Tennessee’s Liam Doyle named Golden Spikes Award Semifinalist
Following an elite regular season as Tennessee baseball’s ace, starting pitcher Liam Doyle has been named a semifinalist for the prestigious Golden Spikes Award.
The Golden Spikes Award, presented by USA Baseball, is an honor bestowed annually on the best amateur baseball player in the country. A Preseason Watch List for the award was published before the season in February while a 45-player Midseason watch List was updated in April.
The southpaw led the nation with 137 strikeouts in the regular season and tied for the most wins (9) in the Southeastern Conference. The hurler was second in the league with a 2.72 ERA and second in batting average against (.171).
In total, Doyle tossed 79.1 innings in the regular season with 14 starts over 15 appearances. He allowed 27 runs (24 earned) on 48 hits and walked just 25 batters. He yielded 18 extra base hits altogether, with seven doubles and nine home runs. Doyle racked up double-digit strikeouts in seven of his starts in the regular season.
Beginning with the announcement of semifinalists on Sunday, a ballot will be sent to the Golden Spikes Award voting body consisting of national baseball media, select professional baseball personnel, previous Golden Spikes Award winners, and select USA Baseball staff, totaling a group of over 100 voters. The voting body will select the top semifinalists from the ballot to be named as Golden Spikes Award finalists and fan voting will simultaneously be open at GoldenSpikesAward.com.
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Fans will have the opportunity to vote up to 25 times per day for their favorite semifinalists. Selections made by the Golden Spikes Award voting body will carry a 95 percent weight of each athlete’s total, while fan votes will account for the remaining 5 percent. Finalists will be announced in early June and the award will be announced later that month live on ESPN.
Past winners of the award include Terry Francona (1980), Will Clark (1985), Robin Ventura (1988), Jason Varitek (1994), J.D. Drew (1997), Mark Prior (2001), Jered Weaver (2004), Tim Lincecum (2006), David Price (2007), Buster Posey (2008), Stephen Strasburg (2009), Bryce Harper (2010), Mike Zunino (2012), Kris Bryant (2013), A.J. Reed (2014), Andrew Benintendi (2015) Kyle Lewis (2016), Brendan McKay (2017), Andrew Vaughn (2018), Adley Rutschman (2019), Kevin Kopps (2021), Ivan Melendez (2022) and Dylan Crews (2023) and Charlie Condon (2024).
Doyle is in his first season at Tennessee, coming over via the transfer portal from Ole Miss in 2024 and Coastal Carolina in 2023. He projected as an early first round pick in this summer’s MLB Draft and is one of the top prospects from the SEC.
Former Vols Christian Moore and Blake Burke were named semifinalists a season ago for the award.
Tennessee finished the 2025 regular season with a 41-15 record and 16-14 mark in SEC play. The Vols will be the 8-seed in the SEC Tournament this week and begin play Wednesday morning at 10:30 ET with the winner of 16-seed Missouri and 9-seed Alabama.
