Schlossnagle's fourth-ranked Ags continue homestand after series victory

Fightin' Texas Aggie baseball claimed its first conference home series against Mississippi State. Head skipper Jim Schlossnagle joined TexAgs Radio in-studio to discuss the win and what he liked from his team offensively and defensively over the weekend. 

Key notes from Jim Schlossnagle interview

• Having to play that game Wednesday night against Prarie View A&M to win in the matter which we did... Thursday night against Mississippi State, we got a great starting pitching performance and a great statement from Ryan Prager. The middle game on Friday was super frustrating for everybody in our dugout. The two things in baseball you’re fighting are frustration and boredom, and that was a really frustrating night.

• One of the questions we go into every weekend is when do we use Evan Aschenbeck. You want to use him twice to win. I wanted to give Shane Sdao a chance to pitch and wanted to save Aschenbeck. We don’t meet after games very often. Everybody knew what Friday’s game was. It was frustrating. Baseball got us bad that day, as did Mississippi State.

• Saturday... Justin Lamkin, man. He had everything working for him. Braden Montgomery did Braden Montgomery things. Our crowd was amazing. That’s a typical SEC weekend and boy, when you win them on Saturday, days like yesterday are really amazing.

• We did bounce back really well. In the first two or three innings on Saturday, we had more of the same. We smoked a ton of balls, and several guys hit balls right at them. It’s like, “How long is this going to last?” Then Jace LaViolette hit a ball to the outfield and bounced off that guy’s glove. When Braden hit that homer, we felt we had the upper hand and wanted to see if Justin could continue to do what he was doing. We had Aschenbeck in the dugout, ready to go in.

• The crowd reaction to Lamkin was really well deserved. I remember taking the ball from him, and Gavin Grahovac was like, “Whoa, this is awesome.” That was a great thing.

• In terms of Lamkin, he caught a little second and third wind. I said in the eighth, “We’ll go batter by batter.” I don’t think, I know there’s something to feeding the ego of a pitcher. Not taking them out in the middle of the inning. Stretching him out and what that does for our bullpen usage and our bullpen availability.

• I've done a lot of the same things at TCU, but I have really studied how the most successful programs have done it. Specifically, Florida and Arkansas. When you have a chance to win, it’s so hard to win. It’s so easy to lose, so when you're within reason, you fire the bullets you need to fire.

• I wasn’t screwing with the game on Thursday when we could have finished it with Evan. I went into it saying, “Let’s have Chris Cortez ready. Let’s have Issac Morton ready.” But once we only needed about 25 to 30 pitches to finish the inning, there was no chance it was not Aschenbeck coming in. That's not a statement about Chris or Issac. That’s a statement about the greatness of Evan. You go with your best guy, you win that series, and we’ll worry about it later.

• A little behind the scenes, Michael Earley and Gavin did a lot of work before the game to prepare for Cam Schuelke. When he hit his grand slam on Thursday, that guy was getting loose in the pen. Gavin was prepared. He was going to change his approach. They’re playing shifts on him, and he hits the ball all over the field. I don’t want Gavin trying to hit ground balls to second base, but I want him to have the ability to hit the ball over there if that’s what the situation calls for. It shows you what a great player he is. It’s not just the homers. It’s winning situational baseball. That’s what the great ones are able to do.

• I can’t be a fan. We know what Ryan Targac is capable of. We’re just trying to cherrypick times when it's a good matchup for him, and he’s swinging it hard in BP. He’s working really hard to make adjustments. The quality of his at-bats was great. I look more at the quality of the at-bat, and the quality of the contact. Is it cool if a guy flares a ball in? Awesome, but that’s just not sustainable. It’s just a matter of trying to figure out what will help us win at the moment while also trying to build our team to be the very best version of ourselves as we move forward.

• Kaeden Kent is a good player, but still an immature player. There are way better days ahead for Kent, and I truly believe that. It is a matter of trying to figure out what, at the moment, gives us the best chance to win while also trying to build our team to be the very best version of itself as we keep moving forward. 

• Caden Sorrell plays with a pretty slow heart rate, which is the biggest challenge for a freshman. That’s what makes Gavin, Gavin. That’s what made Jace, Jace. There’s a saying, “That guy’s a great warrior when there’s no enemy.” You have to be a great warrior when there’s an enemy. You have to go in there, show that relaxed heartbeat, stay under control, and show me positive body language.

• We have some players on our team who are really talented and are going to be great players. I want to look back on the first couple weeks of SEC play and see how many true freshmen are making an impact.

• Look at Wyatt Langford. A guy in the big leagues who had four at-bats as a freshman. So moms, dads and players, just chill out, man. Your son is going to be a good player if you allow him to be a good player.

• Jace getting picked is something we can’t take it away from him. There’s a difference between playing aggressively and recklessly, and I didn't think that was a reckless play. We’re stealing fewer bases this year. Stealing is in the scouting report on us. We’re going to have to make some adjustments, but I’m not going to take that out on Jace. We need to just pick our times.

• Luke Jackson is going to start for us on Tuesday. We’re going to continue to build. I had a conversation with the pitchers and the value of every game. Do you want to help this team win? Go look at Aschenbeck in the face, go look at Sdao and the guys that are pitching a lot and say, “Man, we got this for this game.” You take care of that Tuesday night game, and when you do, you put pressure on me to put you on the travel squad.

• We need to get Cortez an inning probably. We’d like to get Shane back out there and get a better taste in his mouth. We’ve proven we can be down, close to, or losing to any team we play, and the Tuesday night games are going to crank up.

• Next Tuesday, we have to go to San Marcos, then have Air Force, Houston and UTSA, so they aren’t always going to be SWAC teams, and so I told them that they’re going to be able to pitch against some of the best teams we are going to play, so they need to be ready.