Tennessee continues to slowly work him back.
As good as Tennessee baseball is right now, they have a chance to get that much better down the road. The Volunteers are playing it slow with right-hander AJ Russell, working him back from Tommy John surgery.
Russell made his second appearance of the season on Tuesday night, working one inning to start the game against Tennessee Tech. It was the same amount of work he got in his first start, which was also a midweek game.
On Tuesday, Russell threw 12 pitches during the inning, striking out two batters and giving up one hit.
“It was good that it was efficient, because right or wrong, and maybe kind of put a little extra pressure on the kid and told him, ‘Hey, it’s gonna be four or five hitters no matter what,’ Tony Vitello said of the plan for Russell on Tuesday.
“I mean, really, it was kind of record time, is not being overdramatic. So we kind of took a timeout and said let’s build up pitch count and get closer to the date that was the target date, which would have been last week. He was a little sick, so we didn’t mess with it. Could have went last week, but this was the restart of everything.”
Russell made his initial return on February 25th against North Alabama, striking out the side just over eight months removed from the procedure. He’ll be looking to return to the form he had during his freshman season, where Russell posted a 0.89 ERA. He made 24 appearances on the season, tossing 30.1 innings and striking out 47. Russell would move to a starter role last season, but only appeared in six games before being shut down.
So what’s next for Russell as Tennessee works to get him back to full strength?
“Probably next week,” Vitello said when asked of his plan moving forward. “And I’m glad he didn’t fight us on the coming out of the game. Again, I think it was 12 pitches in this first inning, so he would have stayed under a reasonable pitch count if we would have put him back out there, I feel.
“So probably just to get more in a routine where it’s a preparation bullpen and then a competitive day. And you know, more than likely that next competitive day would be next Tuesday. And try and stack another inning on top of another one would be ideal.”
Tennessee moves forward this weekend with a series in Knoxville against Texas A&M. The Volunteers, now 27-2 overall after their 7-1 win over Tennessee Tech on Tuesday, have seven SEC series remaining on the schedule. We’ll see if Russell can play a factor down the stretch run here.