Bears Training Camp Week 1: Hester on Expanded ST, Bushrod Day-to-Day

In Bears, Commentary And Analysis by myles50 Comments

Training camp is under way, and (precious few) interesting tidbits have emerged:

The Bears used pads for the first time on Sunday. 

Devin Hester apparently IS going to at least practice some expanded ST duties this year. He apparently almost blocked a kick in practice, according to a Zach Zaidman tweet (he's a good follow).

Jermon Bushrod is day-to-day with a calf injury. That probably means he's going to be laid up for a week or so, giving some first-team reps to Eben Britton (would be my guess: it could be Jordan Mills, a rookie). I tweeted Zach about this (and you should follow Zach if you like Bears football, he's a great, informative follow) and haven't heard a response yet.

Turk McBride is out for the year with a torn Achilles. Combined with Sedrick Ellis' retirement, the Bears have lost some DL depth already. McBride is relatively fungible so I wouldn't be worried at all.

Nothing really happens in the first week of training camp. When the first round of cuts happens, things will get more serious and interesting. Also, the first preseason game is Aug. 8-11 against the Panthers (the actual date is TBD). 

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  1. Aisle424

    Anybody want my tickets for the Puig debut at Wrigley on Thursday evening?

    I think the face is like $52 each. I’m selling them for $50 for the pair.

    Section 409, Row 5 (I think… row 5 or 6, anyway) – right above the Cubs bullpen.

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  2. Suburban kid

    Don’t you guys every watch baseball documentaries or highlights of the olden days when they show them on TV? OK, so I remember watching Reggie, but I knew most of the earlier guys from watching film of them when I was a baseball obsessed kid. I mean Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig, Ruth, Dimaggio – how can you not know which way they hit?

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  3. Suburban kid

    Suburban kid wrote:

    Don’t you guys every watch baseball documentaries or highlights of the olden days when they show them on TV? OK, so I remember watching Reggie, but I knew most of the earlier guys from watching film of them when I was a baseball obsessed kid. I mean Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig, Ruth, Dimaggio – how can you not know which way they hit?

    Shut up. Football thread.

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  4. Aisle424

    @ Suburban kid:

    I was more confused about some of the more recent guys. I couldn’t, for the life of me, picture Evan Longoria batting. But I guessed right. I guessed right on Al Kaline too. I don’t know why I thought Joe DiMaggio batted lefty.

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  5. dmick89

    @ JonKneeV:
    Did you read that Nate Silver interview in Deadspin yesterday? Nate mentioned that we should think about replacement level for many things, including restaurants. He said Qdoba was a replacement level fast food place. I have a problem with that. McDonalds has to be replacement level for fast food. I’ve never had Qdoba or Chipotle, but I bet anything they’re better than replacent level simply because fast food sucks. It has to be on the higher end in that category. If we use the same method, I’d bet we’d find that, of fast food places, McDonald’s makes up about 20% of them. Close to anyway.

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  6. Rizzo the Rat

    Ruth, Gehrig, Williams, DiMaggio, etc., I know by heart (as well as Foxx, Hornsby, Cobb, Berra, Wagner, etc.), but Reggie somehow slipped my mind. Maybe it’s latent racism on my part.

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  7. dmick89

    I wish I had more thoroughly considered that before writing. You have to group restaurants into at least fast food, which doesn’t even bother trying to make the food good or even appealing, and other, non-fast food places. You could create as many groups as you want, but the quality won’t really represent replacement level, IMO. I mean, what would be the point of a replacement level fine dining establishment? I don’t see how that would tell us anything.

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  8. Rizzo the Rat

    I don’t see the point of “replacement level restaurants” either. The reason we talk of replacement players is that players are a limited quantity, and bad players vastly outnumber good ones. I just don’t see how that applies to restaurants.

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  9. Rizzo the Rat

    If your star player breaks down, you replace him with a crappy player (either a minor leaguer or some other team’s castoff). If your favorite restaurant is closed, you don’t give up and go to Burger King.

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  10. Bill Clay

    I think CHI wins 9 games this year.

    From what I’ve heard about the offense CHI is implementing, they should be able to move the ball more consistently. That said, I don’t think it fits their QB (big arm, erratic).

    It sounds crazy, but they should have considered trading Cutler. I bet NYJ, BUF, MIN or ARI would have given up something like a combination of a 1, 2 and 3 over the next two years, which CHI could have used on Matt Barkley or Ryan Nassib. I like Cutler, but I’d take Barkley, a 1 and a 2 over Cutler in a WCO any day.

    Defensively, I think there will be a slight regression simply because they forced so many turnovers last year and scored so many points directly off them. I don’t think that’s sustainable.

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  11. Bill Clay

    Because I know you’re interested, I think SF wins 10 games this season.

    They should be much better on offense now that Kaepernick has had some time to run the offense. The loss of Crabtree hurts, but Boldin is an adequate replacement.

    Defensively, they’ll give up a few more big plays, so I expect some regression.

    On paper, the team should be about the same. The difference for me is the schedule.

    Green Bay
    Seattle x2
    Houston
    at New Orleans
    at Washington
    Atlanta

    Those are all going to be tough games, and that’s not even including two against STL (whom we didn’t beat last year).

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  12. WenningtonsGorillaCock

    Aisle424 wrote:

    Anybody want my tickets for the Puig debut at Wrigley on Thursday evening?
    I think the face is like $52 each. I’m selling them for $50 for the pair.
    Section 409, Row 5 (I think… row 5 or 6, anyway) – right above the Cubs bullpen.

    Your pricing is an insult to their best customers. Are you also throwing in a $10 voucher for food?

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  13. Bill Clay

    As of right now, I see it happening like this:

    AFC
    1. DEN
    2. NE
    3. BAL
    4. HOU
    5. PIT
    6. CIN

    NFC
    1. GB
    2. SEA
    3. ATL
    4. NYG
    5. SF
    6. NO

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  14. JonKneeV

    The only way I’d pay $50 to go to a Cubs game this season is if I get to watch Jeff Francouer hit a walk off grand slam off Marmol to come within 8 games of 3rd place in the NL Central.

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  15. Bill Clay

    Berselius wrote:

    @ Bill Clay:
    What do you think of GB this year, Ryno?

    I think they represent the NFC in the Super Bowl. Adding Datone Jones is going to be HUGE for that defense depending on how quickly he picks up the nuances of 5-tech.

    It will be interesting to see what they do on offense. They picked up two good RBs in the daft, but that line isn’t going to help them any.

    Overall, though, their schedule looks to be the easiest of the contenders, imo.

    I think Seattle at home is the best team in the NFL. On the road, though, they’re middle of the pack. They and SF play in what might be the toughest division in the NFL.

    ATL will have to face a resurgent NO team that I think will play really well this season and a CAR team that will surprise.

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  16. Aisle424

    WenningtonsGorillaCock wrote:

    Aisle424 wrote:
    Anybody want my tickets for the Puig debut at Wrigley on Thursday evening?
    I think the face is like $52 each. I’m selling them for $50 for the pair.
    Section 409, Row 5 (I think… row 5 or 6, anyway) – right above the Cubs bullpen.

    Your pricing is an insult to their best customers. Are you also throwing in a $10 voucher for food?

    I would, but nobody on the Dodgers or Cubs has been suspended in the Biogenesis stuff. Yet.

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  17. dmick89

    @ Rizzo the Rat:
    I don’t think replacement level has to be so rigid in every area. I see it as a definition, which can vary from field to field. As long as it’s defined, I’m fine with using it any way possible. Definitely with restaurants, which I actually think have a lot in common with, for example, baseball. Baseball has various skills and all of them aren’t necessary to play at the MLB level. I don’t have to go over those skills.

    In food service, there are a number of things a customer considers before making a decision (doesn’t include everything and in no specific order): hospitality, price, quality, location, menu, atmosphere and others. Each restaurant can excel in different ways and be successful.

    I stand by my article about TGIF being a replacement level restaurant. It is. There are many, many, many places that are better, even at the same price or cheaper. There are also some that are worse. I’m not include fast food places because those would have to be looked at differently.

    I’d wager that 80-90% of the restaurants in this country are better than TGIF. That said, it performs a service and it has some value. They’re usually win at location and if time is important, they are, I’d assume, pretty good at getting your ass in and out of there.

    The problem with the idea of replacement level in restaurants isn’t that it’s not doable. It’s that, realistically, it is not. You couldn’t crowdsource the idea because Americans suck at choosing food. They suck when it comes to where they go out to eat and what they make it home.

    Replacement level in baseball is a theory. There’s no reason at all that it can’t be adapted to other disciplines.

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  18. Aisle424

    JonKneeV wrote:

    The only way I’d pay $50 to go to a Cubs game this season is if I get to watch Jeff Francouer hit a walk off grand slam off Marmol to come within 8 games of 3rd place in the NL Central.

    It’s not about the Cubs. It’s about PUIG! Catch PUIG FEVER!! Watch him tee off on Chris Rusin!!

    Junior Lake is just kind of a bonus. Like a free peeler when you order a set of Ginsu knives.

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  19. uncle dave

    @ dmick89:
    @ Rizzo the Rat:
    Also, keep in mind the difference in practice and theory as to how replacement level works. The assumption in theory is that replacement level alternatives are readily available. In practice, many fail to reach replacement level performance (like most of the Cubs hitters last year, for instance).

    Qdoba could be a replacement level restaurant in those terms. McDonalds is more like the Darnell McDonald of fast food, no value whatsoever but has still managed to find a place in a great number of locations.

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  20. dmick89

    @ uncle dave:
    Good point. I’d started another comment kind of along the lines of your first paragraph, but it’s really not worth it. I’d also mention that, at the career level wins and ERA are pretty good metrics. I’d compare them to restaurant ratings (stars). They’re pretty good, but they miss enough that another metric would be useful.

    The other drawback to restaurant replacement level is that you can’t crowdsource anything because America sucks at eating. (dying laughing)

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  21. uncle dave

    @ dmick89:
    On the contrary, we’re great at eating, we just suck at finding good stuff to eat. As a guy who spent a good chunk of the last three years trying (and failing) to eat well on the road, I can tell you that the 30 pounds I gained didn’t come as a result of being bad at eating…

    I wouldn’t trust us to crowdsource my next meal, though, no doubt about that.

    Also, can’t have a conversation about TGI McFriendly’s without thinking of this:

    http://youtu.be/MFZG8KQJni8

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  22. Rizzo the Rat

    @ uncle dave:
    Just because a player’s performance falls below replacement for some period of time, doesn’t mean his talent is below replacement. Based on regression toward the mean, the number of players with negative WAR(P) in a given year will be greater than the number of sub-replacement-level players. I suspect that the number of sub-replacement players in the MLB is actually quite small (at least before the September roster expansion).

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  23. Rizzo the Rat

    Also the sub-replacement players who actually make it to the 25-man rosters tend to get very little playing time (e.g., Gillespie.).

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  24. Rizzo the Rat

    Of all the players on the Cubs this year with negative rWAR, Gillespie is the only one I would call a sub-replacement player (Lillibridge also has negative career rWAR, but just barely so), and he barely played at all. And the Cubs are a bad team, so I doubt there are more than 30 like him. Every once in a while, a horrendous player like Koyie Hill will get over 100 PA’s, but it’s rare. I think replacement level does a pretty good job of describing the bottom of the MLB talent barrel (though, not the performance barrel).

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  25. uncle dave

    @ Rizzo the Rat:
    That’s certainly a valid point with respect to performance vs. talent, and I’d not be surprised if the typically small sample sizes of guys who hover around replacement level also have an effect on what their collective performance looks like on a year-by-year basis.

    I’m gonna throw out something I’ve been thinking about for a while (unrelated to fast food restaurants, unfortunately). If you accept that the universe of baseball talent is distributed normally, MLB would be at the very extreme right tail of that distribution. As you expand the player pool, you get into an ever-increasing range of similar choices — that is, the population immediately to the right of the cutoff line is going to be significantly smaller than the population immediately to the left. If you make an additional assumption that a GM looking for a replacement level player is going to be smart enough to focus on a pretty tight band of candidates grouped right around that replacement-level line, we would then expect that a random selection would more often than not result in someone below replacement level, as there are simply more guys within the pool of available candidates that fit that description.

    I don’t think that GMs pick these guys at random and they’re pretty good at their jobs for the most part. However, I think that this is probably one of those areas that really set good GMs apart from bad ones — not just your ability to ID good talent and bring it in a below market prices, but also the ability to ID good talent at that replacement level margin and avoid handing roster spots to guys who are on the wrong side of that line.

    The Cubs have been very good at that this year. Not so much last year, I guess. That’s my cutting edge analysis on the topic (dying laughing).

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  26. Rizzo the Rat

    @ uncle dave:
    Yeah, I agree GM’s do screw up sometimes and over-promote someone (again, Koyie Hill). I say that’s a problem for reality, not the model. (dying laughing)

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  27. Rizzo the Rat

    Also, there are sometimes situations where a good GM might promote a sub-replacement player, either an emergency (e.g., top 5 guys at a position are injured), or promoting a prospect over his head (Jackson, Vitters).

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  28. uncle dave

    @ Rizzo the Rat:
    Indeed.

    So are we gonna make any more fuckin’ trades? After tomorrow, I’m not sure I have an excuse to pay attention to the Cubs for the rest of the year.

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  29. Rizzo the Rat

    BaPro did a scouting profile on Vogelbach (behind paywall): http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=21382

    Definition of bat-only profile, but the bat could be impactful. Defense not progressing as much as I’d hoped from previous views; DH looking more and more like the best future fit. If everything clicks offensively, this is a potential .290/.360/.500 bat. That’ll play. Importance of offensive development and distance from majors mean high risk.

    Grade: 55; fringe first-division player

    Risk Factor: High

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  30. Bill Clay

    uncle dave wrote:

    @ Rizzo the Rat:
    I’m gonna throw out something I’ve been thinking about for a while (unrelated to fast food restaurants, unfortunately). I…pick these guys at random and they’re pretty.

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