Jim Schlossnagle excited for hire of new Texas A&M pitching coach Max Weiner
Jim Schlossnagle left no stone unturned in his hiring of Texas A&M‘s new pitching coach Max Weiner.
Speaking with the media after making it official, Schlossnagle elaborated on how excited he is for Weiner to join the Aggies, and how it’s helping Texas A&M get back on track this offseason.
“Just super exciting time you know, since we finished playing at Stanford, it’s been pretty unsettled around here, which none of us liked, but that’s part of transition, when somebody makes the decision to go somewhere else. And then certainly, you know, this time of the year your roster is in a lot of transition, trying to figure out what that is relative to the Major League (Baseball) Draft, the transfer portal, what your own current players want to do,” explained Schlossnagle. “So yeah, we feel good about the last you know, 48 hours, of getting Coach Max [Weiner] on board.
“Getting him to work. He’s been great, with — came down in his interview, didn’t check a bag. Just a carry on. Has been hanging out here ever since. So, or not just hanging out, he’s been working. … It’s been exciting. … So we’re slowly getting this thing back on steady water.”
Continuing, Schlossnagle explained what drew him to Weiner among many other candidates, as Texas A&M had their pick of the litter over the offseason.
“I just wanted to do a comprehensive search, which I did. … So just kind of went all across the country,” explained the Texas A&M leader. “I talked to everybody, from Major League GMs to pitching coaches in the big leagues. Obviously the interest in the job was at a very, very high level. College head coaches, college assistant coaches. Some of the very best and brightest people in all of baseball. It’s easy to hire people that don’t have a job, or don’t have as good of a job. It’s really hard to hire somebody that has a great job. You have to go through some processes, and they have to go through a process. So it just because super clear, in a perfect world, what I was looking for. … Someone young, with some energy, who had a great knowledge of kind of the new age pitching style, the science behind it. But also, we all know that those things are great in a bullpen, they’re great in a lab, but you’ve still got to go and win a game. You’ve still got to manage a roster in-game. You’ve still got to call pitches. You’ve still got to read hitters. You’ve got to play real baseball.
“So as I went throughout all of professional baseball mainly, looking for that, one name kept coming to the top. He’s had opportunities prior to this in college baseball. … One thing that really stood out is he wanted to be a college coach. It wasn’t just someone who, ‘I want to dabble in that maybe, or maybe I want to investigate that,’ the one thing he said to me was, ‘My goal my entire career was to be a college pitching coach.’ So that was super exciting, and then everything’s been great to this point. So looking forward to building that relationship.”
Jim Schlossnagle has built Texas A&M into one of the more exciting teams in all of college baseball, and now Max Weiner is coming along for the ride. The future is bright for the Aggies, and their strong coaching staff.