Texas A&M baseball has flourished in the age of the NCAA transfer portal, and now they have two trips to Omaha for the Men’s College World Series to show for it.
Aggies head coach Jim Schlossnagle has had incoming transfers like the now-injured Braden Montgomery, who had a strong season during his first year in College Station. However, the Aggies headman attributes this to the environment surrounding the Texas A&M baseball program.
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“I think any coach would tell you that [they] have a strong culture,” Schlossnagle said. “And Texas A&M, as a university, leads itself to have — Texas A&M stands for something, and it stands for a lot. There’s a culture there that is not just in the baseball program or the athletic department. It’s on the campus. It attracts a certain person that if you don’t live up to that standard, you’re not around.”
Ultimately, Schlossnagle brought in the No. 4 transfer class in the country, according to D1 Baseball. Featuring 10 transfers in total, the likes of Montgomery, Hayden Schott, Jackson Appel, Ted Burton and Tanner Jones, among others, have become mainstays of Texas A&M’s lineup throughout the 2024 season.
These players joined forces and Schlossnagle’s squad put together one of the best seasons in the country this season. Sitting at 49-13 heading into the College World Series and coming off a sweep of Oregon in the super regionals, there aren’t many teams playing better at this point than the transfer-filled Aggies.
“I think the transfers we’ve gotten, they’re all high-character kids from high-character families, and they’ve also come from great places,” Schlossnagle continued. “For example, Braden Montgomery, David Esquer deserves a lot of credit for his development. The coaches at Penn, the coaches at Columbia, the coaches at Michigan.
“Those guys are all — they’re coming from great programs where they’ve been held to a high standard anyway, and knock on wood, we get to reap the benefits of that in today’s college baseball. It has way more to do with where they came from versus necessarily anything we’ve done other than just welcome them with open arms and hold them to a standard.”
Now, Texas A&M will begin its journey in Omaha on Saturday against a familiar face — the Florida Gators. The first pitch is scheduled for 7 p.m. ET and will air live on ESPN.
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