3 Up, 3 Down on Tennessee Baseball Before Home SEC Debut

Conference baseball is entering full swing for the Tennessee Vols, who have experienced mixed results this season.

Tennessee, which currently is ranked 22nd by D1Baseball.com, has a 15-6 record and a 1-2 mark in SEC play heading into a three-game series at home against Missouri (15-6, 0-3). The Tigers are struggling going into Knoxville; they’ve lost four in a row after getting swept in their conference opening series against Auburn, then getting run-ruled Wednesday by Kansas in a 12-0 defeat.

Let’s take a look at three positives and three negatives for the Vols entering this series.

3 UP

1. Manny Marin has swung a hot bar lately for the Vols. In his past 10 games, Marin is hitting .556 with five RBIs and a 1.000 OPS. Marin has tallied at least one base hit in his last eight games, and he’s batting .377 for the season with four home runs.
2. Tennessee added two transfers from Virginia during the offseason and both remain impact players. Let’s start with Henry Ford  who is raking with a .353/.402 OBP/.682 SLG line. His slugging percentage leads Vol regulars and he also currently paces all hitters in home runs (8), RBIs (25), and total bases (58).
3. The other Virginia transfer for the Vols is southpaw pitcher Evan Blanco, who leads pitchers who’ve met the minimum workload requirements in ERA (3.20) and has a 1.11 WHIP. Blanco has ne five or more innings in four of his five starts, and went a season-long 5 2/3 Sunday in a no-decision against the Bulldogs, allowing three runs on three hits and three walks while striking out eight. Georgia roughed up Brayden Krenzel for the deciding five runs in an eventual 8-7 victory in the rubber match of the series.

3 DOWN

1. Levi Clark has struggled mightily this season. One of a slew of sophomores in key roles for the Vols this spring, Clark was a preseason second-team all-conference selection but he’s been hitting at or below the Mendoza Line (.200) all season. Heading into the Mizzou series, Clark’s got an overall line of . His bat has shown signs of life lately; Clark got two hits and an RBI in the series finale with Georgia after sitting the first two games of the weekend, then had a hit with two RBIs and scored a run in Tuesday’s 10-3 win over Eastern Kentucky.
2. You can’t win if you don’t score, and you can’t score if you don’t get men on base. Tennessee currently has a collective on base percentage of .384. That’s more than 25% lower than the .410 mark the 2025 Vols accumulated en route to the College World Series.
3. It appears that Josh Elander, Tennessee’s first-year head coach and Tony Vitello, is still finding his way when it comes to managing the pitching staff. Case in point: the Sunday Georgia game. Krenzel got hung out to dry to some degree, and gave up five runs in the seventh as Georgia took control of the game. Elander said after the game he trusted Krenzel and hindsight is 20/20, but that’s one instance where the Vols should have made ea move much sooner.