Russ McNickle is the new pitching coach at Memphis

[Todd4State]

For those who don't remember- he's the guy that didn't want our pitchers using ice and the entire staff got hurt and imploded in 2008. He owes Butch big time.

I'm not going to rip him too bad though- he was hired away from the Padres where he was a scout and he told the Memphis media people that he learned a lot from that experience. Plus having Shoenrock as their head coach will allow him to do what he is really good at which is coaching catchers while working with the pitchers a little bit to allow Shoenrock to be the head coach. On top of that, I think Polk hired him before he was truly ready for a job like MSU's because Polk got lazy with hiring coaches as well among other things. I can't blame him for taking the job though- it was too good for him to pass up even though he probably wasn't ready for it.

[gravedigger]

Considering how many teams on all levels of baseball use ice on pitchers arms, do you have any idea why he thought not using it was helpful?

[Todd4State]

At that time, Dice- K was a big named player from Japan for the Red Sox. He threw all the time when he was in Japan and had a lot of success for the Red Sox and in the World Baseball Classic. His program was the one that McNickle used which meant lots of throwing on the side and no ice. The thought was that ice would freeze up lactic acid in your muscles and in theory (incorrectly I might add) would cause tightness in the arm.

As you know, Dice-K broke down and his program has been pretty much scrapped for the most part.