Bears week 6 vs Jags in London, Sunday at 8:30am

[Bearded_Beef]

4 hours ago, NotKyle said:

This is gonna be an extremely Kyle post. Don't open the spoiler if you don't enjoy reading those. "Dead dove, do not eat."

 

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The point isn't whether i was right or wrong about Fields.  Maybe I'm wrong about Fields and he's going to thrive in Pittsburgh or somewhere else long-term.  Maybe I'm wrong about Williams and I'm overexaggerating how good he's been or underestimating the impact of the weak defenses we've faced.

The point is how fascinating it is to me that the exact same set of beliefs about QB play are being perceived completely differently.

I wish people would just base their beliefs on ... you know... *belief* and not social positioning.  It's both fascinating and infuriating that I can be considered either an obnoxious contrarian troll or "wow, kinda cool lately" for being the exact same person with the exact same opinions about football (or baseball, or whatever else is the topic at hand.) 

I think QB is so overwhelmingly important that it blots out the sun and makes it difficult to evaluate how good anything else involved with offense is.  UMFan disagrees and thinks that there's a huge coaching component to what appears to be QB success and failure.

His belief is mutually exclusive to mine, we can't both be right.  The only interesting question to me is which one of us is it. Maybe it's him! Keeping an eye on Darnold or seeing what happens if Love gets injured again would be quite interesting to me. There is an underlying reality of bedrock truth that we are both trying to describe, and one of us has a clearer picture of it than the other.  That is *infintely* more interesting to me than:

1) Trying to infer personality traits about him from his belief
2) Which belief would be more fun if it is true
3) Trying to divine how he's trying to position himself within the perception of community by having that belief

Someone explained it to me that "Autistics speak in words, NTs speak in vibes. The words are irrelevant and just vehicles for the vibes" and I completely hate it but I'm starting to understand it, like a foreign language that you at least get the grammatical structure even if your vocab is weak and you're nowhere close to fluent.

That's why people seem to have the perception that I was wrong about Theo Epstein, whereas from my POV I was completely right about Theo Epstein.

I killed trillions of pixels posting about it, so I'm sure I said a lot of things, but the basisc theme was:

"You should not need to tank and divert assets to rebuild, and if you do, it doesn't tell us anything about your ability to sustain success because sustained success comes from having a consistent farm system without having to divert resources that should be going to the MLB club.  What Epstein is doing hasn't shown us anything about his ability to sustain success, and it's very possible that we're going to need another rebuild once his golden generation passes through.   Maybe we win a WS with that golden generation, maybe we don't."

And that's exactly what happened. There was no sustained success. We narrowly got through the playoff coinflips once while our golden generation was in place, which separates Epstein from MacPhail, but then we went right back to another rebuild.

But in vibe-speak, the exact details of what I said are irrelevant.  The words I typed don't matter, the vibe does, and since my vibe was anti-Epstein in the broader sense, anything pro-Epstein (like winning the WS) must contradict me.

It was the exact same phenomenon as the QB analysis but in reverse.

Me in 2011: Rebuilds are dumb and unnecessary. We're a big-market team with the resources to simultaneously compete at the MLB level and create a pipeline of scouting and development

Me in 2013: Rebuilds are dumb and unnecessary. We're a big-market team with the resources to simultaneously compete at the MLB level and create a pipeline of scouting and development

Me in 2024: Rebuilds are dumb and unnecessary. We're a big-market team with the resources to simultaneously compete at the MLB level and create a pipeline of scouting and development

That exact same opinion was extremely popular with NSBB in 2011, extremely unpopular with NSBB in 2013, and extremely popular again in 2024.  Because people don't seem to have actual beliefs that they use to form their opinions. Their opinions seem to be based entirely on a handful of emotional hueristics like "what is most fun to believe in the moment, unless outweighed by my fear of disappointment later" or "what will maximize my sense of belonging in the community."

Same thing with Poles.  What was I wrong about with Poles?

My fundamental beliefs on Poles has been "I love his approach to value, I don't love some of his positional priorities, but his tenure will ultimately be defined by if he hits on QB."

Isn't that what has more or less happened?  His approach to value put him in position to get lucky enough with the Carolina pick to get Caleb Williams, and it sure looks like his QB hit and his tenure is going to be a success (although that hasn't happened yet).   

But I was wrong about him because the general vibe of those words was anti-Poles and pro-Poles things have transpired?

Now, that's not to say beliefs shouldn't change. Beliefs should change when better information comes along.  But that "better information" shouldn't always correlate with "what feels good to believe right now."  If it does, you're not trying to be right, you're trying to feel good, and it seems obvious to me that is wrong but apparently it's not.

 

 

I get what you're saying.  I can't speak for the "internet", but I don't remember the specifics as well as you do most of the time, I guess. 

I thought that I remembered you being down on some of our prospects (specifically when you were living and dying by SO%), saying we had a changed-for-the-worse Theo Epstein because he wasn't willing to spend money and just generally being down about the plan and direction of the team as a whole.  Then I thought I remembered you saying something about being wrong about everything when we won in 2016. 

I thought that I remembered you being really down about Poles and his ability to evaluate talent through the first 2 drafts and specifically hating us trading away picks for Sweat and Moore, calling it a trend and "not building through the draft" or something to that effect.

But really, I am going off of an imperfect memory and this stuff wasn't incredibly important to me.  I am more of a lurker than a poster and I assume you remember better than I do because you were actually writing it.  I just come here to see others reactions, findings on the internet, snark and deep dives on stats, drafts and free agencies.  It's like trying to remember something from an article you read 9 years ago, so it's possible that I am just remembering the "vibes".

[minnesotacubsfan]

kyle doesnt do "vibes"

[NotKyle]

I 100% missed on Javy Baez and Kyle Hendricks due to a bias against strikeout hitters and in favor of velocity pitchers.

I definitely never said we were worse off under Epstein than previous regimes.

I didn't like that the first draft under Poles in particular went DB-DB-ST, and I don't like the Sweat trade, and I stand by both of those.

I think I'd rather have Carolina's 2025 first instead of Moore, which is what I believe we were choosing from.  I think that would be pretty cool right about now, tbh. Can you imagine having a shot at third straight first overall next season?

I'll give you a Bears one for free: I was way too harsh on Braxton Jones at first, calling him the Ian Stewart of the Bears.

Edited October 18, 2024 by NotKyle

[Bearded_Beef]

Fair enough I guess.

You didn't say Hendry was better?  I could have sworn you had early on in the Epstein era.  I thought I even remembered you comparing him unfavorably to McPhail at one point.  I also thought you had strike out concerns about Bryant and Rizzo.

If that's not the case, my bad.  I'll go back to my lurking corner now.  Though I still think your nuts for not liking the Sweat trade.

[NotKyle]

27 minutes ago, Bearded_Beef said:

Fair enough I guess.

You didn't say Hendry was better?  I could have sworn you had early on in the Epstein era.  I thought I even remembered you comparing him unfavorably to McPhail at one point.  I also thought you had strike out concerns about Bryant and Rizzo.

If that's not the case, my bad.  I'll go back to my lurking corner now.  Though I still think your nuts for not liking the Sweat trade.

I don't remember specifically not liking Bryant and Rizzo.  I remember a lot of prospects I liked that didn't turn into anything.  Alcantara and Concepcion spring to mind.  

I said that what Epstein was doing wasn't some completely novel idea that the Cubs had never tried before.  Fans were getting really fond of saying the Cubs had never tried to build through the farm system before.

Coming in and promising to build through the farm system, hiring more scouts and modernizing development was also also the MacPhail plan. And he did it, the Cubs had a no. 1 farm system by the early 2000s and parlayed it into a pretty good run.

I never said Hendry was better, but I pointed out that Hendry made 3 playoff appearances in 9 years as Cubs gm and Epstein wasn't on pace to blow that away.  We ended with 5 playoff appearances in 9 years for Epstein, and it would have been 4 playing under the same playoff format Hendry did.

He got us though the playoffs coin flips once, and that cements his legacy, but the narrative surrounding Epstein being a genius savior who was the first guy in franchise history to try to build through the farm system was overblown.  And we were right back to rebuilding less than a decade later.

Epstein wasn't bad, but he didn't really deliver on the dreams and promised of sustained success. We were supposed to be the Dodgers and we can't even keep up with the Brewers.

If you go waaaaay back to the 2012 threads before we hired him, I said that he wouldn't be one of my top choices because I think there's more value out of trying to find a young, hungry guy who has the next market inefficiency figured out, rather than trying to get a second act out of a guy who already had one.

Epstein's success in the farm system with Boston came from overslotting and leveraging compensation picks.

But it's hard to stay ahead of the curve, a market inefficiency has a short shelf life as it gets diluted by copy cats.  Then rules changes in the draft and eventually IFAs took it away entirely.   Next thing you know, we are building a pitch lab a few years after the early adopters got the most value out of it.

Whenever we move on from Hoyer, I'll say the same thing: I would rather try to find the next hidden gem genius front office than poach the most expensive existing one we can.

 

 

 

 

[BigSlick]

I can probably fess up to being caught up in 'vibes' as a fan and not being super systematic. I pretty much tuned out the Bears after 2018 and the end of the Trubisky and Nagy era and was fired up again when they got Fields. I can completely admit to trying to see everything positive about Fields for as long as I could, and part of that I think is that the type of stuff I was watching/reading/listening to, is seemingly designed to try to drive that. 

I am much more skeptical of the Tim Jenkins/Chase Daniel/QB School whatever type channels than I used to be because I think their whole business plan is to be super positive no matter how poorly a player plays because it drives engagement and loyalty. Fans want to see their QB prospects do well and will find the channels/voices/info that point in that direction. These guys invariably just find the positives in the prospect's play, they go on radio shows, get shared around, etc. Nobody really wants to watch 16 episodes every week thats pointing out the deficiency in a prospects play, they gravitate to the ones who are gonna give you hope. 

Anyway, I strive to hold an objective eye but I am a fan. I'm biased, and immature, and reactive. Hopefully Caleb Williams will neuter some of those tendencies. The team is a lot more fun now in any case. 

[David]

4 hours ago, NotKyle said:

I don't remember specifically not liking Bryant and Rizzo.  I remember a lot of prospects I liked that didn't turn into anything.  Alcantara and Concepcion spring to mind.  

I said that what Epstein was doing wasn't some completely novel idea that the Cubs had never tried before.  Fans were getting really fond of saying the Cubs had never tried to build through the farm system before.

Coming in and promising to build through the farm system, hiring more scouts and modernizing development was also also the MacPhail plan. And he did it, the Cubs had a no. 1 farm system by the early 2000s and parlayed it into a pretty good run.

I never said Hendry was better, but I pointed out that Hendry made 3 playoff appearances in 9 years as Cubs gm and Epstein wasn't on pace to blow that away.  We ended with 5 playoff appearances in 9 years for Epstein, and it would have been 4 playing under the same playoff format Hendry did.

He got us though the playoffs coin flips once, and that cements his legacy, but the narrative surrounding Epstein being a genius savior who was the first guy in franchise history to try to build through the farm system was overblown.  And we were right back to rebuilding less than a decade later.

Epstein wasn't bad, but he didn't really deliver on the dreams and promised of sustained success. We were supposed to be the Dodgers and we can't even keep up with the Brewers.

If you go waaaaay back to the 2012 threads before we hired him, I said that he wouldn't be one of my top choices because I think there's more value out of trying to find a young, hungry guy who has the next market inefficiency figured out, rather than trying to get a second act out of a guy who already had one.

Epstein's success in the farm system with Boston came from overslotting and leveraging compensation picks.

But it's hard to stay ahead of the curve, a market inefficiency has a short shelf life as it gets diluted by copy cats.  Then rules changes in the draft and eventually IFAs took it away entirely.   Next thing you know, we are building a pitch lab a few years after the early adopters got the most value out of it.

Whenever we move on from Hoyer, I'll say the same thing: I would rather try to find the next hidden gem genius front office than poach the most expensive existing one we can.

 

 

 

 

You had me convinced Dave Sappelt was gonna be at least somewhat of a thing.

[NotKyle]

2 hours ago, David said:

You had me convinced Dave Sappelt was gonna be at least somewhat of a thing.

I was so sold on that whole trade.  Torreyes ended up hanging around the fringes of the big leagues for awhile.

 

All told, mostly thanks to Wood, those guys ended up being worth like 10 WAR combined after the trade, versus 2 for sean marshall.