Former IU baseball player and alumnus Michael Earley was announced as the new head coach of Texas A&M on Sunday.
Earley is an Anderson, Ind. product. He graduated from Anderson H.S. in 2006. He played one season at Cincinnati before transferring to play for IU and head coach Tracy Smith for three seasons.
Earley had a magnificent senior campaign for IU in 2010, finishing with a .352 average, 13 home runs and 15 stolen bases to garner Third Team All-Big Ten recognition. He provided protection for his star teammate Alex Dickerson most of the season, helping the sophomore earn Big Ten Player of the Year and First Team All-America honors.
He was selected by the Chicago White Sox in the 29th round of the 2010 MLB Draft. He played six seasons in the White Sox organization, reaching the Triple-A level with the Charlotte Knights. He wrapped up his professional career with the Southern Illinois Miners in the independent Frontier League in 2015. Earley then became a scout before getting into college coaching.
As a high school senior at Anderson, Earley was named county player of the year and earned a trip to the North-South All-Star Game. Earley hit .523 with 14 doubles, four triples, four home runs and 30 RBIs, as he was one of the top candidates for Indiana’s Mr. Baseball, won that year by Hoosier teammate Josh Phegley.
After his playing career, Earley served as an assistant coach at Arizona State and then Texas A&M. He spent the past three seasons as the Aggies’ hitting coach and first-base coach. They went 153-62 with two College World Series appearances over that span, including runner-up in earlier this month.
Earley spent five seasons at Arizona State, including four as the hitting coach on Tracy Smith’s staff where he built a reputation for developing hitters with his most notable work being the rise of Spencer Torkelson to the No. 1 overall draft pick in the 2020 MLB Draft.
“I would not be where I am at today without Coach Earley,” Torkelson said in a Texas A&M release on Sunday. “He is the definition of a winner. His hard work and dedication to the game of baseball is contagious.”
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