Ryan Poles considers himself a learned man. Whenever he has an opportunity to acquire knowledge that he believes will make him better, he’ll seize it. Before becoming Chicago Bears GM, the 36-year-old wanted to see how the best organizations handled their business. Not just in the NFL either. He branched out to other sports too. That is how he came to the attention of New York Yankees GM Brian Cashman.
Poles visited the longtime empire of Major League Baseball, intent on learning how the Yankees have managed to sustain their success for the past 25 years. Since 1995, the team has made the playoffs 23 times and won five World Series championships. They’ve reached the postseason six of the last seven years and are currently the hottest team in baseball at 24-9. Most of that is thanks to what Cashman has done by building a stacked roster. With New York in town for a series with the White Sox, Poles took advantage to meet with his fellow GM again.
#Yankees GM Brian Cashman is in Chicago not only for the White Sox series, but also to spend some time with the new GM of the @ChicagoBears, 36-year-old Ryan Poles. In 1998, at 31, Cashman became the second-youngest GM in MLB history. Poles…https://t.co/jFqsR1VjQP
— Marly Rivera (@MarlyRiveraESPN) May 13, 2022
Cashman brings a perspective that others might not.
He was the youngest GM in baseball when he took over the Yankees. He also had the added pressure of inheriting a championship team and having to keep it at the top of the league. Having to do that and navigating the storm-tossed waters of New York couldn’t have been easy. Now Poles has stepped up in Chicago, a sports-crazed city, and is the youngest GM in the NFL. The parallels are quite striking.
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The big difference is Poles won’t be inheriting a ready-made roster as Cashman did. He’s forced to start almost from scratch. The Yankees GM understands that feeling. His organization basically did the same in the late 1980s and early 1990s. While famous for several pricey veteran acquisitions, the root of their eventual success was simple. They rebuilt their farm system and stacked the roster with loads of homegrown talents, including Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Bernie Williams, Orlando Hernandez, Andy Pettitte, and Mariano Rivera.
Ryan Poles seems to share similar traits to Cashman.
Of course, there is a competitive spirit and high intelligence for somebody so young. Beyond that, it’s the willingness to keep an open mind. Cashman recognized over the years that to stay on top, his team would have to adapt continually. Every time a new method helped improve how an organization could build a roster, he would find ways to incorporate it—an adapt-or-die mentality.
Ryan Poles seems to have embraced something similar. While he still brings an old-school scout mentality to the table, he’s looked to expand the Bears’ analytics department further than ever before. In his mind, there is no such thing as too much information. The more data a team has, the higher the likelihood they make a good decision when the time comes. Not all of them will work out, but more will than won’t.
That is how it’s been for Cashman over the past 24 years.
It is clear what Poles is aiming for. He said he intends to build through the draft. To him, the route to sustained success is primarily through homegrown talent. It may not lead to immediate results, but the payoff will be worth it.
