There was a lot of discussion on the boards last season about the techniques used by our staff in conditioning and treating our pitching staff. I talked to someone close to Aaron Weatherford recently who indicated that the Rockies were shocked at what our staff was doing. When he got to the Rockies, they looked at his arm and found all kinds of inflamation, likely due to improper conditioning and post-game treatment. Thus, he did not pitch at Tri-City and was put on rehab. He is now pitching bull pens well in there fall developmental assignment. I was told the Rockies have him doing almost the exact opposite of what Coach McNickles had him doing. State had him lifting heavy weights, whereas the Rockies have him on low weights with high reps. As they get closer to the season, they will move to less weights and more cardio for stamina. They also have him long toss at every practice, which State did not do, to loosen up. The whole "don't ice the arms" thing is completely opposite of what the Rockies said. My impression was that the Rockies coaches and trainers thought it was nuts. Just thought some of you might be interested in an update, as the football season is going so well.
MSU Baseball Update - Weatherford Status
- Thread starter Low Down Dirty Dog
- Start date
I talked to ne of the players mom earlier in the summer and she said the same thing. She said her son was working with a pitching coach all summer and the pitching coach was shocked with the conditioning, or lack thereof that the pitchers got. She also said that most pitcher were never close to 100% when they pitched because of the crap they went through during practice
Shmuley said:
ice is in the book. The problem is Polk left the pitching conditioning totally up to the pitching coach. I believe the section about pitching that is in "the book" was actually written by the prophet Pat McMahon.
So, I say that to say this- Polk was done in by McNickle as much as anything. In the past, we had pretty good assistants, but finally McNickle's incompetence caught up to him and Raffo's offense couldn't outslug enough people. Then Polk retired and **** started to hit the fan. It was only a matter of time before it caught up to us with our offensive strategy and our recruiting. Let's be honest here- if our entire rotation just stays healthy, we probably win at least 30 games last year, and we would either still have Polk or we would have done well enough that Raffo might have been named the HC.
So, this Christmas send McNickle a Christmas card for helping us to get Cohen.
As a follow up, the person noted that Coach Polk keeps in contact frequently, checking on Aaron's status etc. They also had good things to say about Coach McNickle as a person, just alot of questions about his methods.