OMAHA, Neb. — They’re so close, these we-want-history-now Texas A&M Aggies.
The lockdown closer who was nearly cut two years ago, but Saturday night faced 10 Tennessee batters and struck out seven of them.
The major leaguer’s son who had to step in for an injured All-American for the NCAA Tournament and has not stopped hitting since.
The freshman leadoff hitter whose home run put a jolt through his team just three pitches into the Men’s College World Series finals Saturday night.
The cast on the mound who have refused to let opponents up for air in Omaha.
The coach who graduated magna cum laude three decades ago and has brought seven teams here, but still longs for the feeling only a champion would know.
So close now, all of them.
“It's one win. Can’t make it more than that,” Jim Schlossnagle said after Texas A&M’s 9-5 victory over Tennessee in the opener of the best-of-three Championship Series. “Still got a ballgame to win, got a series to win”
And still got a powerful Tennessee team to beat one more time.
“They know it's one game,” Schlossnagle went on about his players. “We all know what's at stake. There's no Lombardi speech. We just try to keep them as loose as we can. We'll hit in the cages and get our ground balls tomorrow and play. I know it sounds coachy, but if you start thinking about things other than that, Tennessee is going to blow you out of this ballpark.”
Maybe Tennessee can yet find the answer that no one else has this month: How to beat Texas A&M.
Fact: The Aggies are now 9-0 in the NCAA Tournament by a combined score of 69-29, and 4-0 here by a score of 23-8.
Maybe the Vols can at least actually get the lead.
Fact: No one has done that against Texas A&M since the Aggies landed in Omaha. Out of 36 MCWS innings so far, Texas A&M has led at the end of 30 of them.
Maybe the Tennessee hitters can come up with the timely hits that the Texas A&M pitchers have refused to allow.
Fact: The Aggies’ four opponents in this MCWS are 4-for-42 with runners in scoring position. The Vols had chances Saturday. They also struck out 17 times, a Championship Series record for a nine-inning game.
Maybe all the above will change and Tennessee can stop the Aggies Express. If so, it has to be now.
Sunday will be Tennessee’s second elimination game. The first was after the Vols lost to Evansville in their own super regional. Tennessee won the next day 12-1. “As crazy as it is, that Evansville game was a little bit good for us,” coach Tony Vitello said. “I think you need to be reminded every now and again of certain things you need to do. That Evansville game did that to us, and this was similar.” Besides, the Vols lost consecutive games only once all season and that was back in March at Alabama.
Sunday will have to show if any of that matters.
“It's not that serious, like we have to fix a problem or anything,” Vols pitcher AJ Causey said. “We just have to play the baseball we can play.”
One problem for Tennessee. Texas A&M is playing the baseball it can play.
The Aggies hitters are trained to know the strike zone. Six of their runs Saturday were driven in with two-strike counts.
The pitchers are coached to pound the strike zone. Of the 42 Tennessee batters who came to the plate Saturday, 32 saw a strike on the first pitch. The closer, Evan Aschenbeck, threw 46 total pitches and only 12 were balls.
It was a combination the Vols could not handle. Not Saturday anyway.
“Our approach the whole time is swing at strikes and take balls, as hard as that is. That's what we do. That's our mantra, that's what we fall back to,” second baseman Kaeden Kent said of the Aggies’ hitting approach.
“That's the first thing we work on the very first day of fall practice," Schlossnagle said.
Both Texas A&M homers came with two strikes. Freshman Gavin Grahovac hit the first leadoff homer in a Championship Series game in 21 years. It’s called setting a tone. “I hit that ball and thought, oh my gosh, that really just happened,” Grahovac said. Kent added a two-run shot in the seventh that pretty much put the game away.
Kent --- All-Star Jeff Kent’s son – was a reserve who made little noise for the Aggies before All-American outfielder Braden Montgomery broke his ankle in the super regional. That was a loss of 27 home runs and 85 RBI so someone had to help fill the void. In the six games since, Kent has hit .480 with 14 RBI. That’s the same number of RBI he had in the first three months of the season.
“Baseball is a frustrating game. So the consistency and the time that you put in is not always shown out on the field when you play,” he said. “The countless hours in the cages sometimes turns into an 0-for-4 when you go out on Tuesday. But it's just the repetition, man, you're stacking days on days. The compound effect. And you just gotta keep pushing through it.”
As for what the Aggies pitchers have been up to, Evan Aschenbeck will do as an example. In the fall of 2022, he was nearly cut from the team. Then things got better in a hurry. This season he was named national stopper of the year, with his 10 saves and his 1.54 earned run average going into Saturday and his 77-12 strikeout-walk ratio.
There he was Saturday night, slamming every door on the feared Tennessee lineup, plowing through the last 2.2 innings.
“That’s what pitchers are there for,” Aschenbeck said. “When I get the opportunity to go out and pitch, I just want to throw strikes, limit free bases. If they get a hit, they get a hit. It's baseball. It's going to happen. You've just got to keep going pitch to pitch and strike to strike.”
Words that gladden his coach’s heart.
“I don't take him for granted. I've had some great relievers in the past, and he's right up there with all of them,” Schlossnagle said. “You just know he's going to control his heartbeat, number one. The moment's never too big. He's going to be in the strike zone with at least two pitches, usually three.
“I always measure a pitcher by what's my heart rate like when he pitches. My heart rate is not good during most games, but when he pitches it's way better.”
Aschenbeck is not the only Aggie who has been adept here at damage control. How to explain that .095 batting average by Texas A&M’s opponents with runners in scoring position?
“Our players aren’t afraid of the moment and they understand when there are ducks on the pond they don’t need to make a super pitches.” pitching coach Max Weiner said. “They just make their pitch.”
Speaking of the moment, Sunday could be the most important in the history of Texas A&M baseball.
One more game. Or as they say in the Tennessee camp, two more.
MCWS HISTORY: Programs with most MCWS titles | Most MCWS appearances | 7 longest homers
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