Jim Schlossnagle explains moving Jace Laviolette into cleanup spot

It didn’t take long for Jim Schlossnagle to shake up his lineup this year. In Texas A&M’s third game of its opening series against Seattle, Jace Laviolette jumped up to the cleanup spot after he hit eighth in the season opener and sixth in game two.

It worked out well as Texas A&M won the game 14-2 and Laviolette contributed an RBI single. Schlossnagle said he considered shaking up the lineup earlier, but ended up deciding on Laviolette to hit fourth because he didn’t want back-to-back right-handers and he’s one of the Aggies’ top hitters.

“I almost did it Friday night. Not with Laviolette, but with Minnich,” Schlossnagle said. “I don’t really like those back-to-back right-handed hitters that much. But we did it last year with Bost and Rock. Once Jace — at some point, he’s one of the best hitters on our team. … I just figured it was time, kind of like it was starting Kaufer Friday night. He’s the best guy back there right now. Jace is one of our premier hitters.”

Jim Schlossnagle shares what he learned about Texas A&M in Seattle series

Texas A&M opened its 2023 campaign with a weekend sweep of visiting Seattle. No game was decided by three runs or less with Sunday’s contest wrapping up in eight innings as the Aggies walked away with a 14-2 victory over the Redhawks.

The biggest downside of the weekend was Brett Minnich‘s broke thumb, which he suffered in the first inning of the first game of the season. Minnich was one of two players to start all 64 games last season for the Aggies, hitting .306 with a .409 on-base percentage, 51 runs and 52 RBIs.

Head coach Jim Schlossnagle said after the series finale he learned some good information about his team this weekend.

“We know more about our team,” Schlossnagle said. “Obviously we had the injury, and that’s super disappointing. Sad for Brett but we’ll get him back hopefully in the next six weeks. But that just creates opportunity and so we learned a lot about [Kasen] Wells, Stanley Tucker got to play, get some other guys in there late. We know Kaeden Kent‘s an outstanding player. We may look to get him in there, maybe in a different position. But, overall, we’ll take the three wins. Would like to have Juan seem to be a little cleaner in just start but we had a lot of new Aggies get their feet wet.”