Hairyducked Idiot

I don't necessarily regret the Pace hire. It just didn't work out and now you try again.

Exactly what they deserved

And here comes the franchise-crushing fake rally to finish 8-8

Yeah this is my takeaway from the last six years with our core. For whatever reason, I'm going to guess that development further down the ladder is so much better now, you shouldn't really project improvement from position players after their first year or two in the league. Those first 1000ish plate appearances at such an insane level of competition teach guys a lot. But afterwards, in aggregate, guys lose athleticism about as fast as they gain skill, and they just plateau until somewhere in the 28-30 neighborhood, when father time starts working faster. That doesn't bode well for the White Sox going from good to great unless it happens this year. Like if Luis Robert doesn't take a big jump this offseason, it's much less likely to ever happen. What becomes more likely is that he improves his plate discipline at about the same rate he loses prowess in CF, and just settles in at 3ish WAR. That's not a bad thing, but it makes building some 105 win juggernaut pretty unlikely. Between this and the way the financial system massively rewards you for freshly promoted talent, it feels like tank-and-spank has become the dominant paradigm and there's not really any good reason not to do it, which sucks. Or maybe I'm just biased because I'm a Cubs fan and Epstein completely failed to give us the kind of perma-producing farm system we were promised.

from 2016 forward, some guys didn't develop into what we thought (mainly schwarber), some had some injuries, heyward turned out as badly as it could, quintana wasn't what we expected and darvish had a wasted year and a half. lester got old. zobrist got old and retired. few other things went wrong too, but i'd say blunted/early aging curves for the young guys is far from the top of the list. maybe heyward qualifies, if you want to call it that? other than 2020, KB has been mostly great while missing time from time to time, Rizzo has pretty much been Rizzo, Javy took a massive leap forward (again, aside from 2020), and contreras has only gotten better. russell did go from a thing to nothing - there were obviously some unusual horsefeathers circumstances (him being a complete piece of garbage) that probably were involved with him falling off the map, but that was sort of offset by javy going full superstar. we'll see if 2020 was a blip or not for him. mostly i think it was fowler going, zobrist getting older and going and the pitchers getting old/mediocre. It's winter of 2016. Someone asks you "How many times in the next four seasons are Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo going to match or surpass their fWAR/game production from this season when they are 24 and 25 respectively." I say "zero." You were going to be fine with that prediction?

Some idiots tried to warn everybody that there's no such thing as being set for a decade, that aging curves were way more blunted than people were realizing and it's perfectly ordinary these days for a guy to put up his best seasons at 24-25 and never get back to that level.

No, but I do have custom-made $1300 ice hockey skates that I use to play replacement level defense in the second-lowest beer league level. I know how easy I give in to stuff like this. my suggestion is invest in the lessons first and the equipment second. I got a nice new driver but it turns out when I slice it, it still slices! The good part is when I catch it, it goes. I've got some messages out to coaches in the area. Mostly for my nephew, but I'd like to take a handful to make sure I'm on the right path.

I have the Cobra 3/4W and absolutely love it. I absolutely crush it (when I get it right). Apparently, you don't ski. No, but I do have custom-made $1300 ice hockey skates that I use to play replacement level defense in the second-lowest beer league level. I know how easy I give in to stuff like this.

Need? Maybe not. But I love hobbies and buying stuff for them, and golf is the ultimate “part men from their money” hobby, so I promised myself I would be reasonable and take it slow. I just ordered a used Cobra Speedzone on a cyber Monday sale. I’ve always thought those looked slick, and used plus on sale is a pretty low investment if I end up not liking it.

Took my new grip to the course today. Since my nephew wasn't with me and I was paired up with other people, I played the white tees. I'm pretty happy with how I did, +14 over 9, so basically a bogey and a half per hole. Miss dispersal is obviously wider when you're playing longer shots, and I lost a couple strokes to not knowing my distances right now. I've been having trouble getting anything clear of 150 yards because the side spin was just murdering carry and roll. First time I hit driver today, I caught it just a little bit toward the toe. It started out dead straight, then died a little and faded to a couple of yards right of the fairway, didn't really get any additional roll. It still went 195. I don't need to be a big hitter, but from looking at the maps of the full-size public courses around here, I need to be able to carry 180 of the tee consistently at a minimum to get around the course, so it's looking like we're about there. And this is with a dead cheap $60 off-brand driver. I promised myself I wouldn't go too deep on spending with yet another hobby, but I don't know how long I can resist temptation on a modern name-brand driver. Hole of the day: 2nd hole. When I play it from the forward tees with the nephew, it's an easy 120. From these tees, it was playing 173 to the pin over a creek. Went 5-hybrid, dead at the pin but it ballooned up just a little bit and fell a few yards short of the green with no roll. I had about 40 feet from the fringe, rolled it to a stop less than an inch from the hole. First time I've ever par'd that hole.

I keep trying to watch videos explaining what's happening in LoL matches and I never understand what's happening.

OK we lost Schwarber and Kasper but one of the Theo and Jed's frat buddies came in as the new GM so that's basically a wash.

We did it! I went back and watched some of the first golf videos I ever watched, kind of trying to rebuild from the beginning. I noticed that I was gripping the club slightly differently than what I had learned. With my left hand, I was holding the club from the crease of the bottom knuckle of my pointer finger (correct) through the lifeline at the top of my palm underneath my pinkie (incorrect). It's supposed to stay above the palm the entire way, ending at the bottom of the pinkie. Then I was pointing both thumbs directly down the shaft instead of creating a V that pointed back toward my right shoulder. This slight grip problem was encouraging an open club face, which was causing my side-spin problem. Went back to the range this morning with nephew and the slice/fade was finally gone. The balls that I caught off the heel or toe still had a little left or right movement, but when I caught the sweet spot they were absolute ropes, laser-straight. And without that spin influencing flight, everything went farther. My irons all went about 20% farther instead of just dying at the end. I've been struggling to clear 160 with my driver because the ball would start to die in the air and then be going sideways by time it hit the ground. This morning the clean strikes were getting about 180 carry and another 20-40 in roll. 3w was getting to about 200, 5h about 180. That's more like what I would expect for someone of my skill level, club speed and equipment quality. All the other stuff I learned trying to figure this out was still helpful. The slight in-to-out club path, the elbow tuck, the wrist hinge, all useful. I don't know if the grip was the whole problem all along or if it was just the last piece.

This sucks

I'm fine with not trading down. I would like to stop trading up.

There are obviously several things that bug me about that move, but what you said makes sense. If you are willing to give up a pretty decent haul to move up 1 spot on the off chance someone took Mitch at 2, that says that Pace had Mitch ahead of Watson and Mahomes by a significant margin. If they were close in his evaluation, he takes the risk that no one takes Mitch at 2, and if they do lives with one of the other guys. Ridiculous Pace just doesn't think that way. He identifies someone as the one he wants, and then he pays whatever it takes.

Yeah, screw it, I'm buying myself lessons for Christmas. I tried all the different stuff today, and I'm just making it worse or at least not helping. I think the problem might be my lead wrist at impact. Or maybe I'm not rotating my hips enough. Stronger grip, inside-out swing path, bowing the lead wrist, no matter what I do, I'm still getting left-to-right ball movement. I might even be experiencing that thing where you overdo the thing and make the problem worse instead of fixing it. But I literally cannot make the ball move right-to-left. Best I can do is get my best ones down to a slight fade, but mostly I'm still slicing, especially with driver and 3 wood. Although I do like the wrist-bowing thing, and I think in general trying to fix this has improved my swing. Getting that trail elbow tucked, rotating and keeping the arms in line with the body, I definitely noticed some more distance today on the ones I did hit clean.

I spent the entire range session today going aggressively in-to-out and I was still managing to slice it. I think I have a really bad open-club-face problem. I can see it even when I practice in slow motion, my natural movement is to let my wrists break and open up like crazy. I have some ideas on how to fix it, maybe? I'm wasting so much time on this stuff because I "don't have time for lessons." I think this is the source of my distance problems too. I'm not a great athlete by any stretch, but I'm a healthy adult male who can get a normal amount of swing speed going, but I'm getting *way* less distance than the average golfer reports. I think with the higher irons, the backspin is letting it straighten out, but the backspin is still killing the distance. Then the longer clubs would be almost a decent length if it was going straight instead of curving so much. How do you have so much time during the day to go golfing? Take some lessons and become really good. I don't have *that* much time. I'm a paid caregiver for my disabled son. I go squeeze out 9 holes while he's in school or I get up early and try to get home before he wakes up. But mostly I'm just making excuses because lessons would be a pain to set up and commit to, while thinking the next Youtube video or random tip will save me is easy and low-effort. I did the same thing when I learned to ice skate for hockey. Three years of learning on my own had left me very frustrated. I hired a serious coach and literally the first lesson they had me going 50% faster with just a couple of easy tweaks. I should have done it from the beginning, and I'm doing the exact same thing with golf.

I cant tell what's serious and whats joking around with this post. sure, OL can last many years, but QB? Not for the Bears. Sure, GB can have generational talent. Pittsburgh too! even a second tier small market team like NO can pull that rabbit out of a hat. But not the Bears. Never, ever the Bears. Well, I'm kind of operating under the assumption that the Bears aren't under some sort of curse that will never let them hit on a QB pick. If they are, then yeah, we'll have to do something different

I know I'm wrong more often than I'm right so it doesn't mean anything, but god does it feel good to stop hearing "STFU we're 5-1, what do you mean we need a rebuild" and have everyone on the same page. (Not here, in more general Bears fandom places). We're in full-on tank mode.

I moved further from the ball and that kept me in to out. Too much sometimes. I spent the entire range session today going aggressively in-to-out and I was still managing to slice it. I think I have a really bad open-club-face problem. I can see it even when I practice in slow motion, my natural movement is to let my wrists break and open up like crazy. I have some ideas on how to fix it, maybe? I'm wasting so much time on this stuff because I "don't have time for lessons." I think this is the source of my distance problems too. I'm not a great athlete by any stretch, but I'm a healthy adult male who can get a normal amount of swing speed going, but I'm getting *way* less distance than the average golfer reports. I think with the higher irons, the backspin is letting it straighten out, but the backspin is still killing the distance. Then the longer clubs would be almost a decent length if it was going straight instead of curving so much.

Another great thing about drafting QB and OL is that they last forever. It's way better value than drafting a position where you'll get 3-4 good years max.

God as my witness, I'm going to figure out how to stop slicing. I don't care if I start pull-hooking everything down through my 8-iron, at least they won't be slices.

I still kind of like Nagy. I think the problems with his playcalling are in the same vein as fans always thinking there's some perfect usage order that will turn a crappy bullpen into a good one. I'm not saying he doesn't pull out some weird ones once in awhile, but he's trying to work around some major personnel issues. Pace is the one I have a problem with. He has no sense of value. He figures out which player is "his guy" and then overpays for him. Then we all act shocked when the roster is thin or has glaring holes, but that's a direct result of him overpaying for stuff. Even if you think Trubisky is your guy, giving away three picks to move up that one spot is insane. Mack is great but he's not worth two firsts *and* a huge contract. There were more crappy but not completely worthless QBs than jobs this offseason, but he still traded a 4th for Foles. Etc., etc. Plus this last offseason just didn't make sense. Signing Quinn, making your biggest investment in OL be some random retread castoff, letting Patterson be your RB3. That's some crazy stuff. But since I'm not interested in keeping Pace, you have to ship Nagy too, because I'm not saddling the new guy with a legacy HC.

I'm still trying to figure out what you wanted to post in the first place Nothing worth that much fuss