Handling the ups and the downs
Chafin’s decision to leave Aggies for year at Blinn proves right call
COLLEGE STATION — Texas A&M baseball coach Rob Childress has a habit of asking his teams to have faith in what they can achieve late in a season. The 2017 Aggies are not one of those teams.
“We’re not asking them to have faith, which sometimes is believing in something you haven’t seen,” Childress said as his squad prepared for the Southeastern Conference tournament at Hoover, Ala.. “We’ve seen it. We’ve done it a very high level in SEC play.”
Seventh-seeded Texas A&M (36-20), which plays No. 10 seed Missouri (35-21) at 1 p.m. Tuesday, encountered two rough patches during the season — at the beginning of SEC play and at the end.
“It’s about minimizing the roller coaster the best you can, and for us it’s been a significant roller coaster,” said Childress, whose program will make its 11th consecutive NCAA tournament. “We started 14-3, went 1-6, got it back together and went 19-4, and then went 2-7.
“We’ve got another run in us. Whether it starts (Tuesday) or next week, I don’t know, but we’ve got one in us. I believe that.”
A dose of reality
Junior reliever Kaylor Chafin, one of the Aggies’ top pitchers, can relate to the up-and-down nature of college baseball. He redshirted in 2014 as a freshman from Sweeny and late that winter sat down for a sobering talk with Childress.
“Coach told me I wasn’t going to play much (in 2015) and asked me what I wanted to do,” Chafin said. “I told him I didn’t want to sit the bench again; that wasn’t going to do anything for me. We met in the middle and decided Blinn would be a good idea for me.”
Blinn College is located in Brenham, which is about 40 miles south of College Station, and Chafin became a college baseball commuter during the winter and spring of 2015.
“I made the 35-minute drive back and forth every single day,” Chafin said. “It was a good experience and made you appreciate everything you’ve worked for.”
Learning experience
Chafin threw 79 innings for the Buccaneers, finishing with a 7-4 record and 3.19 ERA. He returned to A&M in the summer of 2016 with a load of college baseball experience although he pitched only four innings last season as a sophomore for the Aggies.
“I was trying to do too much, to be somebody I’m not,” Chafin said.
Or as Childress put it, “He was pitching to the radar gun.”
But that all changed in 2017. Chafin (7-1, 1.99 ERA) threw 281⁄3 scoreless innings at one point late in the season and was A&M’s most effective pitcher down the stretch.
“He’s grown up,” Childress said. “I don’t know if his stuff is any better than the day he showed up on campus. But his maturity has allowed him to go be who he was supposed to have been all along. That’s what makes me most proud of him.”
Childress had reason to be proud of four of his other players Monday after middle infielder Braden Shewmake was named the SEC’s freshman of the year and also earned first-team All-SEC honors, catcher Hunter Coleman and outfielder Logan Foster joined Shewmake on the league’s all-freshman team, and pitcher Brigham Hill was named to the SEC all-defensive team.
The Aggies, who outscored the Tigers 25-4 in sweeping a three-game series at Columbia, Mo., in late April, would advance to play No. 2 seed LSU with a victory in the doubleelimination tournament Tuesday.