Tennessee’s baseball coaching staff will have a different look in Josh Elander’s second season at the helm.
Elander announced Thursday that he has parted ways with assistant Josh Reynolds, who spent the 2025 season as director of baseball operations and pitching performance. Reynolds was promoted to an assistant role overseeing the pitching staff last November, which followed former Volunteers head coach Tony Vitello leaving to become the manager of Major League Baseball’s San Francisco Giants and taking longtime pitching coach Frank Anderson with him.
“I want to thank Josh Reynolds for his hard work and dedication to the Tennessee baseball program during his two seasons in Knoxville,” Elander said in a released statement, “but I have decided it’s best for our program to move in a different direction from a pitching standpoint at this time.”
Elander, whose first season as Tennessee’s head coach ended with a 38-22 record and an 0-2 showing at last weekend’s Chapel Hill Regional of the NCAA tournament, added that a search for a new pitching coach for the 2027 season is already underway.
Tennessee’s 4.72 team earned run average ranked 49th nationally and seventh within the Southeastern Conference, but it was the program’s worst clip since 2013. The 2022 Vols set an insanely high bar with a 2.51 ERA, with that staff headed by starters Chase Dollander (10-0, 2.39), Drew Beam (8-1, 2.72) and Chase Burns (8-2, 2.92), starter/reliever Zander Sechrist (4-0, 1.67) and reliever Kirby Connell (4-0, 1.66).