It's become clear by now that Texas A&M baseball's draw for this regional field is maybe the most undeservedly difficult of any this postseason. The Aggies will have a heck of a time trying to get through the three teams they've been paired with, despite the advantage of hosting in College Station.
The Aggies were not only given a tough field, but they were dropped far further than many anticipated. Texas A&M was in contention for a top-eight seed right up until the end of the season, and the projection of the Aggies as a ten-seed following the SEC tournament by D1Baseball already felt disastrously low.
And what did the Aggies get? Not the ten seed, but the twelve seed. That was a ridiculous fall for the Ags— and one of the co-owners of D1Baseball, the biggest and most trusted college baseball outlet out there, just dropped a bomb as to why that fall might have come about.
College baseball insider reveals surprising rumor as to why Texas A&M dropped so far in seeding
Here is what Rogers had to say about Texas A&M's seeding, which has become very controversial due to the degree to which they slid below projections. You can hear his full comments by clicking on this link.
"I think everybody would rather be paired with North Carolina than what a little birdie told me was originally the pairing, which was at one point Texas vs. A&M... I think they were going to be the eleven-seed, but when Texas ended up being the six, I think [the selection committee] wanted to avoid that, so the question becomes, do you bump them up and bump Florida State down, or do you just bump A&M down one spot, leave Oregon up, problem solved? So I honestly think that's the only reason they're the twelve seed."Kendall Rogers
Would Texas be difficult to defeat in a super regional? Yes, they would. Will North Carolina also be difficult to defeat in a super regional? There's no doubt about it. Does this slide for Texas A&M make it harder for them to get into a super regional at all? Unequivocally, yes.
This is a shocking admission by Rogers for several reasons, of course. First, the common wisdom among both Texas and A&M fans for some time has been that the Aggies and Longhorns get paired far too often by NCAA Selection Committees, with many committees going out of their way to put them in combination even when it didn't make sense.
This revelation controverts that common wisdom, of course, but it once again works out to screw Texas A&M over. The Aggies have the toughest regional of them all, having to work to get past the no. 9-ranked team in RPI, the USC Trojans. Of course, Rogers is bullish on Texas A&M's chances to get past the Trojans, but there's no doubt that Aggie fans would rather be in Florida State's shoes than where they are right now.
FSU is facing off with Coastal Carolina, Northern Illinois, and St. John's. The highest RPI rank in that regional is the Chanticleers, at 27th. That's a much more favorable draw than what Texas A&M actually got, and they would have been paired with the Alabama Crimson Tide in the supers.
Now, there's some argument for wanting to avoid an SEC team in the supers, of course, and the Aggies did not get the chance to face off with the Tide this year. However, UNC will be no joke for the Aggies (if they make it out of their regional, which is also particularly difficult), so that's kind of a moot point.
This is a bit of an ugly look behind the curtain for the Aggie faithful, as it shows that Texas A&M was pushed down in the seed line based on factors that had nothing at all to do with merit. That's not how these things are supposed to work, and it's going to cost the Aggies in this playoff field.
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