Cam Appenzeller (Apr. 30, 2026)

Freshman phenon pitcher Cam Appenzeller stops by in this week's edition of Kiv's Korner, presented by Calhoun's.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So it's the show within a show that everyone loves, presented by our great friends at Calhoun's. This is Kibb's Corner. Ross Gibbs, Tennessee assistant baseball coach and recruiting coordinator. This is his program. He brings the guests, he sets the topics, he asks the questions. He is in charge. I'm merely here to make sure that he gets to break on time. Six of nine. We keep rolling, moving up the standings. It's getting better every weekend.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

You want to play your best baseball in May. That's you've heard that for the last, I don't know, two decades since Coach Rod, Hall of Famer. Shout out, Rod. I don't know you're really just kind of tempering a small wave until you can ride the big one. So I'm hoping that the big one is on the horizon here with Kentucky coming up this weekend, and then um not to get too far ahead, but then a big home series versus Texas. Someone that will be definitely impactful on the weekends is a freshman phenom. Two chains is a rapper, two tattoos is a left-handed pitcher from Chad from Chatham, Illinois, Cameron Appenzeller. Oh backwards crew. Nice.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

He did it, so I did it. I didn't know I did it because you did it.

SPEAKER_02 1:15

I just copy him.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

I want to be Cam Appenzeller when I grow up. There's a rule about the backwards hat thing, though. Now, because you're involved in baseball, you can do a backwards hat. Sure. But you see people in public wearing backwards hats. Oh, this is gonna be good. And it's like you don't have a right. You know, only certain people have a right to go with the back. If you win a championship, you can a championship, you can certainly do that. But if you played catcher at any point in your life, you have the right to wear. So you have the right. Absolutely. You have the right to wear your hat backward for the rest of your life. You can be 89 years old. I agree. And you can have your hat on backwards. Okay. All right.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

But some dudes don't do that. Well, yeah, hey guys, listen, if I see your hats backwards, I'm gonna ask you if you can.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

I still say if you served in the military, you can wear your hat backward for the rest of your life. I have rules. I'm not gonna get into it because we got Cam here. So like am I allowed to wear my hat backwards? You play baseball. Well, you're left-handed, too. When your baseball career is over, it's forward. We'll have to talk about it. Call me.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

I had a college coach that told me the direction of your hat is the direction of your life. So currently, after my 2 a.m. or on Tuesday morning, I'm going backwards. But he is not. He is on the way to going forward. Cam App and Zeller, here's the here's the difference. I gotta go. He's like, okay, now I'm nervous about it. Because we got Kentucky tomorrow. We're moving forward. He's got Kentucky tomorrow. Let's start with something really, really light because Kibb's Corner is a fun family show. Why did you turn down the draft to come to Tennessee? Oh, that's really light. Uh was it not light? It was not light. It was down to the wire.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

How long did it go on? Long process.

SPEAKER_02 2:56

But that first day of the draft.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Yeah, second day of the draft. That's when I knew I was coming. But the first day was a it was long. I mean, it was a lot of stuff going on.

SPEAKER_02 3:05

You were drafted in the 19th round by the Seattle Mariners, but don't let that kid jump.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

It was like after I already decided.

SPEAKER_02 3:12

It's one of those picks when you get drafted there, it's in case someone doesn't pass a physical, and then they have the money that Cameron and his village was asking for, which could possibly take him away. So we're popping bottles, having some beverages on day two of the draft. He gets popped by Seattle in the 19th round. We're going, man, it's still not technically out the woods till August 1. No harm, no foul. He came back to school for summer school, and now you're starting to see what he can really do on the mound, and that's get people out in this league. What's the biggest adjustment between the fall, your first, let's call it three or four weeks of out of conference, and then the early success to now riding the roller coaster a little bit, getting ready to get back on that high horse?

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Yeah, I feel like it's just focusing on like the little things, like throwing more strikes, like being just that much more accurate with all your pitches.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

Do you feel like accuracy is something that you're kind of born with? Because you can throw it to both sides of the plate, which is why you see success. We always talk about commanding the fastball, and this guy's been doing it his whole life, since he was an area code guy or an East Coast pro, and then coming into his high school season, where we'll talk about your basketball career a little bit later. But and then obviously as a freshman here, he's he's starting to throw strikes. But when did that start to become an emphasis in your work?

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Once I kind of started taking baseball more seriously, like sophomore junior year, that's kind of what I just kind of realized that throwing strikes is like how you get guys out, it's not just like blowing guys up.

SPEAKER_02 4:41

You've shagged enough BP or taken enough BP to know if you throw it over the middle, you even get out and bat it.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

Yeah, yeah. So I'm I was a hitter in in high school, and whenever guys just throw it over the plate, I mean you would ground out the second. No, no, no. I'd usually hit it over the fence.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Should they let you hit right now?

SPEAKER_01 4:57

He's gonna say yes, and that's not I mean, yes, I want to hit, but I like our hitters.

SPEAKER_02 5:02

I think they're better than me. What a team guy. Team guy. Hey, coach, I don't know if you knew this, but this guy, ridiculous athlete in high school, scratch golfer all conference, yeah. I don't know what the second team All State or something. Yeah, and he went to state as a basketball player. Outside of not really having a jumper, he can he can 360, windmill, dunk, and all sorts of things. How's that athleticism play in pitching?

SPEAKER_01 5:24

I feel like it's just kind of being a natural athlete moving down the mound. I mean, it's just kind of a feel thing. I feel like pitching is it's like a you gotta do what feels right to you.

SPEAKER_02 5:34

Moving down the mound for for the people at home that doesn't know what that means. What is something that you would do drill-wise to make sure you're moving down the mound?

SPEAKER_01 5:42

Anything with like uh like a water bag on your back, just like staying stacked, something like that.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

You say moving down the mound, what do you what are you talking about specifically?

SPEAKER_01 5:52

I'm not great at explaining or like teaching, I guess, but just like he's good at doing, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

Just moving down the mound is basically like your delivery. So how he comes set and he you know when he lifts his leg, how far he can get down. They call it the slope because it it is where his foot lands, what position he's in there, and then how athletic and springy it can be from behind that. Is Tegan Koontz the best at that? He's our best mover. Yeah, he is very close to to being Tegan Koons being you know two years younger.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

Tegan explodes. It's it's electric. The the leg action, yeah, they used to talk last century about Nolan Shout out to the nomads. Yeah, they used to talk a lot about Nolan Ryan with just the leg action and Roger Clemens and guys like that with the incredible leg action that they had generated the power more so than even the arm. When you see Tegan, you're like, man, he is getting some torque going from the lower body.

SPEAKER_02 6:49

When we're taking notes recruiting, we would label Tegan a clean mover. Clean mover because it is so explosive once he gets his foot down, and what's coming from you know, coming behind it is electricity. He's also got we had Zach Stovall on in Shout Out Stills. And analytics wise, his his reach or his extension is off the charts, the way that he can spin the ball is crazy too, and a lot of it is because he moves, which is something that you've been worried about in crazy. You talk to Tegan a lot. Yeah, even though we we joke around with him a lot, yeah. There's a lot to learn from him. He he is pretty impressive, and and then I think something that's been impressive with with Cameron is getting thrown into the fire, okay, so early. You start off as the midweek guy, getting two or three innings, and now it's like, okay, here's the weekend, Arizona State, and then it's been the weekend since then. Did you always feel the confidence that you you had going into that, or was that just a slow burn with Ren?

SPEAKER_01 7:46

I mean, I kind of always had the confidence. I mean, I had a good fall, so just kind of having that good fall leading into the season helped me.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

How impactful for is the fall? I don't think people really realize that playing those fall games is so important, and we didn't have the opportunity to do that this year, but scrimmaging against your own guys that are gonna go high in the draft, Henry Ford, you learned some some things. But what's one thing that you took outside of the fall can that does have the possibility of having some chaos? Yeah, what's something you learned from that?

SPEAKER_01 8:17

I mean, I just learned it's a whole different level. Just from getting here in July to the whole end of the fall, I mean, it was just a whole different animal. Like, like, I mean, I know it's a different different people here now, but that first month with Q, that was just made me realize I wasn't really ready for college. And then after that, what wasn't ready? The body? Yeah, no, my body was not. What's something you focused on?

SPEAKER_00 8:38

Put on weight and get started. Yeah, proud of himself. Put on put on a little weight in the fall. So you're very sure at this point, after your experience over the last eight, nine months, that college was the right decision for you. Obviously, Tennessee was the right decision for you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:53

I I think I think the gaining weight thing is what you've seen the velocity start to tick up. We want to play our best ball in May. That's what we said at the beginning of the show. And in order to do that, you have to be able to have the stamina to embrace it's about to be 90 degrees in Hoover, coach. You've been down there for the SG tournament. It's gonna be warm in Oklahoma, et cetera, throughout Knoxville as well. So being able to handle that and avoid some of the soft tissue stuff, what's some of the routine-based things that you do after you throw?

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Yeah, I mean, next day I do a lot of like Mark Pro, heat, hot tub, cold tub, just like recovery stuff. I don't really throw much after, but just like a bunch of recovery.

SPEAKER_02 9:33

Do you have the ability to kind of create your own schedule, or is is Coach Reynolds and and Keegan, shout out Keegan, getting that body right? Is is that kind of what you're going off of?

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Um, it's kind of a mixture of both. Like we work together to figure out a schedule for me that works good and for both of us.

SPEAKER_02 9:50

So is it a requirement when you're SEC freshman pitcher of the week to get tattoos?

SPEAKER_01 9:56

No, definitely not a requirement. I don't think Trent uh Greenlinger has any tattoos. Shout out Trent. Um Trent had a good week last week. Trent did have a good week.

SPEAKER_02 10:05

Seven hits. That's a lot of hits. That's a lot of hits. That's a lot of hits. What about Kentucky? What's something that is an emphasis for this weekend that will have success if you do this or if your teammates do this?

SPEAKER_01 10:16

Yeah, I think just the big emphasis is if people get on base, then just to keep them where they're at, like not let any free 90s. I mean, you know, Kentucky's gonna try to steal, try to bunt, try to play their game. You just gotta play your game.

SPEAKER_02 10:28

This is way off topic, Coach. I'm sorry, I'm I'm on a tangent with him. He's he's one of my favorite recruits that I've had. When you're going through the process, what is something you're looking for? And what did Tennessee do so well at checking those boxes?

SPEAKER_01 10:43

It's just uh like the what they have to get you to the next level after that, and what they have to um like get you better. I mean, you guys here they have the best um facilities, coaches, like everything to get you better.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

You come in and college baseball at this level is like a job. And yet you still have to go to school. Yeah. How long did it take you to learn the ballots to figure that out?

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Probably about like halfway into the fall. I mean, I had a my fall schedule, school schedule compared to my schedule now was pretty like light. Like I have more in-person now than I did in the fall. So it was kind of slowly got me into like the college life, but it honestly wasn't too bad. What was your fall GPA? 4.0.

SPEAKER_02 11:27

Shout out Megan Anderson Megan and Thornton Center. What a resource. What are we up against in the Wildcats? Kentucky is a multiple offense, so not to use, not to be coach height. Kind of like Alabama was similar, but they'll bunt way more. I mean, I'm talking a hundred more bunts. Sacks in situations where you can't um really expect to sack uh one or two out sometimes. Safeties. We're gonna have to shift a little bit less, is the initial just because of how they run and where they place the ball. True aluminum bat team. They'll they'll run uh consistently, and sometimes in spots where you you it's not really by the book. They have to create chaos on the defense and put pressure on the defense that way because they don't have the sit and slug guy on the mound. It's it's strikes. Um, it's it's all premium stuff in this league. So we're gonna have to be able to move runners and drive them in with less than two outs. You got to win the middle innings against Kentucky. I think that's what South Carolina did a really good job of. You can get them if if you play your best ball. And it's time to play our best ball because it's May. Go get the Wildcats. It's time to own the Wildcats. Thanks, Cameron.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

All right, that is Kibb's quarter, Ross Kibbett, Cam Mappenzeller. Backward hat gang. Calhoun game. Calhoun's is the presenting sponsor. We've got more right after this.