Caught this via one of The Cub Reporters regular posters.

Written by Transmission: I've decided to dig into David Groeschner's qualifications to be head trainer of a major league team with a $90million payroll and world series aspirations.

There's a cite for the Professional Baseball Athletic Trainers Society that lists each MLB trainer and includes a short biography.

http://www.pbats.com

Having made a quick and dirty database of the degree, major (where listed) and years of service in MLB of every head trainer and the first-listed assistant trainer, Groeschner ranks (by this admittedly superficial glance) as one of the two least qualified head trainers in MLB, with several if not most of the assistant trainers appearing more qualified as well.

Dave has a B.S. in Phys Ed. from South Carolina and five years of MLB service as an assistant trainer at San Fran. The only other two head trainers that have so few years of MLB experience both have Masters Degrees, one in physical therapy, the other doesn't specify. Only fourteen bios allow one to figure out the trainer's major; and of those fourteen, four are in Phys Ed, but the majority are in something more... well.... directly medical, like Phys Therapy or Sports Medicine or Exercise Science.

When I turned to examine assistant trainers, Groeschner still looked underqualified. The majority of assistant trainers (I was lazy here and only looked at the first of sometimes several assistant trainers listed for each team) also have more years of service in MLB than Groeschner, and ten of them have Masters Degrees

That said, maybe I was selling a South Carolina Phys Ed degree short. I don't mean any disrespect to their university, or to PE teachers. What does one have to learn in order to get a Phys Ed. degree from South Carolina?

Checking the U of South Carolina College of Education website

http://www.uscs.edu/academics/se/undergrad_programs/physed.pdf

the answer seems to be, "not much." There are two sorts of Phys Ed degree - one for teaching, and one for corporate and pro sports sorts of positions. Looking at the requirements for the second sort of Phys Ed degree....

There's a course on Movement Education, one on Measurement and Evaluation, one on Fitness Assessment and Prescription, but they're all part of the general "Professional Education" part of the program. Having a degree in secondary education from a state university, myself, I can say anecdotaly that most education students and teachers I know find their Professional Education courses to be very, very useless.

In the courses listed under the Major itself, there are classes with obviously no relevance to Groeschner's current situation, classes like "Lifelong Health and Wellness" and "Dance and Gymnastics". The three classes that stand out as relevant are "Exercise Physiology", "Biomechanicis", and "Sports Skills".

You tell me: Do you think nine undergraduate credits in Exercise Physiology, Biomechanics and Sports Skills from South Carolina, plus the surrounding credits on general phys ed topics and professional development topics, plus a few years paying his dues in the Giants' system (see below) is enough to warrant being the trainer to the Cubs? He is the least qualified head trainer in terms of MLB experience, has the minimum education level, and one of the less useful and relevant education areas for the job. Compared to the thirty assistant trainers Iexamined, he still comes out as less experiences, less educated, and with a less relevant education background than the average trainer. The best I can say about him is that he must have served under Stan Conte in San Fran...

(Again in closing, note the superficiality of this study: several degree majors went unlisted, I didn't examine every single assistant trainer, there's no (easy) way of telling whether the Phys Ed program at S.C. is particularly rigorous, or how well he did in it, and so forth...)

I will credit all of the injuries that have been happening to the Cubs as just pure bad luck. What I won't let slide are the shady time returns that our training staff says when players should return. Almost every single time they have been off by a matter of weeks if not months. To me that is denial or unable to properly diagnose the present injury and treat it the 1st time. If that is because Groeschner is an incompetent trainer he needs to be fired. Judging by his qualifications he should of been the last person the Cub's hired.

But being one of Dusty's boys you know his job is safe, just like Rey Ordonez, and Wendell Kim.