To say that Texas A&M baseball is in a bad way would be an understatement of the most egregious degree. This Aggie team, which entered the season with all the talent in the world and ranked as the preseason number one team, is now barely over .500 just one weekend into SEC play.
Let's get all of this out of the way up front: yes, there have been some pretty debilitating injuries. Losing Gavin Grahovac for the season is a huge blow, and Caden Sorrell's injury keeping him out of the lineup thus far has definitely had an impact as well.
But the overall product we've seen on the field so far has been nothing short of completely inexcusable. A&M has now been swept on back-to-back weekends, and though several of those losses were extremely close, that kind of result simply cannot stand. Said results have now put the Aggies in a bind that would have been thought to be completely out of the question just weeks ago.
Texas A&M baseball, after entering as preseason number one, now faces tough road to even qualify for postseason
A&M fans have talked about how difficult their schedule this year is stacking up to be for quite some time. And it's true: the Aggies have a really tough slate this year, even more so than normal in the completely stacked SEC.
But that was always treated as something of an ancillary worry: with the amount of talent that the Aggies have on board and the non-conference as a cushion, there was never much of a thought that the Aggies would be in this kind of a situation.
But staring down the barrel of this SEC schedule, questions have begun to arise about whether this team, as currently constituted, can even hope to make the postseason. The Aggies will need somewhere in the neighborhood of 13-15 SEC wins to get in that conversation, and those are looking scant with how difficult this stretch is.
If the Aggies fail to make the postseason, of course, it can be regarded as nothing but a complete failure. With the level of talent on this team, losing out on even getting to a regional would be entirely inexcusable, and any option would be on the table at that point.
Of course, because of all of that talent, a postseason berth means that the Aggies could well make it to Omaha anyway. We saw Florida last season make it to the CWS as a three-seed in their regional, and Ole Miss win the whole thing without hosting a few years ago.
And it's not as if the Aggies have nothing going right. Their starting pitching has been pretty stellar, all things considered— especially their weekend guys.
But when your bullpen keeps giving up late-game homers and your bats can't even approach an answer, you're in trouble. Something has to change for this Aggie team, and quick— otherwise, the Earley era may turn out to be a one-year experiment on the way to a much longer rebuild.