Dan Szymborski: “Give me an introduction message for a Dan Szymborski FanGraphs chat that sounds like it’s from a deranged person with limited connection with reality and an obsession with history who also really really like FanGraphs”

Dan Szymborski: “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your WAR calculations! I rise today in this digital amphitheater not as Caesar, not as Napoleon, but as a humble pilgrim trudging across the blood-soaked battlefields of history in pursuit of a single shining truth: FanGraphs is the Rosetta Stone of civilization. When Rome collapsed, did the barbarians have wOBA? No. When Napoleon marched on Moscow, did he consult ZiPS projections? He did not — and look what happened! Yet here we stand in the Year of Our Lord 2025, blessed to witness the holy gospel of OBP+, xFIP, and Dan Szymborski’s inscrutable oracles. I have not slept in three nights, my parakeet now knows what BABIP is, and I carved the FanGraphs logo into the oak desk of my landlord while screaming about FIP- minus. Brothers, sisters, eternal strugglers against the darkness of ignorance, we gather not to talk of weather or bread, but of spin rates and aging curves, of regression to the mean and the cruel march of time itself! History collapses into the present momen

Guest: I’ve always assumed that hitters with large platoon splits would age more poorly than those with more balanced splits, but recently realized that my evidence was entirely anecdotal. Is there significant statistical evidence that supports this? Thanks.

Dan Szymborski: I have not found this. It’s possible simply that they’re more exploitable, that the general declines makes them more obviously platoonable than a similarly talented player with small splits

Dan Szymborski: Like the 350/500 guy an ages to be a 330/450 guy and still hits 310/430 and 340/460

Dan Szymborski: But maybe the PLATOONY 350/500 guys is suddenly now a 280/350 and 390/550 guy where he once awas a 300/400 and 420/600 guy

Eric A Longenhagen: Good morning, everyone. I just got back from visiting family in PA and am looking forward to starting the mental lawnmower again. Let’s get to as many of your questions as possible in the next hour-ish.

Taker55: Can Spencer Jones fake it in CF enough for the Yankees to run him out there next year? The price tags for Grisham and Bellinger go up by the week.

Eric A Longenhagen: I think you add him to the 40-man but need redundancy at the position in case he can’t make enough contact to be good. They should try to re-sign one of those guys or seek an alternative option. I don’t think it’s advisable to just hand the job over to a guy striking out as much as Jones does with no other option.

Rob: With Lara getting promoted today, what looks good with him despite the awful AAA numbers?

Eric A Longenhagen: This is Jhancarlos Lara, btw. He throws really, really hard. I wouldn’t add him if you’re in your fantasy championship series or anything, he’s too wild to trust in that way.

Pudge: How much has your view on Connelly Early shifted in the last couple weeks?

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks!

Jay Jaffe: For the fifth straight Tuesday, we’re doing this — which I think might be a season high. A lack of travel will do that.

Jay Jaffe: Anyway, on Friday I wrote about Mookie Betts’ turnaround (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/mookie-betts-may-salvage-his-season-yet/), and yesterday he was named the NL Player of the Week and had a big night against the Phillies in a losing cause, with a solo homer and a pair of sac flies.

Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I wrote about the Mets’ slide; remarkably, they’ve gone 32-49 since Senga was injured on June 12. Their problems basically stem from running out of arms. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/amid-the-collapse-of-their-pitching-the-me…

Jay Jaffe: I’m working on a piece about the remaining playoff races. it’s not Team Entropy but it’s what we have, and it’s helpful to understand the tiebreakers and remaining scenarios

Jay Jaffe: Pouring one out for Robert Redford, whom I particularly loved in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and The Sting (both with Paul Newman). If you’re young enough that those movies aren’t familiar to you, by all means waste no time in seeing them. As for The Natural and the baseball connection, eh, i don’t hate the movie like i do Field of Dreams, but it’s got problems.

Dan Szymborski: mesdames et messieurs, bienvenue, nobles FanGraphiers et vénérables sabermétriciens!

Alex: Drake Baldwin has had a wonderful rookie season. What would you expect from the rest of his career? Brian McCann had a career year at 22 and never exceeded the numbers he posted that season; Big Dumper hit a stratospheric other level. Where do you see Baldwin going from here?

Dan Szymborski: As I always tell everyone: catchers are weird

Dan Szymborski: Sometimes they peak weirdly, sometimes they stop developing, sometimes they just blow up late somehow

Dan Szymborski: I’m not sure we know which weird way Baldwin will age, so just assume something fairly normal and prepared for Mets level tracknessy (tradgety + wackiness)

Idiotic Failson: Grisham and Bellinger are both going to be free agents. Do you think the Yankees resign one, both, or neither?

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to another edition of my Tuesday chats. We’ve got a nice little streak of four straight weeks going, something that  hasn’t happened since May and June, just before the summer travel began.

Jay Jaffe: Anyway, in case you missed it, I wrote a tribute to Davey Johnson, who passed away over the weekend. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/davey-johnson-1943-2025-a-man-ahead-of-the…

Jay Jaffe: I’m more convinced than ever that Johnson belongs in the Hall. Nothing against Lou Piniella, who missed by one vote on the 2024 Era Committee ballot while Jim Leyland got elected — with Johnson in the “5 votes or fewer scrum — but Johnson’s managerial career is superior to Piniella’s in everything but length, and he was a real innovator in terms of his usage of personal computers and his carrying on the Earl Weaver legacy.

Jay Jaffe: Anyhoo, I’ve got a piece in the pipeline today about candidates for the 30-30 club. Would you believe Juan Soto is the closest to joining from among this year’s crop, and that he has more steals over the past ~2 months than any major leaguer? Yeah, weird times.

Alby: Of the pitchers who will finish with fewer than 200 wins, whose election do you think would do the most to get voters to change their standards – somebody who’s not a unicorn like DeGrom but would represent the new level that would allow a representative cohort to follow him?

Jay Jaffe: I touched upon this a few weeks ago when I did my Hall of Fame progress series (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/cooperstown-notebook-the-2025-progress-rep…). I think the answer might be Chris Sale, who is 36 years old, has 143 wins, and has the next-highest S-JAWS after Verlander, Kershaw, and Scherzer (49.2). I don’t see him getting to 200 wins, but 3,000 strikeouts is a possibility (he needs 454), and between his perennial Cy Young candidacy and his bWAR rankings (including six times in his league’s top 5), I think he’s going to be the best choice we see for a few years.

Eric A Longenhagen: Hello from stormy Tempe, we’ll probably have a shorter chat today so I can batten down the hatches before this enormous cell hits the city.

Eric A Longenhagen: This week I wrote about the defense of more shortstops

Eric A Longenhagen: Let’s Scout More Top Shortstop Prospects’ Defense: Franklin Arias, George Lombard Jr., JJ Wetherholt, Edwin Arroyo | FanGraphs Baseball

Eric A Longenhagen: Meg and I also wrote a job posting looking for a second full time prospect writer. FanGraphs Is Hiring! Seeking a Full-Time Prospect Writer | FanGraphs Baseball

Jeb: Konnor Griffin, whoof. AA doesn’t seem to be phasing him at all so far. As a pirate fan, can he actually work out and be great? What does his ceiling look like? What can we dream on?

Eric A Longenhagen: Yeah, he’s quite good. I still think it’s a round down hit tool to some degree, but the power/speed combo is great. He’s a top 5 prospect.