KNOXVILLE — Were it up to Tennessee’s Liam Doyle, he’d have thrown fastballs all night, striking out Vanderbilt hitters and delighting fans in orange.
But that dang baseball gave him away.
“Had blood all over that thing from his blister,” Vols coach Tony Vitello said.
Prior to that little revelation, the best starting pitcher in college baseball had lived up to his billing again. With seven shutout innings, Doyle provided Tennessee with a much-needed 3-2 victory over rival Vanderbilt to open a pivotal series between two clubs fighting for NCAA Tournament seeding and hosting rights.
In a diminutive Lindsey Nelson Stadium known for offense, Game 1 was a wonderful pitchers’ duel.
Just recently, D1Baseball.com had moved Doyle to No. 1 in its ranking of college baseball’s best starting pitchers. He then went out and showed exactly why to win a game that struggling Tennessee needed.
Doyle was untouchable, for the most part. He struck out 12. He allowed only three hits. He improved to 9-2 this season and dropped his earned run average to 1.98.
And he did it despite that pre-existing finger blister. It worsened as the game progressed, eventually causing him to hit a batter and then nearly give up a game-tying home run that centerfielder Hunter Ensley brought back into the ballpark.
Ensley joked afterward about how it is easy to get bored out there with Doyle pitching.
“He’s been incredible,” Ensley said.
“He’s got good stuff,” Vanderbilt coach Tim Corbin said of Doyle. “Good fastball, gets on you. He doesn’t give in, throws strikes. It’s something you see above levels of this. So it’s tough. We did the best job we could, but we didn’t make enough contact to move the ball forward.”
Doyle, a junior, is emblematic of this nomadic era of college sports. He’s on his third college team in three seasons.
Originally from New England, he started his college career in 2023 at Coastal Carolina. Then he went to Ole Miss in 2024.
“It’s awesome being at this place in front of these fans and with this coaching staff, especially,” Doyle said. “It’s a pretty special place to come play baseball . . . Now that my off-speed stuff has grown so tremendously, it just helps my fastball — which was already pretty damn good — get better.”
As a prized transfer, he has been a fit for this Tennessee program. There’s a swagger to him. He’s confident, and he’s fiery on the mound. On May 4, for instance, Doyle was ejected for exchanging verbal jabs with an Auburn player during a relief appearance in a game that had been delayed by weather.
His weekly routine was altered. Didn’t matter one bit. Shutting down Vanderbilt in a big game was another indication of Doyle’s “warrior mentality,” to use Vitello’s words.
These Vols of 2025 haven’t yet proven to be the caliber of last season’s national champs, but in Doyle, they have an advantage last year’s Vols never did: A true ace to front their starting rotation.
“It gives our players confidence,” Vitello said. “It gives our coaching staff a chance to kind of map out how we think or want the weekend to go. And it influences every game all the way to Tuesday, because you’ve got a guy that can give you 100 pitches and set the tone for the weekend.”
Last season, Vitello pieced together the Friday night role out of necessity. When AJ Russell wasn’t healthy and AJ Causey couldn’t hold down the job as a starter, Tennessee made an unorthodox move to Chris Stamos. He’d pitch an inning or two before giving way to Causey.
It worked at times, but not in Omaha. Stamos and Causey combined to allow 13 runs in six innings at the College World Series. Therefore, Tennessee nearly lost its wild CWS opener against Florida State, and it did lose its first game against Texas A&M before rallying to win the best-of-three championship series.
“It’s a big credit to last year’s team to have success the way they did,” Vitello said. “ . . . You look at all the best teams in our league each year for the last 20 years, that’s the deal: You’ve got a guy that strikes fear into the other team.”
Fear? Hey, it’s no exaggeration.
Let’s see you try to hit a 99 mph fastball with blood on it.
“It’s just kind of representative of how the guy will compete,” said Vitello, “and I think our team needs to take note of that.”
Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and hang out with him on Bluesky @gentryestes.bsky.social
