Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat – 1/18/18

Estevao: Edgar

312/418/515
.204 ISO.  .405 wOBA.

Larry

313/400/565
.252 ISO.  .412 wOBA

Coors Field is obviously a factor,
Edgar 147 wRC+
Larry 140 wRC+

But any advantage Martinez might and probably had gets crushed in the overall value analysis, def and bsr big advantage Larry

Dan Szymborski: They should both be in the Hall.   I’m not going to suggest we dont’ vote for Edgar just because Walker can’t get in this year in all practical likelihood.

Bret: How do you evaluate the Blue Jays offseason to date?

Dan Szymborski: Incomplete.  This has been a slow offseason and I’m loath to give anybody a grade.

Dan: Devers’ projection is pretty crazy for a 21 year old.  What does his long term (~5 year) projection look like?

Dan Szymborski: Don’t have it in front of me, but quite solid!

Dan Szymborski: Of course, since he had an .800 OPS in the majors at age 20, it would be weirder if he didn’t have crazy projections long term

Andrew: To what degree are swing changes taken into account in ZiPS?

Dan Szymborski: Not at all.  ZiPS can only work with data.

Juan: The Padres owner said that they’ve made Hosmer a creative offer. What do you think that could mean?

Dan Szymborski: GIven the Padres, probably means they offered a player opt-out that makes it worse for them.  I seem to remember the Royals talking about the creative contract needed to lure Ian Kennedy, which was the same thing (though I could be wrong)

CamdenWarehouse: Eno’s still chatting man.  Do i have to choose?

Dan Szymborski: You got multiple tabs, don’t ya?

CamdenWarehouse: Nevermind.  He just ended

Bork: How do you evaluate the Szymborski offseason to date?

Dan Szymborski: There is no offseason.  It’s Endless Szymborski until I die or the universe does.  Probably me first.

Coors: thoughts on Sherman’s NYPost Ian Desmond for Jacoby Ellsbury trade?

Dan Szymborski: Hadn’t seen it.  Probably not the worst idea in the world, though I think the Rockies get the more useful player.

Dan Szymborski: Desmond’s contract was OK *if* you believe he can play shortstop, second base, or centerfield.  There was no way it was going to work out when you sign him for 1B

Dan Szymborski: If the Yankees have to trade bad deals, I’d prefer them to get one with more utility.

Dan Szymborski: And as for the Rockies, I’m not sure they even realize it would be a good idea.

Dan Szymborski: They don’t actually know Gerardo Parra stunk in 2017..

Metlover: How does ZiPS like Gonzalez for next season? Been looking and I can’t find a projection anywhere.

Dan Szymborski: CarGo?  He’s in the Rockies projections

Oren: Where do you fall in on the Collusion —– Just-A-Weird-Offseason scale? Is there something sinister or game-changing going on this season, or is it really just a set of unique circumstances that will probably change by next year?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think there’s anything sinister.  Just a mediocre group of free agents and teams less willing to spend money Just Because.

Coach K: Do you see Bryant staying in 2spot in Cubs Batting order for 2018, or moving back to 3 in front of Rizzo?

Dan Szymborski: I expect him to be second.  Not really much in the way of lineup changes.

RotoLando: If you could break up all the Billboard Top 100 Hits into decades, and have all the bands fist fight each other, who wins it all?  (difficulty: bands with hits in multiple decades exist simultaneously. For example, Good Vibrations Beach Boys could team up with or take down Kokomo Beach Boys)

Dan Szymborski: I dunno, I think 70s bands would do well

CamdenWarehouse: With Dave leaving, you’re going to fill his weekly Monday appearance on Fangraphs Audio, right?

Dan Szymborski: Nobody asked me!

Josh Nelson: My buddy is going to Las Vegas this weekend and wants to place a bet on future World Series winner. Which team outside of the Yankees, Astros, Cubs, or Dodgers would you recommend?

Dan Szymborski: Depends where the betting lines are.  Generally favorites don’t have bet-friendly odds

Dan Szymborski: I think the Phillies are a reasonable bet at +10000 and maybe even +8000

Dan Szymborski: Cardinals at +2000 lots of places, think that’s reasonable.  Angels at +2000 or higher.

Craig in CHI: Are my Sox actively shopping Avi or Abreu?  Avi has to get dealt!!!  lol

Dan Szymborski: I don’t know about active, but I assume they’re listening

Michael J: Should the Dodgers not even consider signing Darvish, since it increases the difficulty of squeezing in Kershaw and/or Harper for 2019?

Dan Szymborski: I think luxury tax reset probably more important than 2019 payroll

Craig in CHI: Josh Harrison on the NYY fits.

Dan Szymborski: Not a bad contract if we’re tlaking swaps

Gub Gub: Have you read Ready Player One?

Dan Szymborski: On my list but I have not yet

Blue Jay Matt: What is your snack of choice?

Dan Szymborski: cheese

Jay: How much stock should I put into batted ball data like quality of contact when trying to determine BABIP sustainability?

Dan Szymborski: It’s pretty decent.  I’ve got the r^2 to babip up to around 0.6 in a season just from that kind of data

Guest: ZiPS is not a People Person

Dan Szymborski: It’s a PC

tacopocket: BJ answered this earlier in the week but I was surprised by his answers so I’m tossing it out to you:  5X5 keeper league with 12 teams where we get $300 at auction.  Which 5 do I keep:   Kershaw @ 63.  Rendon@17.  JDM@38.  Upton@23.  Alex wood@11.  story@11,  justin turner @23.   I think there is a huge dropoff after the top 4 starters (the other 3 are being kept) so I’m leaning towards keeping kershaw even though he’s not a bargain.  i also love JDM and think the upton price is pretty good but that’s a lot to spend on keepers.  I love woods price and story’s potential is enticing.  Sorry for the long winded question but i’ve been agonizing about this for an unhealthy amount of time.  Part II (if i’m being greedy) — would you deal alex wood for thames, margot or domingo Santana (all below $8)

Dan Szymborski: It’s still really hard to commit $63 for Kershaw

Dan Szymborski: I wouldn’t deal Wood for Margot.  I love Margot as an MLBer, but I don’t think you’re properly rewarded for what makes him good in fantasy

Estevao: Larry Walker’s Career On the Road
271/377/487 .305 BABIP .216 ISO .373 wOBA 126 wRC+
Carlos Beltran’s Career
279/350/486 .299 BABIP .207 ISO .358 wOBA 118 wRC+

Dan Szymborski: Beltran’s a CF, so that comparison makes Beltran look good.

JC: Are #1 comps unique per year – aka each ML player is 1:1 with a former player per year? if not, is there any specifc player that gets “#1 comped” the most?

Dan Szymborski: #1 comps aren’t unique.  Even on teams you sometimes see the same guy twice!

Dan Szymborski: You tend to see mediocre veterans who are similarly mediocre across the board come up a lot.

Dan Szymborski: Like mediocre aging catchers get a lot of Chad Moeller and George Mitterwald.  A lot of meh centerfielders have Herm Winningham

Dan Szymborski: Paul Sorrento and J.T. Snow come up a lot for mediocre first basemen

Estevao: http://maximustake23.blogspot.com/2017/12/al-mvp-again.html … …

Judge better in…

OBP .422 to .410
SLG .627 to .547
ISO .343 to .202
wOBA .430 to .405
wRC+ .173 to .160
WPA/LI 6.23 to 4.59
RE24 52.05 to 38.51

Bellagio: Bad news…we have you at 100,000-1 on going first.

Dan Szymborski: Good odds

Craig in CHI: When will we next have a Knuckleballer?

Dan Szymborski: When Wright pitches?

Hannah Hochevar: How was withdrawing their offer to Hosmer not a stipulation for Dave going to SD?

Dan Szymborski: heh

Dan Szymborski: See, I’d be more likely to get Hosmer if I employed Dave or a clone of myself.  Would be fun to get the new empllyee really annoyed.

Hovey: Does Contreras career surpass Posey and Yadi at some point?  Which catcher out of Posey and Yadi rates higher in your opinion?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think so.  Posey

Morbo: In light of Tommy Pham’s 5.9 war in roughly 80% of a season last year why are the projections so down on him, 3 war for a full season. I’m aware that is still very good.

Dan Szymborski: Even with vision changes and stuff, you have to take an outlier season not as a baseline.

Andy: Has the market come back to a point where the Royals could re-sign Hosmer, Moose, and Cain?  If they can get those 3 guys for around 50 mil combined per year, would it be worth it?

Dan Szymborski: Not really.  It might get them to 77 wins.

Dan Szymborski: They had a 72-win pythag *with* everybody last season, including Vargas pretending to be Maddux for half a year.

Hannah Hochevar: Or was that his plan all along: hammer down Hosmer’s value on FG so that he’d come cheaper once Dave got to SD?

Dan Szymborski: Sounds like the Padres are mainly bidding against themselves anyway

Bilz: what kind of package (without Tatis and Gore) would it take for the padres to get yelich? Urias Cal Margot +another or something of that nature ?

Dan Szymborski: That’s probably and I’m not sure they ought to do it.

Margery : Do you think the distance between the basepaths (and from the mound to home plate) are ideal for baseball? Would you adjust them if you had the chance?

Dan Szymborski: It’s hard to change it up given how uniform it is through history

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think I’d do it since the downsides woud be greate rthan the benefits, but I wouldn’t mind a preseason experiment of having smaller distances between bases, to make putting the ball in play relative to three true outcomes more beneficial

Dan Szymborski: Though you may make strikeouts for pitchers even MORE valuable

hscer: crap, I was guest for a couple there

Gub Gub: Is the market for Carlos Gonzalez like the scene in Groundhog Day where Chris Elliot jumps up into the bachelor auction?

Dan Szymborski: heh

Jethro: Is grabbing Jorge Polanco later in a draft worth the risk vs. overdrafting a SS like Xander Bogaerts?

Dan Szymborski: I think so, though the exact names depends on format

Tomahawk chop: How many of the top-tiered free agents are left unsigned come spring training?

Dan Szymborski: I think there will be a lot

Metlover: Sorry! Meant Adrian Gonzalez

Dan Szymborski: Meh, I think he’s done.  Even in 2016, he was buoyed by an unusally good BABIP for him

Dicky Henderson: what is hosmer worth? 5/100?

Dan Szymborski: To the right team in contention, I think that’s not a crazy number

Estevao: The San Diego Padres are a fascinating case, how many times do you see a team hire a GM, have such GM beginning his tenure by making splashy moves going all in, and in an incredibly short period of time seeing that plan fail epically, and despite it, keeping that General Manager to completely rebuild the farm system that he himself destroyed, the whole situation is very uncommon, and I did not even mention the bad reputation Preller has around the league.
http://maximustake23.blogspot.com.br/2018/01/the-sd-padres-and-head-sc… …

Blue Jay Matt: Obligatory trade speculation – Bo Bichette for Christian Yelich, who says no and which side to do you prefer?

Dan Szymborski: I think the BLue Jays do

Dan Szymborski: I might actually consider it if I’m hte Jays

Scottie : In an era where just about every FO leans heavily on advanced metrics, which is the most tradtional FO in baseball?

Dan Szymborski: Marlins

Slapshot: Given how some teams seem to be blowing things up (Pirates, Marlins) in a big way or are consolidating talent (NYY, Astros), do you have a personal, non ZiPS driven over/under on the number of teams that lose more than 100 games, or win more than 100 games?

Dan Szymborski: 2.  100 wins is still hard.

John: Would you rather draft Joey Gallo or Michael Conforto in a keeper league?

Dan Szymborski: Gallo simply because Conforto has short-term risk due to injury

THE Average Sports Fan: Should small-mid market teams just sell out during their window of contention?  It seems like the Pirates didn’t do that and now they are going to stink anyway, without the payoff from their good run.

Dan Szymborski: I felt when they were pushing, they should have pushed a little more aggressively

Dan Szymborski: They tried too hard to shift towards win-now *and* win-later and I think got caught between the two.  And this magnified with bad luck things like Taillon setbacks and Kang

Carl: Is McMahon going to run with the Rockies 1B job?  Is he going t be awesome if he does?

Dan Szymborski: He very likely could.  I dont’ like him as much as a 1B>

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS has him at 100 OPS+.  THat’s solid at other positions he can play.  But at 1B, it’s a who cares

William: What makes someone “break the mold” of projections as regression machines? Often, we regress back toward a mean, but sometimes players are projected to be better.

Dan Szymborski: Depends *how* they break th emold

William: Is the projection of, say, wrc+ for a player to be treated as the mean with a normal curve of possible outcomes surrounding it?

Dan Szymborski: No.  There are no normal curves involved.

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS is a non-parametric model.  It generates player curves on the fly

Art Vandelay: do you have a projection for Darvish? I know he wasn’t with the Dodgers so I probably just missed it.

Dan Szymborski: It was with the DOdgers

Iordan : How quickly would a team start to fail if you replaced their GM with a layman?

Dan Szymborski: I think it would take a couple of years really until the lack of organizational expertise and the less-public parts of the job start being a problem

Bebop: do you think the Cubs should prioritize signing Hendricks and Contreras to long term extensions?

Dan Szymborski: You can have beer and tacos.  It should be explored, but it always depends on the other side also being willing

Pat: If the Rangers were to sign Yu Darvish, they would only finish _________ games behind the Astros and would have a ___% chance of getting one of the AL wild cards

Dan Szymborski: I think the Rangers are a tthe end of the string

CarrotJuice: Do you think the Cole/McCutchen trades are in any way related to the Hosmer/RAND conspiracy?

Dan Szymborski: We can only see.  Have to see what my agents come up with.

VampWeekAtBern: Are there any valuable spring training stats?

Dan Szymborski: There’s *some* value, but minimal

Andrew: Is launch angle/launch velocity data incorporated? That may be a more functional measurement of a swing change.

Dan Szymborski: I have it, but I have some not-obviously-public things

VampWeekAtBern: Who at Fangraphs has the best hair?

Dan Szymborski: Eno

CamdenWarehouse: What team should I watch this year since the O’s won’t be fun?

Dan Szymborski: Astros.  Need a palette cleanser of good pitching after watching hte O’s

Slamboni: I am very curious to see what ZiPS projects for Trevor Bauer for 2018. Finished 2018 very strong, any guess to what his stat line looks like?

Dan Szymborski: Like I’m spoiling Monday’s projections

Billy Beane: Dan, you really should be on Fangraphs Audio. Please. LEt me know if we should start sending Carson Cistulli unnecessarily grandiloquent letters lobbying for it.

Dan Szymborski: You should lobby Carson, but he only responds to actionable threats

Iordan : Do CLE, NYY, BOS, CHC, and WSH all basically belong in the same tier right now? Any meaningful differences?

Dan Szymborski: I think they’r ein the same tier

Theo: Would Happ, Almora, Montgomery and Albertos/Alzolay be in the ballpark to get Yelich?

Dan Szymborski: Yes

Head: Elvis Andrus…can his power sustain?

Dan Szymborski: Generally homers for batters aren’t that fluky

velo: what factors does zips look at when projecting ISO in a younger player with better than average contact skills?  ozzie albies for example put up higher iso in his debut than any point in the minors, granted it increased from AA to AAA.  curious if there’s factors to consider, especially in smaller players, Altuve, Betts, maybe Albies, all who came up with solid hit tools but were undersized.

Dan Szymborski: Generally speaking, I’ve found minimal value to size data.

Dan Szymborski: Simply put, we’re missing a lot of the data that we have for majors

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS knows stuff like strike percentage and spray data for minors, but no direct velocity stuff

Billy Beane: Dan, if you had to make a whole new projection system from scratch, do you think you would end up basically with ZiPS again, or are there things you could change that you just don’t because the work/marginal value calculations don’t make sense?

Dan Szymborski: I think I’d end up with ZiPS, but more organized and in Python

botchatheny: if our nuclear arsenal was hooked up to a video game controller, would it be as simple as the atari 2100 or complex like the current gen systems?

Dan Szymborski: Sadly, I think it’s like an Atari 2600.  After all, the Panic We’re All Going to Die announcement appears to have been a big red button saying “Panic.”

Bret: Who’s going to sign Lorenzo Cain?

Dan Szymborski: SF is my favorite.

Pat: To all Yankees fans, there are only 25 spots on the active roster. You don’t need every player that is on the trade block

Morbo: What, one. move can the Cardinals still make this off-season to significantly increase their WS odds?

Dan Szymborski: Abduct Mike Trout

Josh Harrison: I may want a trade, but isn’t my trade value roughly zero given all the other available infielders?

Dan Szymborski: You have a solid contract

Sandy Ravage: If Maikel Franco hit his ZiPs projections on the head in 2018 (.266/25/72) would we be saying that a) he is still underwhelming and has been a disappointment b) that there is improvement and a breakout could be coming or c) this is probably as good as it gets and thats ok?

Dan Szymborski: There’s still potential, but the upside’s been going down down down

CamdenWarehouse: I find it impressive that Murray Chass managed to not have the worst HOF ballot this year.  He even posted in his blog that he was wrong about Edgar in the past.

Dan Szymborski: Yeah, there were some worse ones.

Sevento Sanchez : Guys develop their hit, power, and fielding tools all the time. Are there cases of guys having a meaningful jump in speed?

Dan Szymborski: Not that I’m aware of offhand

Wondering Mind: Your comps are always different than BP’s.  I would think they would be unique based on using the same input data.  What makes them different?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t run Pecota, so I can’t say

Dan Szymborski: Don’t think they have as much of the minors in their comparison list as I do

Justino: Will anyone currently in the Cubs minor league system actually end up being a #1-#2ish starter?

Dan Szymborski: I suspect no.

UncleWeez: Any chance the Reds go with a 6-man rotation? Seems like an obvious org to try it, what with a bunch of talented, flawed, unproven guys battling for spots.

Dan Szymborski: Probably not

ChiSox2020: Which contender has the biggest hole you think can be easily filled?

Dan Szymborski: I think Angels and a top pitcher.

Nick: Is anyone else reading Fangraphs getting Denver Nuggets advertisements whilst not living in Denver? Who is responsible?

Zach: Andruw Jones seems like he should be a HOF lock based on his defense and power numbers. Do you think the veterans committee will one day look past his steep decline at 31?

Dan Szymborski: Not until the Hall completely rethinks how they do these committees

Phamtastic: Love Tommy Pham, but does a 7 degree average launch angle paired with all those bombs suggest he likely got thrown a disproportionate number of meatballs?

Dan Szymborski: I think that’ reading too much into the data

The Old Buccaneer: Which team do you think is better equipped to replace what they gave up in their “face of the franchise” player, the Rays or Pirates?

Dan Szymborski: Pirates.  McCutchen’s just not that amazing anymore

Mike M: What comp has surprised you the most this year? Which seems the most off? Which seems the most on?

Dan Szymborski: Avi Garcia getting Roberto Clemente.  Now, Clemente was up and down and had a lot of mediocre years until his late 20s, but still, CLemente.

Dan Szymborski: THe next players are much…worse…than Clemente

AA: Braves and Marlins were said to be progressing on a Yelich trade at the winter meetings. With reports the Marlins are now demanding Acuna what changed? Can’t imagine Atlanta was offering Acuna to begin with. Just saving face now or are the competing offers that good?

Dan Szymborski: Marlins overasking

Zwak: Do you want the Orioles to trade Machado and, if so, which team would you prefer?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t care what team he goes to, just that the O’s get the best package

Peter: Who has the better 2018 – Edwin Diaz or Felipe Rivero?  Was originally thinking Rivero, but saves could be few and far between with the Pirates in full rebuild.

Dan Szymborski: I think Rivero less erratic.  Nor do I think the Mariners are going to be that far ahead of Pirates in wins

Dan Szymborski: Cole/McCutchen hurts, but Cole really only has one star season and McCutchen’s best years are all in the rear window.  Probably

Jake: Can you advise the BFIB as to what the Cardinals should do between now and Opening Day?

Dan Szymborski: Please stop tweeting at me that the Cardinals bullpen was the worst in the history of mankind in 2017 because it wasn’t

Zwak: If you could create a team with active ML players, but you had to be a regular player, which position would you play if you were trying to maximize wins?

Dan Szymborski: Good lord.

Dan Szymborski: Uh…second base?  Was my most comfortable position as a teenager

Chuncey Wiggins: Do you follow sumo wrestling?

Dan Szymborski: I do not

Dwigt Rortugal : Which non-Beane GM would perform least poorly if forced to be an everyday player?

Dan Szymborski: Can we count Jeter?

Chuncey Wiggins: Would baseball be better or worse if the bags were replaced with trampolines?

Dan Szymborski: I’m not sure there’s enough jumping

Bryce Harper: ZiPS likes Dom Smith. The Mets don’t like Dom Smith. What do you think Sandy sees that ZiPS doesn’t?

Dan Szymborski: It’s hard to tell who drives the decisions all the time

Phil: What are the hardest types of players to project?

Dan Szymborski: Players with skimply backgrounds

lordan jr: How quickly would a democratic superpower start to fail if you replaced their leader with a layman?

Dan Szymborski: Government is a pretty big machine.  Unless you have someone legitimately crazy, I’d be surprised if anything that bad happened

Mike Truk : Do the Marlins have a realistic chance of folding anytime soon if ownership continues down the Loria 2.0 path?

Dan Szymborski: No.  Worst case they’re just the Washington Generals

Re: Preller keeping his job: I’m mostly convinced that the 2015 push was ownership-mandated to get something going and now him doing all the shrewd/normal GM things was the fallback plan that was expected all along.

Dan Szymborski: It was.

Dan Szymborski: But I’m not convinced they’re run well right now

Pirate Steve: There’s a lot of talk about Comerica having a hot gun, especially when evaluating Miggy’s performance last year. Is it possible the difference is being exaggerated simply because Miguel was a better hitter at home last season?

Pulling his data from Statcast search, I’m getting a home EV of 92.2MPH, and an away EV of 90.0MPH. But then I look at his splits…

Home (2017): .288/.340/.493 .318 BABIP 116wRC+
Away (2017): .213/.319/.308 .268 BABIP 69wRC+

Dan Szymborski: It’s possible, but hard to read just from Miggy

Pat: How is it handled when a player from a team who’s ZIPS projections haven’t come out yet gets traded to a team who already has their projections out? Ex: If the Brewers traded for Chris Archer?

Dan Szymborski: I’ll tweet it at some point typically and they’ll appear in the final projections

Phil: Fill in the blank: The Dodgers should _________ Yasmani Grandal.

Dan Szymborski: fart

Phil: Do your models take framing into account for pitchers and catchers values?

Dan Szymborski: Yes.  Very conservatively

tacopocket: thanks a lot for answering my keeper question.  you said you wouldn’t deal wood for margot — how about for Santana or thames?

Dan Szymborski: I think I would

hscer: but how could you play mike trout without giving the game away?

Dan Szymborski: If Blofeld can do it, so can MLB teams

MetsFan: What would Todd Frazier do for the Mets? I really hope they get him

Dan Szymborski: It’s not a bad fit.  I argued for it in my piece yesetrday

SZYMMMBOOO SLICE: How excited are your for the Orioles?

Dan Szymborski: none

Jon: On player pages, when a minor league player is traded mid season the new team stats is listed above the old team, so it isn’t chronological. Is there a reason for that or will it be fixed? (See Daz Cameron’s page as example. Listed as tigers, then Astros

Dan Szymborski: Have to ask Apples

RP to SP: Odds of the following two guys moving into the rotation of the respective teams: Archie Bradley and Chad Green?

Dan Szymborski: Long

Johnny : How is WAR or equivalent calculated for multi-position players such as Jose Ramirez or Kris Bryant or pitchers who split their time between starting and relieving such as Mike Montgomery?

Dan Szymborski: I project players for one position.  Pitchers are easier to split up

Dan Szymborski: If I do multiple, then I have to figure out a way to project that and express that

SIdney Crosby: Can we get Musgrove ZIPS?

Dan Szymborski: I think I tweeted it

Nick: Will the Amazon 2nd HQ selection impact the Hosmer signing, vice versa?

Dan Szymborski: Depends on Putin

Kevin: Who do you like in the backend of the Giants rotation? Beede, Stratton, Suarez, Blach, mystery man?

Dan Szymborski: Beede but only because I want to call him venerable

Jay: I haven’t researched this widely enough but I have noticed a possible correlation between some declining skills offensively preceded by a drop in their recorded Sprint Speed on Statcast (going back to when they started capturing it in 2015).  What are your thoughts? Merely coincidental or is it possible that loss of speed could be the first indicator of a decline for a player?

Dan Szymborski: THere is some relationship.  In BABIP for instance

Chuncey Wiggins: As a statistically inclined guy, you might be interested. Apparently sumo is experiencing the equivalent to Wayne Gretzky in their sport. Hakuho is perhaps even more dominant than the Great One was for hockey.

JSDee: Padres twitter is a dark place where you get dragged into disputes about minor league utility players.  Is it possible the front office is darker?

Dan Szymborski: I enjoy the rage of Padres twitter.

Dan Szymborski: AMusingly, it’s many of the same people that had INTERNET RAGE~! about me bashing the Kemp trade

Dan: If you had to pick one player who will exceed their 95th percentile forecasted outcome for 2018, who would you pick?

Dan Szymborski: I think Kopech has both a shockingly good chance to be awesome and a shockingly good chance to be horrible

$11 Worth of Taco Bell: Looking forward to articles in 20 years defending Eric Hosmer Hall of Fame votes?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think it’ll come to that.  Lot of people bleated abotu Joe Carter and Garret Anderson as those types and nothing came o fit

Bryce Harper: Nakamura has to win the Rumble right?

Dan Szymborski: WWE tends to be ultra-conservative with rumble winners, sadly

Dan Szymborski: what was the last surprising rumble winner?  ALberto del Rio?

Josiah: if you are Friedman and co. in LA, you going after Yelich or Harrison? or both?

Dan Szymborski: Harrison is more practical I think

Sonny: Big downside to log jam of worth candidates and 10 player cap is the disappearance of the ‘home town beat writer giving local good player a lone HOF vote.’ Jose Rijo man

Dan Szymborski: There’s always Bill Livingston

Phil: Best stadium food is ________

Dan Szymborski: edible

Magic 8 Ball: What type of prospect(s) would the Dodgers have to package with Kemp in order to move $30M of his salary?

Dan Szymborski: I think they’re fine with it distributed how it is

Dan Szymborski: I think they’ll release him before giving a way a prospect to dump him

Tomahawk chop: Will the 2018 Marlins be the worst team in MLB history?

Dan Szymborski: No

Matt: Uh. You ever going to chat at the time that’s listed towards the bottom of FG.com?

Dan Szymborski: Not until Carson honors the laws of time

Phil: Top 3 most reasonable fanbases on Twitter… go!

Dan Szymborski: Just from my experiences, Astros, Pirates, and believe it or not, Phillies

Kai: What is a team that could surprise this year?

Dan Szymborski: Phillies

“E” from the Big B: how much rope will the O’s give Chris Davis this year

Dan Szymborski: Unlimited

Lou : Has advanced analytics killed the local sports writer pontificating about moves that should be made?

Dan Szymborski: No reason it should

CarrotJuice: The best way to show how terrible this off season is is that MLBTR has four (!) paragraphs dedicated to the Brewers signing Ernesto Frieri to a minor league deal, who I forgot even existed.

Dan Szymborski: On that note, I have some errands to run — which is weird as I’m on vacation — and it’s time for me to go!

Dan Szymborski: As a reminder, you can read my work at ESPN.com, chats and projections here at FanGraphs.com, and DSzymborski on Twitter.

Dan Szymborski: Now go work or something