Now that Texas A&M baseball’s season is over, following a second-straight loss to USC where the Aggie offense was all but nonexistent, the Aggies have wasted no time in making a staffing change that should have been done a year ago. Texas A&M, according to a report from Ryan Brauninger of TexAgs, will not be retaining pitching coach Jason Kelly.
This comes on the heels of a year in which the Aggies had, nearly the entire year, a championship-level offense. With Gavin Grahovac, Caden Sorrell, and Chris Hacopian batting one-two-three in the lineup, the Aggies looked like they were nearly unstoppable much of the time, even when facing intimidating opposing pitching.
That wasn’t the case against Southern Cal, of course, against whom the Aggies mustered a grand total of four runs through two games. It’s hard to put too much on the shoulders of the offense, though, when it was the pitching that was the Achilles Heel for the entire team all season.
Texas A&M will not retain Jason Kelly for 2027, but move could be a year too late
Let’s be clear about one thing, too: Clayton Freshcorn, in his first-ever start for the Aggies, was the reason that Texas A&M had a chance in the game against USC. He pitched valiantly, hitting triple digits in pitch count, and had great control of the game up until it was becoming clear he should sit, sometime late in the sixth inning. Instead, Jason Kelly and the staff let him stay out there, and a three-run homer from USC took all the wind out of Texas A&M’s sails.
It is not only stuff that shows up to Texas A&M fans in game that is the issue with Kelly, of course. Whatever is going on behind the scenes to yield the results we’ve seen this year from guys like Weston Moss, Shane Sdao, and others— whether it’s approach, technique, or what have you— it has become clear that something has to change.
Frankly, it should have been clear after year one, in which the Aggies had a much better pitching staff with much worse results than they should have. Ryan Prager’s final year in the Maroon and White, for example, was simply not what it should have been.
Though Michael Earley has done a lot to prove himself this season after the disaster of last year, he will now enter the upcoming season with his seat slightly warm. The move at pitching coach had to be made, and he had better knock this next hire out of the park, but there will still be some skepticism about him after the Aggies failed for the first-ever time to advance out of a regional hosted in College Station.
Overall, he’s built more equity this season than he’s lost, which is a positive, and I understand that hindsight is 20/20. However, had the Aggies dismissed Kelly last offseason and made an elite hire, it’s hard to image in that they wouldn’t still be playing for a chance to get to the College World Series this upcoming weekend.
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