The Vols batted 14-of-37 (.378) in those situations, and they batted 13-of-36 (.361) with runners in scoring position.

On Saturday, the Vols blasted two three-run homers with two outs en route to the 13-2 runrule that secured the sweep. Leaving runners on base has been a looming issue all season, but they have been well past those problems as of late. The hits were coming, but not the runs. Now, the runners that have been left on base had already driven in a run.

The Vols are

Back On Track To Make The Postseason

It was looking like Tennessee was in jeopardy of missing the postseason a few short weeks ago. A four-game losing streak and three straight series losses to SEC foes were making sure of that — not to mention a 5-10 start to SEC play.

However, even though the team was playing bad, it was clear that the Vols were not a bad team. Glimpses of the potential had been on display in the final games of series with Florida and LSU.

What was unclear was if Tennessee would reach its potential. If it did, would it be too late in the season?

But after the sweep, the Vols have finally climbed above .500 in SEC play for the first time this year, and they are back in the driver’s seat on the road to the postseason.

Christian Moore breaks out of slump

Since an 0-for-5 opening game of the Florida series, Christian Moore has been in the midst of a brutal hitting slump where he batted just 3-of-36 (.083) in SEC games heading into game two of the Mississippi State series. He was clearly frustrated with each strikeout, ground out or flyout.

He had a vent session with batting coach Josh Elander while continuing to work things out in the cages, and everything changed for him.

Something switched on Friday night and he finished the series on a 4-of-9 tear with three home runs and six RBIs.

Moore is someone who was expected to be at the top in terms of production in the beginning of the year, but has been very inconsistent at times. If he can use this past weekend and build off it, then the potential of the team becomes much higher.

“There’s challenges ahead of us, but I do think we have a picture of what it looks like when we show up to the park with our right approach or best attitude,” Vitello said. “Where guys need to be is getting closer but not a finished product. And like I said, marching towards May, I think we got good ball ahead of us, we just need to keep playing baseball and not complicate things.”