The Cubs have just annnounced by press release that Mark Riggins was named pitching coach. This was widely rumored since Larry Rothschild departed to become pitching coach of the New York Yankees.
This isn't Riggins' first major league pitching coach assignment -- he was pitching coach for the Cardinals under Joe Torre in 1995. When Torre was let go after that season, so were all his coaches, and Riggins became minor league pitching coordinator for the Cardinals. He had previously been a minor league coach and manager in the Cardinals system after playing for five years in that system after signing out of Murray State in 1979.
The Cubs signed him to be their minor league pitching coordinator in 2008. In many ways, Riggins has the same longtime baseball pedigree that Mike Quade does -- many years in the minors doing quite a number of jobs. Quade has more major league coaching experience than Riggins does, but the two have extremely similar backgrounds and are almost exactly the same age -- Riggins was born Jan. 23, 1957 and Quade Mar. 12, 1957.
Riggins, obviously, has already worked with a lot of the pitchers who have been in the Cubs system over the past three years and that gives him a good working relationship with the young pitchers already in the system. While I was never as critical of Larry Rothschild as some of you were, there's one thing I won't miss now that he's gone -- his tendency to ask his pitchers to nibble, nibble, nibble.