Michael Earley explains how he modeled his first staff at Texas A&M after Tony Vitello

New Texas A&M Aggies baseball coach Michael Earley is a head coach for the first time. That means he’s had to put together his first staff, which he’s modeling after Tony Vitello and Tennessee.

Earley just saw firsthand in the College World Series the power of what Vitello has done in Knoxville and, during an interview with TexAgs, Earley shared that his model is how the staff at Texas A&M has been built to this point.

“I had a model I wanted to go off of and Tony Vitello is obviously a great coach,” Michael Earley said. “So, I was trying to follow a similar model to how he built his coaching staff around the same age as me in the SEC as a first-time [head coach].”

Tony Vitello took over the Tennessee program as a first-time head coach in 2018. That year, he added Frank Anderson as his pitching coach, who had more experience than Vitello and was a former head coach himself. He also brought in Josh Elander to work with the team’s hitters and to be the recruiting coordinator.

“So, I was looking for a guy who had been a head coach who was a pitching coach. I was looking for a hitting guy who was similar to me but also recruited,” Earley said. “Because in the recruiting thing, it’s no secret, I was set to become the next recruiting coordinator if anything happened. I would have been named recruiting coordinator here the second after it happened. So, that’ll be more a role I have as a head coach and then I needed someone who had the same hitting style as me but also was a recruiting coordinator.”

Two of the key assistants on Texas A&M’s staff have already been reported on and they do seem to mimic the construction of the staff Vitello put together. It was reported that the Aggies were hiring Jason Kelly as their new pitching coach. To do so, he’s leaving his head coaching job with Washington. On top of that, it’s been reported that Caleb Longley will join Michael Earley’s Texas A&M staff. He previously worked with hitters and as a recruiter at Texas.

“The last part I needed what I thought was an elite infield guy. So, all those things are getting wrapped up. There’s a couple other things getting wrapped up, but we’re in really good shape and I just love the team around me,” Earley concluded.