Josh Elander hasn’t been able to assess his first season as the University of Tennessee head baseball coach.
His summer calendar hasn’t had room.
“It’s just not the way this thing works now with roster construction being such a huge deal in college sports and even more so in baseball,” Elander said Thursday. “It has been a wild year in the (NCAA transfer) portal, and we talk to our players all the time about attacking the thing that’s in front of you. For us as a staff, it’s been about building a competitive roster so we’re playing longer in the postseason than we did this past year.
“The draft is definitely next on the menu, and then we’ll take some time to look back. I think learning from this year will put us in a better position next year, and I don’t think there is any doubt about that.”
Elander was promoted from hitting coach last October, which immediately followed Tony Vitello’s departure to become manager of Major League Baseball’s San Francisco Giants. It was a unique hiring by the Giants at a unique time of year, which has led to a head-spinning element for Elander for the past nine months.
“It’s been a little crazy,” Elander said, “and I think that’s the easy way to say it.”
Tennessee went 38-22 this past spring, which included a 15-15 mark in Southeastern Conference contests. The Volunteers had a 7-2 run to close their regular season, which contained series victories over Texas and eventual national champion Oklahoma, but they lost to East Carolina and VCU in NCAA tournament play.
It marked the first time in Tennessee’s 16 trips to the NCAA tourney that the Vols came away winless, but Elander has been encouraged by the weeks since.
“With our group, we held everybody that we wanted from the core from the previous year,” he said. “I’m really excited about Trent Grindlinger and Cameron Appenzeller, and I can go on and on with guys down the list. We have some really good kids who love the Tennessee Volunteers who we’re really excited to build around.
“Inevitably, there will always be some movement, but I think we’ve got the right guys in the building.”
DRAFT IMPACT
Who joins Tennessee next season will be impacted greatly by this weekend’s MLB draft in Philadelphia, which began Saturday with the first four rounds. The Vols landed commitments from 10 of ESPN’s top 150 draft prospects, with Jared Grindlinger — the outfielder and left-handed pitcher from Huntington Beach, California, is Trent’s younger brother — going 12th overall to the Los Angeles Angels.
The St. Louis Cardinals had the 13th pick and took another Tennessee commitment, outfielder Trevor Condon from the Atlanta suburb of Woodstock.
St. Louis also tabbed Vols pitcher Tegan Kuhns 32nd overall. As a draft-eligible sophomore this past season, Kuhns went 5-5 with a 3.56 earned run average, tallying 106 strikeouts in 81 innings.
Elander’s program had another commitment taken in Saturday’s second round, with the Atlanta Braves using the 48th pick to snag pitcher Kaiden McCarthy of Vermont Academy. Those three commitments likely will sign with their MLB teams — Grindlinger has a $5.89 million pick value according to MLB.com, while Condon’s is $5.66 million and McCarthy’s $2.08 million.
The Tennessee commitments selected Sunday will have more to think about in terms of their impending decisions.
“I’ve been doing this for a while now in our league on the recruiting side of it, and you never get everybody and you never lose everybody, either,” Elander said. “When you put together a talented group, which our staff has done — it’s just a multiyear process. Some of these guys were committed to Tennessee in eighth grade, which is wild to think about.
“We will have to hold our breath a little bit, and we do have to lean on our relationships with the pro teams in terms of what our program has been able to accomplish with guys getting in professional baseball and having success.”
STICKING AROUND
A program such as Tennessee retaining its commitments who were drafted high was unheard of a generation ago, but financial opportunities through revenue sharing and name, image and likeness deals plus an enhanced college experience is tilting more elite players toward a delayed professional start than ever before.
“It’s hard to argue coming to play baseball in Knoxville, Tennessee, and going to watch Coach (Josh) Heupel’s boys over in Neyland (Stadium),” Elander said of the football program. “There are a lot of things that make Tennessee amazing and special, and these guys truly have a first-class experience in every capacity, whether it’s in the travel or the fan support, or even things like nutrition and recovery. I rode the bus in the minor leagues for a while and had a blast doing it, but it was a little bit different from what our guys are able to get here.
“We were fortunate to win the national title here in 2024, and to be able to go to Omaha and play in these venues is not something you get to do if you sign out of high school, and I think a lot of people are leaning into that.”
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Elander watched the draft from Charleston, South Carolina, where he was attending the wedding of former Vols relief pitcher Kirby Connell. He has brief conversations with Vitello on occasion and hopes to visit his former boss when he’s recruiting on the West Coast later this year.
There are decisions to be made by the new draftees, and Tennessee’s work in the portal isn’t done, but eventually Elander will look back at his first season and take aim at his second.
“We need to get better, period,” Elander said. “We’ve been fortunate here to win a lot of games in the postseason in the last nine or 10 years we’ve been here. We’ve been around some incredible players, but there have been plenty of sleepless nights recently and plenty of reminders that this season ended well sooner than I think anybody is OK with around here.
“It was a problem, and the solution is to get better each day. We need to reload and get back to work.”
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.