Kendall Rogers reveals his biggest concerns for Texas A&M entering 2025 season

Texas A&M has a loaded roster entering the 2025 season, and D1Baseball has the Aggies as the top-ranked team in the country heading into the year.

Kendall Rogers of D1Baseball doesn’t have many concerns about Texas A&M, but he did share a couple of potential issues on a podcast with TexAgs recently.

One question Kendall Rogers is interested to get answered is how first-year head coach Michael Earley will manage the team, particularly late in games. Earley is in his first season as the Aggies head coach after previously serving in an assistants role.

Michael Earley replaced former Texas A&M coach Jim Schlossnagle, who is now the head coach at Texas.

“I think anybody would look at, I guess coaching would be the wrong way to say it, but like, how does A&M moving forward, especially Mike Earley, how does he manage late in the game?” Kendall Rogers said. “You’re in the SEC. You’re going to be in series where it’s going to be 7-7 in the eighth. How is Mike Earley as a manager?

“We all think he’s a good coach. He connects with the kids really well. But how does he manage late in the game? I wouldn’t say it’s a concern, I would say it’s more of like we don’t really know, so what do we expect? So that’s one thing to kind of keep an eye on.”

The other potential concern for Texas A&M is the back-end of the bullpen, according to Rogers. The Aggies must replace Evan Aschenbeck, who earned All-American honors in 2024 and was named the NCBWA Stopper of the Year.

“The other thing I would kind of pinpoint would just be the back-end of the bullpen. It’s not that I’m concerned about it from a talent standpoint. The talent is absolutely there,” Rogers said. “I’m a big fan of guys like Clayton Freshcorn. Grant Cunningham was electric at Washington last year, etc.

“But again, you’re losing one of the best ever in Evan Aschenbeck. It’d be disrespectful to him to say, ‘Oh, well even with him gone they’re not going to skip a beat.’ Because they will skip a beat to some degree. The question is how much. So that would be the only two concerns I have.”

Texas A&M finished as the runner-up at the College World Series in 2024, falling to Tennessee in the CWS finals. The Aggies finished the year with a 53-15 record.

After the season, Jim Schlossnagle left the program to coach rival Texas. However, most Texas A&M players stayed, and the Aggies also brought in some help from the transfer portal.

A&M is widely expected to return to Omaha and be a top national title contender in 2025.

“Obviously I feel great about Ryan Prager at the front of the rotation. We talk about motivated, the fact that he came back after being offered around $1.3 million from the Angels kind of gives you an idea of where his mindset is,” Rogers said. “Justin Lamkin is kind of the guy I circle as a breakout candidate. I thought his numbers last year were a little worse than what he really pitched.

“And then the other guy for me that I’m sky-high on is Kaiden Wilson. I think we all kind of saw that a little bit in Omaha last year, like how electric he can be.”