Jason Kelly will not return as Texas A&M's pitching coach

On Tuesday, it was announced that Texas A&M baseball will not retain associate head coach Jason Kelly.

TexAgs baseball analyst Ryan Brauninger was the first to report the news.

The decision comes following the conclusion of a 2026 campaign that saw Michael Earley's Aggies finish with a 41-16 overall record, as Kelly's contract expired at season's end.

Further, A&M was significantly hindered by woes on the mound, which fell under Kelly's purview as pitching coach.

As a staff, the Aggies finished 2026 with a 5.24 ERA, 1.41 WHIP and allowed 90 home runs. While they held opponents to just 155 walks in 57 games, there was a noticeable lack of swing-and-miss stuff as a unit, amassing just 497 strikeouts.

A&M's top arms this spring were National Stopper of the Year finalist Clayton Freshcorn (12 saves, 2.82 ERA) and right-handed starter Aiden Sims (8-1, 3.84), but there was a dearth of reliable options beyond those two. Despite being among MLB.com's top 100 draft prospects, southpaw Shane Sdao struggled to find any consistency in his return from Tommy John surgery, and Weston Moss scuffled in his move from the bullpen to the rotation.

Last July, Kelly sent four left-handers — Justin Lamkin (Kansas City, second round), Myles Patton (Boston, seventh), Kaiden Wilson (Miami, ninth) and Ryan Prager (Cleveland, ninth) — to the MLB Draft, but inconsistency on the hill haunted the Maroon & White as they missed the 2025 NCAA Tournament despite ranking second nationally in walks per nine (2.89), thried in strikeout-to-walk ratio (3.31), 11th in WHIP (1.27) and 20th in ERA (4.30).

Hired just hours after Earley signed to become A&M's skipper on June 30, 2024, Kelly came to College Station after two seasons as the head coach at Washington. Prior to that, he was the pitching catch at LSU in 2022 and had previously crossed paths with Earley while on Tracy Smith's staff at Arizona State from 2020-21.

Kelly's departure now gives Earley two assistant coaching vacancies to fill after recruiting coordinator Caleb Longley tendered his resignation on Jan. 12, 2025.