Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat – 1/16/25

Dan Szymborski: Umm, it seems to have started already, so I’ll be back here in 16 minutes.

Dan Szymborski: OK, NOW we’re starting for real!

Guest: Thx for chats…the Yankees traded for Fernando cruz….how does zips see him performing in 25?

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS has him at a 3.14 ERA/3.09 FIP, ERA+ 131 with a billion strikeouts in 57 IP in NY

Idiotic Failson: Why is my favorite team hated by ZIPs?

Dan Szymborski: Things that you have done.

Keefths: When is Sasaki going to sign ?

Dan Szymborski: I think he’ll sign by the end of next week

Jack: How do you see the Phillies outfield looking come opening day? Platoon wise, etc. The Kepler signing doesn’t seem to move the needle for a team whose window is about to slam shut

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think it will be PURE platoon, but I’m confident both Kepler and Marsh will get a disproportionate off time when lefties are in the mound

Dan Szymborski: They have a lot of right-handed guys who can play the outfield just hanging around, after all

Keefths: How do you like CES as a rebound candidate ? What’s his upside ?

Dan Szymborski: I think his upside is similar to Morel’s

Dan Szymborski: he did have a year ruined by injury at a key developmental time

Dan Szymborski: But if everything’s back to normal, he could hit for a lot of power with an abysmal OBP

David Stearns: Favor memory of the legendary Bob Uecker?

Dan Szymborski: Possibly his various Major League quotes!

Dan Szymborski: Though do those count as BOB UECKER moments since he was Harry Doyle?

Dan Szymborski: If Uecker, the tuba incident still makes me smile, even though I obviously wasn’t there to see it in person

drhotdog: is 16 minutes early the new on time?

Dan Szymborski: No, that was me screwing up the start time

Gram: What does Zips see in Tyler Fitzgerald? Underlying numbers were pretty bad and seemed to be almost completely held up by massive BABIP.

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS simply thinks he’

Dan Szymborski: s more of an BABIP guy thant Steamer does

EZBZ: How does Gary Sanchez project with the Orioles?  How about vs. lefties as a breakout?  Assuming that’s a bit what he was brought in for…

Dan Szymborski: 217/302/398, 100 OPS+, 0.5 WAR in 300ish PA

Dan Szymborski: He’s never really had much of a platoon split

Dan Szymborski: so ZiPS has the splits fairly even

O’s believer: Kjerstad is an interesting story. Any hope that he can get the playing time to match his zips? Mountcastle and Oneil weren’t great against RHP…

Dan Szymborski: I’m hopeful they mostly go for him

MikeM: Is there any data to show how hitters recover from labrum tears?  With reports that Kim will be out until the May timeframe I wanted to know if we could expect a dip in offensive output or will the shoulder not affect him when he returns.

Dan Szymborski: I’ve done shoulders generally, but not labrums specifically

Craig: A lot of chatter on X about how team friendly the Rooker deal is for the A’s… what say the Goddess of ZiPS?

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS said 5/52.6 and that’s *with* a 3.9 WAR projection the first year

Dan Szymborski: He’s a 30 year old DH who hits free agency for the first time for his age 33 season. It’s really hard to argue that this is team friendly

Dan Szymborski: Other than the normal cost control stuff

Patrick: Overall who is a better hitting prospect Jac Caglianone or Jace Laviolette?

Dan Szymborski: College translation stuff is rudimentary enough that it’s hard to say, from a projection standpoint, who is better

Dan Szymborski: They both have excellent names, but Jace Laviolette gets the edge there because I’m a sucker for a protagonist in a southern Gothic horror

Bob: OOPSY incorporates bat speed data (I think) – does ZiPS?  Any plans to try and bring that in?

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS does implicitly. Need more years of data to have good evidence of how to integrate it explicitly

drhotdog: is there something that happens in baseball that you find hard to quantify/properly evaluate in the ZiPS model?

Dan Szymborski: injuries for sure. ZiPS deals with them, but in a very generalized way

Dan Szymborski: and I’m nto sure there’s actually a solution

neuronic: Hey Dan! Eagerly looking to troll through the ZIPS 2025 predictions whenever they go live on the player pages. I’ve been reflecting on my own modeling mistakes recently, and was wondering what your biggest mistake was when developing ZIPS?

Dan Szymborski: Not learning Python or something!

Dan Szymborski: I also spent way too much time chasing height/weight data for something useful but never really found anything

Lowetide: Based on the teams ZIPS has already publicly evaluated, Jackson Holliday ranks No. 8 among second basemen. I know this is entirely based on possible playing time, but assuming 125 game, in a league where you can keep a player for four years, should Holliday be considered a keeper?

Dan Szymborski: I think so. Especially if you play OOTP!

Prospector: Who are the most underrated/overrated prospects right now?

Dan Szymborski: Ask me on Prospect Week!

frogs38: Does James Wood batted ball profile ie. 55% GB rate limit his upside?

Dan Szymborski: It could limit his high-end power potential

Dan Szymborski: but it’s worth noting that it’s a 2024-specific thing, so could at least theoretically be reversed

Burnes’d: Dan, what the heck is going on with the Orioles pitching staff? The payroll flexibility at the trading deadline won’t matter if they are out of it by May 15.

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think that’s the risk, the rotation isn’t such that they’re going to fall otu of the pennant race or something.

Dan Szymborski: But it’s concerning if injuries hit and in October

Jurickson Profar: Any reasonable reason to see if he could play the infield again? He’d be a good fit for the Yankees from a hitting perspective but I just can’t see them running him out there in the outfield.

Dan Szymborski: It’s always worth a spring training experiment, but I’m also one of the people who is far more vocal about teams doing crazy shit in the spring

Biscuit: How on earth have the Reds not signed Anthony Santander, and the Mariners Pete Alonso. Why are the easiest moves to see the ones that never get made?

Dan Szymborski: The first one is $

Dan Szymborski: the second one is $$$$$. It’s REALLY hard to recommend a team giving Alonso what he wants

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS has scoop data in it’s defensive runs, but even with a few extra runs a year, the numbers vs. projection don’t line up

Dan Szymborski: Now, as for the Reds, they SHOULD sign Santander

Broken Bat: Danny of no beans chilli fame.. is Langford of Rangers close to the Sept. guy who blew up or what that peak? How do you see Langford with the new depth of Ranger outfield that has a healthy Carter, Taveras, and now Peterson sharing Nina. Garcia of positions?

Dan Szymborski: Somewhat in the middle. ZiPS remains positive about his future

EarthboundMisfit: Damn you Szymborski! I bought a 5-pack of that Buldak carbonara ramen at your suggestion. I need to buy some more.

Dan Szymborski: It’s weird, but good, isn’t it?

Dan Szymborski: It’s one of those things you read the package and it sounds awful. Then you think about it and it sounds awful. And then you taste it and it doesn’t taste like carbonara at all. But somehow, it’s still absolutely AMAZING

Dan Szymborski:

Idiotic Failson: Is Jacob Wilson going to get full time reps in…er…Sacramento this year?

Dan Szymborski: He makes the most sense for Oakless for sure

Burnes’d: Pour one out for Bob. That is all.

Guest: Do you think the O’s will trade for another TOR starter

Dan Szymborski: no

Biscuit: Why is ZiPS so light on innings for Imanaga?

Dan Szymborski: It’s light on all pitchers IP because pitchers are really breakable

Burnes’d: Where does Santander land? Does he top 50 million?

Dan Szymborski: NO idea on the first. He’ll top 50 though

Dan Szymborski: and if he doesn’t top 50, then the GMs who didn’t sign him and should have should be instantly fired

Dave: With the Mets and Pete seemingly coming to a deal would you spend the remaining 20M of last year’s payroll on Tanner Scott or spread it out on a couple of bench/util guys?

Dan Szymborski: I’d actually try and go after Flaherty

shaner: Do you agree with the guy above that the Phillies window is about to slam shut?

Dan Szymborski: Not SLAM shut, but it’s closing; the key parts of their offense are largely on the downslope somewhere

Dan Szymborski: The Phillies are like being in a swimming pool at 4 PM and you see some ominous clouds in the distance

Dan Szymborski: You’re GOING to have to get out at 8 PM for sure, but the weather also may take a sudden turn for the worse and the lifeguard is going to yell at you to get out when the first clap of thunder goes

Sasaki: This whole “recruiting” process is just for show to pretend I wasn’t going to the Dodgers the whole time, right?

Dan Szymborski: While it’s hard to completely get rid of that from my gut, nothing’s happened yet, and I only know what I can prove

Guest: Hagen Danner was claimed by the Mariners off the waiver wire from Toronto.  what is zips outlook?

Dan Szymborski: Averageish reliever

Section 34: Hey Dan, give us your take on the bashing of Mike Elias’ offseason. It’s easy to say the Orioles should have signed Fried, Burnes or Snell, but none of them wanted to play in B-more (obviously they don’t appreciate crabcakes). I’m an O’s fan and wish they had added one of these guys but I don’t mind their moves instead, and I don’t want to see them overpay for a second-tier starter like Castillo from a prospect base that isn’t as deep as last year.

What’s your take?

Dan Szymborski: I’m not positive that none of them wanted to play in Baltimore

Dan Szymborski: iIt’s kinda hard to say, I’m disappointed about the lack of a significant pitcher add

Dan Szymborski: and it’s hard to say how much to believe that was Elias and how much just the O’s still being closer to Angelos-spending than Cohen-spending

shaner: What is the percentile outcome needed for Volpe to be any good on offense? say 100 wRC+? Steamer has him at 101 and OOPSY has him at 94, but hes come nowhere close to that in 2 full seasons

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS has him at 97

Dan Szymborski: I don’t have wRC+ percentiles, just OPS+ and his 60th is 102, so probably something like 57th/58th percentile or so

tortycraig: Have you had to alter ZIPS at all to reflect (what I perceive, but could be wrong) the increasing trend of fast promotion for high-probability major leaguers through the minors? Is this hard to distinguish from COVID developmental aberrations?

Dan Szymborski: I haven’t found any recent trends that change things considerably

Guest: What do you think of the OOPSY projections?

Dan Szymborski: I haven’t really dug into them. I have enough work to do calibrating and double-checking MY projections already!

Constantine if he was atheist: What’s the dumbest thing you could base a projection system on that is also useful?

Dan Szymborski: pitcher wins?

Dan Szymborski: Before you guys bite my head off

Dan Szymborski: if you don’t have GOOD stats, wins give you some kind of rough signal as to performance and innings

Dan Szymborski: it’s not good though

Dan Szymborski: Maybe I didn’t answer the question?

Guest: Is Mark Vientos really a 35 home run player?

Dan Szymborski: as an over/under, that’/s too aggressive for me

liptowi: Santander ends up in

Dan Szymborski: …the restroom all evening after winning the team’s naga viper pepper challenge

liptowi: What does it take to get L. Castillo to Baltimore?

Dan Szymborski: Have you give a real bat

shaner: In a projection system, how do you handle partial seasons at AA, AAA, MLB in the same season say? Or even a 2020 situation where some players might have looked totally different than 2019 and 2021 purely do to a sample. Do you weight by PAs?

Dan Szymborski: It’s all translated to MLB

TooDamnTall: Who do you think you are?

Dan Szymborski: The evidence suggests that I am Daniel John Szymborski, born 6/19/78

J: Is there any team with more of a gap between ZiPS and Steamer than the Cubs? Outside of Tucker, ZiPS is higher on just about everyone.

Dan Szymborski: Gonna have to wait until later in the offseason to gauge that

Tacoby Bellsbury: You’ve been developing ZiPS for an extended period of time, and you frequently say that much of the meat has already been taken off the bone. In retrospect, what were the most consequential pieces of meat you’ve taken off that particular femur?

Dan Szymborski: In-season stuff

Dan Szymborski: PECOTA came out slightly before ZiPS did, but I had studied in-season/preseason projection interactions before basically anyone in public

Ghost of Eric Davis: Is there an injury history database that you can (or do) plug into ZiPS as an additional data point? Is it complete enough?

Dan Szymborski: I do have a database of generalized injuries

Biscuit: Who is the most interesting ZiPS lover affair so far? Combination of the biggest difference from other projections and also just overall visibility?

Dan Szymborski: Well, this year, the Cubs

Dan Szymborski: I forget the biggest difference last year

Dan Szymborski: The year before, ZiPS was in love with the Diamondbacks

Guest: any more team zips profiles this week?

Dan Szymborski: One more tomorrow!

Dan Szymborski: Then we’ll be down to just five teams

Dave: Do you publish percentile outcomes anywhere?

Dan Szymborski: Not systematically outside 80/50/20

Nate: is it you or the cats that decides ZiPS release order

Dan Szymborski: =rand()

Dan Szymborski:

Dave: Do you generally just add code ontop of code or do you rebuild Zips from the ground up?

Dan Szymborski: It’s a math shanty town

Gram: Zips has a decent projection for Jerar Encarnacion. Does it pretty much just ignore his Marlins time?

Dan Szymborski: Shouldn’t be ignoring anything!

Idiotic Failson: Hang on a minute – you just said you didn’t find anything useful in height/weight data. Does that mean that there might actually be some sort of ‘market inefficiency’ for the wrong looking prospects (too short/skinny/heavy/whatever)? And does that work for pitchers and hitters?

Dan Szymborski: It could be

Dan Szymborski: the larger problem is the data just frigging sucks historically

Dan Szymborski: BR Kruk is smaller than Ichiro

Dan Szymborski: and that’s not shade at BR – the data just sucks

Projections: Are there any players that consistently outperformed or underperformed their ZIPS projections throughout their career? Excluding injuries

Dan Szymborski: I don’t have the EXACT players off hand

Dan Szymborski: I mostly look for systematic errors, which are really hard to find

Dan Szymborski: the year-to-year miss r^2 is very low (under 0.01)

Burnes’d: Jackson Merrill seemed to come out of nowhere last year. Was that peak-level performance from him, or did he demonstrate that he’s better than projections initially thought>

Dan Szymborski: Maybe not peak

Dan Szymborski: but as a group, one shoudl expect last year’s ROY candidates to take a step back

Dan Szymborski: not because of any mythical sophomore slump

Dan Szymborski: it’s just that the top achieving of any population are likely the ones that had the highest percentil eoutcomes

Dan Szymborski: Like a 110 win is far more likely to have overperformed than underperformed

Dan Szymborski: https://twitter.com/DSzymborski/status/1876409772372861383

Dave: Which of the Jacksons does Zips prefer over their careers – Chourio Holiday Jobe or Merrill?

Dan Szymborski: Chourio

drhotdog: do you not use Python for ZiPS?? how is calculated then?

Dan Szymborski: A horrible ZiPS + third party add on mess

Dan Szymborski: and a whole mess of visual basic scripts

mmddyyyy: If ZiPS took a look at the players on this year’s hall of fame ballot, would any of them project well?

Dan Szymborski: Now? no

Sam: Has there ever been a ZIPS projection that just fully baffled you where it wasn’t some sort of database or calculation error?

Dan Szymborski: Shane Bieber his breakout year

Dan Szymborski: I prepared to be stabbed after projecting him to be equal with Clayton Kershaw

Guest: is the offense in zips position based?

Dan Szymborski: large cohorts of similar players are

Guest: So is that ramen artificial spicy or artificial chicken?

Dan Szymborski: It’s spicy

Dan Szymborski: though not BULDAK spicy

Dan Szymborski: for SPICY you need

Dan Szymborski:

Cat Latos: What do my cat friends do?

Dan Szymborski: I have no cats with me at the moment

Dan Szymborski: Last I saw them, Mercutio was aimless wandering in the upstairs hallway

Dan Szymborski: Cassie was asleep in the empty Chewy box of their cat food that I haven’t taken down to the recycling bin

Dan Szymborski: Justinian was hunting one of these weird toys that look like straws they got in their Meowbox a few months ago

Dan Szymborski: and Constantine was asleep in in one of the living room chairs

Steve O: Would you ever recommend a team go “all in”? Like trade a bunch of prospects, sign relatively bad contracts, etc to win now knowing that if you’re a mid 80s win team, you’ll probably have a solid shot of making the playoffs. Imagine if the Yankees signed Alex Bregman and traded for Garrett Crochet. They’d be great, but in a few years they could be a disaster.

Dan Szymborski: It would have to be a very specific situation

Dan Szymborski: Because MLB’s playoff structure disincentives going all in

Dan Szymborski: You have to have the OBVIOUS cliff in your near future, like the Royals a couple years after winning the WS

Dave: Wasn’t Altuve listed at 5’8 initially?  Hard to find a signal when the input is crap

Bobby Peru: You may have covered this already but do the Rays ZIPS take into account Yankee Stadium dimensions for home games?

Dan Szymborski: I’m just going with neutral for them. Steinbrenner Field’s PF were neutral enough in FSL that it didn’t seem to be worth the bother to pin it down further given how inaccurate it likely would be

Bobby Peru: Who does ZIPS project as the top 3 players in baseball 3 years from now?

Dan Szymborski: Ohtani, Soto, Witt

Dave Carry: Hello Dan, Do you have a time line for introducing the 3 yr Zips projections?

Dan Szymborski: When the projections go live at FG, I always include those for Apples

Tacoby Bellsbury: ABS implementation in the minors at least fixes the height data sooner.

Dave: Rays are scheduled for something like 60 home games by the midpoint of the season.  Have you seen anything how extended road trips/home stands effect performance?

Dan Szymborski: I’ve looked at the issue a little, but haven’t found anything that’s really relevant

sliptoad: Could height data (if not weight) become easier to use with the advent of roboumps and the associated need to have accurate data on player size?

Dan Szymborski: It could, but I won’t have it historically

MP: Thoughts on Bowden Francis this year? Haven’t seen huge enthusiasm. He had a strong run in the second half after they left him alone and let him start.

Dan Szymborski: I think the big question is just how high his UPSIDE is, which is a big part of enthusiasm

Jeff Behrends: Do you stand by the idea that you know only what you can prove, as you said above? Seems too high a standard for knowledge

Dan Szymborski: I can SUSPECT things, but I only KNOW what I can prove

Burnes’d: Witt ranked higher than Gunnar? Surely Zips must be broken

Dan Szymborski: He’s 4th

Dan Szymborski: I don’t put my thumb on the scale EVER but if I did, I guarantee I’d give the Orioles the boost

Dan Szymborski: On that note, ti’s time to head off. I’ve got ZiPS to finish befroe too late in the afternoon for Meg/Matt