MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla. (KBTX) – After a “disappointing” baseball season, Texas A&M athletic director Trev Alberts said he’s welcomed some extra time to asses the sate of the program, while he’s at Southeastern Conference Spring Meetings in Miramar Beach, Fla.
He’ll have a conversation with first-year head coach Michael Earley at some point when he returns after the meetings conclude on Thursday.
“I’ve had a little bit of communication with Michael, but I’d love to get back to College Station, sit down with him and sort of recap,” Alberts said, when asked if a change at head coach needs to be made. “I think it’s good to spend a little time, both he and I, as we kind of assess the situation. Obviously, he would tell you the exact same thing. We had some highs in baseball. Clearly, we fell short.”
The Aggies were the preseason No. 1 team in the nation after falling just short in the College World Series Final a year prior. Former head coach Jim Schlossnagle left his post for the manager position at Texas a day after that national runner-up performance and Earley was tapped to replace him in hopes that the Aggies’ high-caliber offensive lineup would stay intact.
However, the Aggies struggled offensively through the season and ultimately missed out on the NCAA Tournament for the fourth time in 20 years.
The Aggies finished the season ranked 172nd in batting average (.206), 125th in scoring (5) and 126 in home runs per game (.670). A year prior, A&M ranked 53rd in batting average (.298), 23rd in scoring (8.5) and eighth in home runs per game (2).
The Aggies also took series from three of the 2025 NCAA Tournament’s national seeds in No. 3 Arkansas, No. 6 LSU and No. 14 Tennessee and beat No. 4 Auburn in the SEC Tournament.
After A&M’s season came to a close by losing to LSU in the SEC Tournament, Earley said he loves being a part of the Aggie athletic department, having also spent three years prior as A&M’s hitting coach under Schlossnagle.
“I’ve learned more than I could possibly imagine,” Earley said of his first season as a head coach. “Just managing a lot of people and personalities and just creating such a broad scope of relationships is really tough. It’s something I really pride myself in. So, it’s definitely been a learning experience. I think you can see the growth in our team throughout the season. I’m just super proud to be a part of a university like this and the people. It’s just a really special placed I just take so much pride in being the head coach here.”
A&M slugger Jace LaViolette, a key piece that returned from A&M’s deep College World Series run, gave a full-throated vote of confidence to the coach he returned to Aggieland to play under.
“I think he’s done a lot more than anybody on the outside can see, OK?” LaViolette said after the LSU loss. If you look at me before I got to college as a hitter, comparatively to now, it’s night and day. And then, if you look at me as a person — I mean I call this man my father. I really do. I’d die for him and it’s not only me. There’s multiple, multiple, multiple people on this team that would kill to play one more damn game for him.”
Earley earned $900,000 for his first season as head coach of the Aggies, with his salary set to raise $50,000 in the second year, according to his contract obtained by KBTX via open records request. Should Alberts decide to go in a different direction, the university would owe Earley the remainder of his contract, which equals approximately $3 million.
One of the most prevalent talking points among coaches and administrators at SEC Spring Meetings is the potential approval of the House v. NCAA antitrust case settlement, which opens the door for schools to pay athletes up to $20.5 million annually in revenue sharing. Cost cutting is a measure many athletic departments have emphasized over the last year.
However, balancing the check book isn’t a factor when it comes to Alberts decision on the matter, he said.
“I think there’s always an economic factor to making decisions, but I can assure you, in this situation, those decisions are not being driving economically,” he said Tuesday. “We’ll do what we think is in the best long-term interest of our baseball program and our athletic department.”
The Aggie baseball team wasn’t the only diamond sport with a surprise ending to the season. A&M softball entered the NCAA Tournament as the No. 1 overall seed, but became the first program to earn the designation to lose in the regional round of the bracket.
Alberts, who was a linebacker at Nebraska well before entering athletic department administration, said those kinds of disappointments are a part of competition.
“There are days when you win and there are days when you lose and there are some weekends that I walk around the house and I’m like, ‘Man, we’re really good at this, honey,’” Alberts said. “And there are weekends when it feels like we just can’t win a thing. That’s just part of what you do. You fight every day. We’ll win some, we’ll lose some. There was some disappointments, there’s no doubt about it. But we’ve got really good people and part of this is just getting everything to settle down a little bit and that will help create some stability.”
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