Texas A&M baseball takes embarrassing nosedive in polls, but there's hope ahead

Texas A&M baseball's slump leads to precipitous poll plunge, but Aggies may have broken out

Texas A&M baseball began the year as the number one team in the country. This was a squad that, despite offseason turmoil, returned many of the key contributors from a championship-contending group and added a few key pieces through the portal as well.

Not only that, but this was a team that hadn't lost to an opponent outside of the SEC in a year and a half. There was a lot of reason to believe in this Aggie team, even through the worrying injuries that were already beginning to mount through A&M's first few games.

It was shocking, then, to see the Ags struggle as much as they did. Texas A&M baseball, despite bringing back several big time power hitters— the kind of guys that everyone in the country was after in the portal this past offseason— couldn't seem to buy a single run against some less-than-stellar competition.

In the final game of the weekend series against Cal Poly, the Ags only managed two runs. Against Texas State in the midweek game, they cobbled together only three. Versus Arizona on Friday, they got only two across again, and they were shut out by Oklahoma State on Saturday.

Things looked pretty grim on the message boards and other places where optimism had once been so common before the season. A four-game losing streak before conference play began was not something that anyone had in the cards.

But, with any luck, the Ags may have just broken out. Their final opponent of the weekend was Rice, so not near the quality of some of the other teams they've faced, but against the Owls, the Aggie bats finally seemed to wake up. A&M was mashing the whole game, putting up 16 runs when all was said and done.

The losing streak yielded the consequences you might expect in the polls. A&M dropped from the first overall spot— which they had retained initially despite the first loss— all the way down to 14th.

If this latest game is any indication, though, the slump may be over. You get one or two of these each season, no matter who you are— even last year's team had one headed into the conference tournament. We know the potential of this team, though, and if they live up to it, there's no one else in the country that can stand toe-to-toe with them.