Hayden Schott, Gavin Grahovac and Jace LaViolette have withdrawn their names from the transfer portal and announced their return to Texas A&M this week. D1Baseball’s Kendall Rogers takes a look at what the Aggies’ baseball roster could look like in Michael Earley’s first year.
Key Notes from Kendall Rogers Interview
- With Michael Earley being hired, I think I would have a different view of it if Earley had hired assistants and I was like, “Ehh, I don’t know about that.”
- One thing I like about Earley is that he’s obviously very confident in his ability to be the head coach at Texas A&M. I think the first step is saying it with conviction and then having the sense that he’s actually ready for it.
- Earley had a concise plan. Another interesting thing is that he approached this case with a Tony Vitello model. Vitello hired Frank Anderson, and Earley went and got Jason Kelley.
- If he hadn’t hired Kelley and brought in Caleb Longley, who had a really good offense at Texas last year, I think we’d see a slightly different team.
- We’ll see that recruiting in two or three years, when you don’t have the roster you have this year. So far, I feel like Earley has checked a lot of boxes, and frankly, I was skeptical that he wouldn’t when he was hired at Texas A&M.
- I don’t want to burn the sources here, but obviously A&M hired Brian O’Connor. They also approached, to some extent, Link Jarrett and then Vitello, who I think was the guy they were really looking for.
- My understanding is that Vitello thought about it. I think the idea of ​​recruiting Vitello was crazy, but my understanding is that he thought about it seriously. If you can’t recruit those three guys, people will say, ‘A&M is not a big-time program.’
- Vitello has a gold mine in Tennessee. He can get anything he wants. O’Connor has a son who’s a senior in high school and didn’t want to make him move. Jarrett was brought back to Florida State, specifically by Mike Martin’s family. He’s not going to burn that bridge.
- I think once they got past those guys, they looked at Tom Walter or Dan Heefner. Oh, by the way, Earley wanted to interview for that job.
- I’m sure Trev Alberts didn’t expect Earley to have such a detailed plan. From what I understand, Earley showed up and got an A+. He had a plan and a lot of confidence and laid out a complete vision of what he wanted to do for the program.
- If you’re A&M and you get those top three players because of other circumstances, do you hire the guy who can hold the roster and kill the interview, or do you go down the list and hire another guy?
- We can argue until we lose our minds about which direction they should have gone, but especially in the short term, A&M probably made the right decision. Then again, we’ll see in two or three years if they made the right decision in the long term.
- I have reason to believe Earley isn’t going to be a huge success, but look at the guys who were 36 or 37 when they were first named head coaches. O’Connor, Vitello, Jay Johnson. The list goes on.
- Whether this was a terrible hire or, more frankly, an A+ hire remains to be seen. I’m ticking a few good boxes for Michael Earley, at least in the short term.
- A&M is a team, on paper, that’s coming into next year in a good spot. They need to step up a little bit in pitching, and I don’t think they’re done in the portal. That’s what’s going to happen. Earleyl is a really confident guy and he’s in a unique position as a first-year head coach.
- Receiver is going to be an interesting position. Obviously, you have Max Kaufer in the portal, and Jackson AppelI think they’d like to get him. I think he’s going to be drafted relatively high. USC receiver Jacob Galloway is in the portal, and he’s a talented guy to watch.
- The other thing from A&M’s perspective is having options like Cam Clayton and Aiva Arquette, so if Kaeden Kent decides he won’t come back, those are two other options.
- A&M is going to have a lot of options, and from what I understand, the NIL part of the system has been significantly strengthened. Not only was it strengthened before Jim Schlossnagle left, but I was told after he left that they would do everything they could. That certainly appears to be the case.
- Texas flipped a couple of A&M high school players. I’d say two or three of them are pitchers, so they’re following Max Weiner there. In terms of head-to-head matchups in the portal right now, they’re 0-0.
- I guess you could count Jace LaViolettebut actually I felt like LaViolette and Gavin Grahovac Tennessee or LSU players had a better chance of going to Texas. You can argue all day about how things went, but those guys are really good coaches. I think Texas and A&M can both be very good in the baseball landscape.
- At first, I felt some unease about the situation around the region. People contacted me about it, but I didn’t pay attention. I don’t know if I saw him leave A&M for Texas.
- In Omaha, there was a lot of talk about things. Schlossnagle’s statement at the press conference on Monday night was, honestly, the most decisive for me. It was really a deal breaker for me, and then, of course, we know what happened the next 24 hours.
- Ultimately, I have no doubt that this thing had to be in the works. There’s no way you’re going to make this transition as quickly as you’re doing it, and there’s no way you’re going to announce your staff 24 hours later if it’s not something you’ve prepared in advance. It’s not something you just put in your head that quickly, without having planned it.
- I’ve talked to sources. I’ve talked to Schlossnagle. I think people who were aware of the situation wish they had handled it differently. Whether it was fair to Schlossnagle or anyone else, the perception among A&M fans was that you took our team from the Men’s College World Series and left as soon as you got off the bus.
- I think if Schlossnagle had waited three or four days and said, ‘Look, A&M is great, but I want to coach my best friend…’ it wouldn’t be what it is today.