KNOXVILLE - Tony Vitello's second baseball team at Tennessee will be more experienced than his first.
The former longtime assistant also should benefit from the experience he gained in his first year as a head coach.
The Volunteers start their 2019 season with a three-game series against Appalachian State in Knoxville, with the opener at 4:30 p.m. Friday. Saturday's game is at 2 p.m. and the finale is at 1 p.m. Sunday.
Seventy-nine percent of the starts for Tennessee baseball players last season came from underclassmen, giving the Vols what should be a returning lineup that has been through it. Vitello's pitching staff returns its three primary starters, as well as all eight pitchers who started at least once and every pitcher who recorded a win a year ago.
The Vols improved their depth by signing some recruits they expect to be quality freshmen, including Cleveland High School's Camden Sewell, a 6-foot-5, 184-pounder Vitello said could contribute immediately. Sewell was rated the No. 4 overall prospect and the No. 2 right-hander in the state of Tennessee in the 2018 signing class.
"We recruited him as, and we see him as, a SEC weekend starter," Vitello said. "When that happens, I'm not able to predict that. It depends on how quickly he matures, but he's maturing quickly. A lot has to do with how he carries himself, his routines, his presence on the mound. Physically, what fans will see, he's not the biggest guy, but he will fill that frame out. He's got a bright future as long as he'll continue to approach things as professionally as he is, which is rare for a freshman.
"I wish they all did it that way, but he's one of several that do."
Last year's Vols, with a roster stocked with underclassmen, went 29-27 for the most wins by a first-year coach in school history, and their 12-18 Southeastern Conference record was Tennessee's best since finishing with the same league mark in 2014.
Now Vitello and the Vols will try to take things further for a program that made the NCAA tournament eight times from 1993 to 2005, with three College World Series appearances in that span.
"The bottom line is we need to get better every day," said Vitello, an assistant at Missouri (2003-10), TCU (2011-13) and Arkansas (2014-17) before taking over the Vols. "Where we started at and what the tradition was that's a pretty large gap. You can make that up in a short amount of time if you're talking years, but if you're talking days, that's not the case.
"It actually has become a mantra to get better every day so we can build on where we started. Maybe we can get to that destination, the point we want to be at a little quicker because of that, but we're ambitious of making up that ground as quickly as possible."
It appears he has the experience - combined with the talent - returning to make that happen.
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3 or at Facebook.com/VolsUpdate.