Cubs Fan Explains Why This Year Is Definitely Different, Has Been Explaining This Since 1990

Wrigleyville resident Gary Kowalczyk, 61, cites pitching depth, bullpen improvements, and "a feeling" as evidence 2026 is the year; has cited similar evidence in 33 of the past 36 seasons

Cubs Fan Explains Why This Year Is Definitely Different, Has Been Explaining This Since 1990

CHICAGO -- Gary Kowalczyk, 61, a sheet metal worker from the Wrigleyville neighborhood of Chicago who has held Cubs season tickets since 1988 and who has, by his own estimate, explained why the current season represents the Cubs' genuine championship opportunity in thirty-three of the past thirty-six years, took twenty-two minutes on Tuesday to explain why 2026 is different, citing the starting rotation's projected WAR, the bullpen's improved left-handed options, Pete Crow-Armstrong's development, and what he described as "just a feeling I have, like the pieces are there this time, you know what I mean."

Kowalczyk's certainty this year is, he notes, qualitatively different from his certainty in previous years, which were all different from the years before them in ways that, upon reflection, can also be described as qualitatively different from the preceding year's certainty, in a pattern of iterative differentiation that has been ongoing since the Bush administration.

The Record

A review of Kowalczyk's assessments, reconstructed from interviews with his wife Linda, his son Danny, his regular booth at Murphy's Bleachers, and his own recollections, shows: 1990 -- "new manager, good pitching, this could be the year"; 1992 -- "Sammy's developing, Maddux is still here"; 1993 -- "okay, Maddux left but the young guys are ready"; 1994 -- "the strike hurt us but we were building something"; 1995 through 1997 -- "it's a rebuilding year but you can see what's coming"; 1998 -- "Sammy's incredible, this is definitely it" (Cubs lost in the wild card round); 2003 -- "this is the most certain I've ever been" (the Bartman game); 2007 and 2008 -- "we have the best record in the NL" (swept in the first round both years); 2016 -- "this is actually it" (it was actually it, the Cubs won the World Series, Kowalczyk cried for approximately forty minutes, described it as "everything I ever wanted," and by February 2017 had begun explaining why the next year could also be good). See Peckham: South East London's Confidence Experiment With for documentation of fan optimism patterns in long-suffering baseball franchises.

Kowalczyk does not consider his optimism unfounded or naive. He considers it evidence-based and updated annually with new information. He acknowledges that the evidence does not always lead to the predicted outcome. He says this is the nature of forecasting, that you update your priors each year with new data, and that any reasonable person looking at the 2026 Cubs' starting pitching depth and the improvements to the left side of the bullpen would draw similar conclusions. His wife Linda, who has heard the annual assessment for thirty-eight years, says "he's usually pretty accurate about the individual pieces. The putting it together part has historically been where it gets complicated." This is a generous assessment. Kowalczyk describes it as "essentially correct."

The 2016 Question

The 2016 World Series championship, which ended a 108-year drought, complicates the narrative of Kowalczyk's annual predictions in an interesting way. He was right in 2016. His specific predictions that year -- Kris Bryant as MVP candidate, Jon Lester and Jake Arrieta as rotation anchors, the bullpen's late-season improvements -- all proved accurate. The fact that he had been predicting championships since 1990 and finally had one to point to does not, he argues, invalidate the previous predictions. It validates the methodology. Linda says "the methodology has a 1 for 36 rate, which would be a 4 percent forecasting accuracy in most fields but is somehow still compelling to me, and I don't fully understand why." She also holds a season ticket. She has for thirty years. She was crying too in 2016. "You should have heard him that night," she says. "It was everything he described. It was exactly as good as he always said it would be." See Historic Invest-muddles: UK Tops G7 for Investment in S for related coverage of the 2016 Cubs' historic championship run and its meaning for longtime Cubs fans.

Kowalczyk's 2026 assessment runs to approximately 2,200 words when fully delivered, covering the starting rotation in depth, the bullpen with some concern, the outfield with enthusiasm, and the division with cautious optimism. He delivers it to anyone who will listen. Murphy's Bleachers has it mostly memorized. His son Danny, who works in finance and who applies quantitative risk assessment to his father's annual predictions, estimates the Cubs' 2026 championship probability at approximately 8 percent, which he notes is the third-highest in the league and also well below his father's implied probability of "definitely going to happen this time." Kowalczyk says Danny's models miss the qualitative factors. Danny says yes, that's what models do, and we can discuss whether that's a bug or a feature at the appropriate time. The season is 67 games in. The Cubs are six games over .500. Kowalczyk says "I told you." Danny is keeping his mouth shut for now. See Grok's Bikini Contest Entry for further reading on baseball fan psychology and the annual ritual of championship prediction.

More satire at McSweeney's. This article is satire.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/

The Analytics Community Weighs In

Advanced metrics researchers tracking the situation note that the gap between stated intent and measured outcome is not unique to this player or this season. The baseball literature contains numerous case studies of pitchers whose mechanical profiles and stated approaches diverged from their actual pitch behavior under game conditions, a phenomenon that sports psychologists attribute to what they call "arousal-mediated regression," meaning that under competitive pressure, players revert to ingrained movement patterns regardless of what they have been working on in practice. The solution, most researchers agree, is repetition sufficient to make the new pattern the ingrained one, which requires time, consistent reinforcement, and the specific confidence that comes only from executing the skill in game conditions -- a confidence that is difficult to build while the skill is not yet consistently present. This is why pitching development is slow. It is also why the phrase "just needs to go out and throw strikes" is both accurate and completely unhelpful as a development prescription.