Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat – 11/13/25

Dan Szymborski: And awaaaaay we go!

Ryan: After writing your Phillies report, do you see them as a fit for Jarren Duran? If not them, who?

Dan Szymborski: If they want him and have enough to tempt the Red Sox, I think most teams could fit in Duran’s skillset

Dan Szymborski: I have to admit, I’m still not sure how much of the trade buzz is smoke and not fire, even if it makes sense due to the logjam

The person who asks the lunch question: Is it a lunch day? What’s for lunch, if so?

Dan Szymborski: No lunch today

War2D2: What were your feelings on the NL Cy Young? I heard some grumbling that Sanchez had a more difficult schedule and should have at least garnered a couple 1st place votes.

Dan Szymborski: I’m a bit ambivalent as I think it was pretty close, closer than the first palce vote tallies. I haven’t really dug into WHO I think is the better candidate though.

Mike: Of these three, who will still be on the Twins when the season starts… Lopez, Ryan, Buxton? Thanks.

Dan Szymborski: I actually think they will all be

Sam: Woohoo for ZiPS season! Regarding the Phillies projections – the outfield seems weak (per usual unfortunately). What would your ideal and realistic outfield look like for 2026? (i.e., resigning Bader for CF and trying to find a right fielder)

Dan Szymborski: I expect them to come to terms with Schwarber in the end and search for a fill-in candidate similar to what they did with Kepler

Dan Szymborski: One uncertainty is I just don’t have a feel for how THEY feel about Castellanos

Dan: How do you see Sonny Gray faring next year (and in 27 if his option is exercised)? Can he go toe-to-toe with the Cease/Valdez/Suarez cohort for a year or two?

Dan Szymborski: He’d do decently, but it would likely be short term; remember, 2028 is his age *38* season.

Dan Szymborski: If he’s a free agent after next season opting out after Cards exercises option, he’ll probably get an extra year at that salary, not a big salary bump

Mike: Wow. Is that the right thing for the Twins?

Dan Szymborski: Probably not. Once you take a heel turn, it’s best not to leave it half done.

wheelhouse: does zips see tucker as being as likely to live up to the contract he’s projected to get as other recent #1 free agents? i know he’s great but i just see this 30th-percentile outcome where he’s either a poor defensive RF or a 1B/DH with half the contract left to go

Dan Szymborski: I do not. ZiPS does not either, though I don’t always agree with ZiPS

War2D2: What does ZiPS think of Horton going forward? The projections on FG right now are…not good, to say the least. Having watched almost every start of his I personally feel like he’s probably better than a 1.4 WAR player, given how well he controls the zone. I think he has the possibility to be a pretty good #3, sort of another Taillon (for a comp in his own rotation). I realize even that prediction will disappoint most Cubs fans!

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS likes him quite a bit more than Steamer does

Lars: Why do MLB players foul so many more balls off themselves than, say, high schoolers? Way more inside pitches? So much more movement?

Dan Szymborski: I think there’s a lot of truth to this. And a major leaguer is much more competent at connecting with a shitty inside pitch they shouldn’t have swung at

matt w: Have you already started thinking about the special typeface you will use for Skenes in the Pirates projections? Also, how are the cats?

Dan Szymborski: I’ve already thought about how to be obnoxious along these lines. But you’ll have to wait and see if I am

Dan Szymborski: Unfortunately, Mercutio crashed a few weeks ago with acute kidney failure, which basically fast-forwarded him from his early stage chronic kidney disease to end stage. He basically went from normal to unable to walk in about five hours and when I brought him to the vet, his temperature was down to 90 degrees. There was no choice what the humane thing to do was (he was 17)

Dan Szymborski: Constantine is the one who most noticed he’s gone; Constantine used to fetch him for dinner and has been meowing a bit in Merc’s favorite spots. The other two are fine.

Guest: Sorry if I glossed over any prior explanation,  but has there been any changes to the zips system that effected this years projections?

Dan Szymborski: Nothing super different!

Dan Szymborski: There’s an intro for the ZiPS launch!

Dan Szymborski: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-2026-zips-projections-are-almost-here/

Devil Ray Jay Johnson: Did you have an awards vote this year? If so, what was your general process?

Dan Szymborski: NL ROY, and I did a piece on it too! https://blogs.fangraphs.com/my-2025-national-league-rookie-of-the-year…

Dan Szymborski: Haven’t really thought about my Hall ballot in specifics yet; they’re supposed to be mailed out from Cooperstown this coming Monday

TameImp: Is it safe to say that if Fairbanks had no takers at $11mm then Devin Williams probably isn’t worth $22mm for one year?

Dan Szymborski: I’d definitely be surprised if Williams got that

Chef Boyardee is here: Any weird dreams lately?

Dan Szymborski: Nothing too odd really

Tiger Fan: Hey Dan, broad FG question here: are positional adjustments displayed publicly, and if so, where? I was wondering if 2B or 3B was higher. It feels like 3B defense is publicly considered more important than 2B, even though a 2B has a lot more ground to cover. Thanks!

Dan Szymborski: https://library.fangraphs.com/misc/war/positional-adjustment/

Dan Szymborski: The ones I use in ZiPS are a bit “mellower”

Dan Szymborski: I use C 9, 1B -9.5, 2B 3, 3B 2, SS 7, LF -7, CF 2.5, RF -7, DH -9.5

Lord Thunder: Will Adley be considered a top 5 catcher in MLB 3 years from now?

Dan Szymborski: Honeslty, I’m leaning to no

Dan Szymborski: Though it’s certainly quite possible he is

Insert Witty Name Here: How can baseball regulate their gambling revenue stream to where all star pitchers who make tens of millions of dollars won’t juke their stats for 1919 Black Sox money?

Dan Szymborski: That’s the thing that amazes me, the piddling amounts of money involved.

Dan Szymborski: It’s like if a team asked me to change a projection to a fake on they provide and paid me with a sandwich

Dan Szymborski: I can buy my own sandwich, thank you very much

Tom: Ha-Seong Kim, do you think he ends up being getting a contract less than consensus – and who makes the most sense to you? That seems high for a waiver claim a few months back…(FYI 3/ $45M per crowdsource)

Dan Szymborski: I tend to think he will and shoudl probably consider a pillow deal. We’ll see

Shandy Koufax: Saw today that DRS and FRV, despite both being above average stats, sum to very different non-zero values. What gives? (FRV was -33, and -6 the last 2 years and DRS was 427 and 466)

Dan Szymborski: DRS isn’t being ruthless rebalanced to average clearly!

Mike: This likely isn’t the last gambling issue sports has. We have to believe some NFL officials are doing this, yes? How bad will it get how fast?

Dan Szymborski: It’ll probalby get worse before it gets better. It’s kind of a messy thing

Boo Dodgers: I have a number of coworkers who think MLB teams can just buy world series nowadays and point to the Dodgers as their prime example. I agree with them that money matters and helps, but I don’t think it is the primary factor for determining success. Yes, teams that win WS tend to have spent more money, but part of that is good teams spend money when it is more valuable to them to do so. The Dodgers also happen to be the among the best at developing players. What do you think?

Dan Szymborski: The thing is, money only goes so far because the sport is *inherently* coin flippy

Dan Szymborski: A team going from a 15% chance of a WS trophy to a 60% chance just by spending a whole crapload of money would be a real problem

Dan Szymborski: But if the best that money alone can do is move you from, say, 15% to 19%, it’s hard to care THAT much about it

matt w: I’m sorry about Mercutio. We lost our 17-year-old cat a little over a year ago and it was very hard. Now we have three young cats.

Guest: Sorry for your loss, Dan. Losing a furry family member is always really tough.

Alby: No question, just sorry to hear about Mercutio. It’s always tough.

Dan Szymborski: Thanks! It was quite a surprise since he had been acting relatively normal.

Dan Szymborski: But he *was* getting that old cat look so it had been in the back of my mind for about a year.

Dan Szymborski: He was getting bonier and his arthritis was bad, and I’m pretty sure he was going deaf

Dan Szymborski: He was getting monthly injections for his arthritis which had been helping, but still, he was only going to get worse, not better

Dan Szymborski: When I got the vet ER, I did have them perform a battery of tests and try to stabilize him, just so I could be sure what was going on. Since it was so quick, a number of things could have happened

Dan Szymborski: but his blood chemistry from his kidneys was off the table bad

Dan Szymborski: the vet thought it was triggered by pancreatitis

Guest: Obviosley you aren’t going to completely spoil it for us, but how does ZIPS feel about the Reds rotation? Top 5?

Dan Szymborski: I’ll just say it decently likes them!

War2D2: As an aside: sorry I’m machine gunning you with questions, I’ve not been able to attend a chat in like a month. I appreciate that you do these!

Dan Szymborski: I don’t usually do chats during playoffs simply because I’m sneaking every minute to get zips ready that I can! So you didn’t miss anything

Schwarbomb: Are you able to change a players home ballpark and see hypothetical changes in their projections? Ex. Schwarber plays 81 games at GABP, vs 81 games at Oracle Park. Is that something you can play with?

Dan Szymborski: Yeah. In fact, a common thing that player-agents like is a readout of the ZiPS for a player in every park

mmddyyyy: What do you try to do for professional growth?

Dan Szymborski: At this stage in my career, I’m just trying to arrest professional decline!

War2D2: Don’t the piddling amounts kind of imply that Clasé et al had more going on? I tend to assume that if you’re so desperate for $5k you’re probably over-extended. I’m not by any stretch a rich man, but I don’t think $5k would be enough for me to even consider making a change in the data I use at work.

Dan Szymborski: It’s certainly possible, but I don’t want to speculate what EXACTLY was going on, since I don’t know.

Dan Szymborski: People sometimes just do very stupid things that provide them no real benefit

Dan Szymborski: For instance, I’m a sucker for gas station hot dogs and lukewarm gas station breakfast sandwiches

Guest: Sorry about cat, I had 13 year old lab i lost and now my 13 year old Scottish terrier and I miss her terribly

Dan Szymborski: I’m sorry for your losses as well! My grandparents had a scotty when I was little that I was very attached to

Tom: What is the highest 80th percentile projection you have seen ZIPS produce, and does it surprise you that it was 2026 Paul Skenes?

Dan Szymborski: I’m pretty sure it was a de grom

Springerdingding: How unusual would you guess or would ZiPS say is a rebound year like we saw from Springer?  This many years past the steroid era, any signs of re-lengthening of the peak performance window as a result of non-cheating conditioning and surgical improvements?

Dan Szymborski: It’s on the unusual side – 4% of players beat their 95th percentile OPS+ and Springer was one of them

Dan Szymborski: I haven’t seen any performance changes

War2D2: Condolences for the loss of Mercutio as well. I lost my 17yo tux cat in 2019 and I still accidentally call both my dog and my new cat by his name.

Dan Szymborski: BRB

Dan Szymborski: Ok internet just went out so im on phone. This will be slower

JD Martin: has the widespread availability of AI tools helped ZiPS at all?

Dan Szymborski: Not really. It’s helped clean up some of my hamhanded visual basic code

Dan Szymborski: Zips is already more or less a supervised model

Tike Mrout: Are there any players that you think ZiPS is flat wrong about, but in ways that are difficult/impossible to fix within the model?

Dan Szymborski: This was a larger problem the first few years, but wringing put calibration issues has eliminated this as a big problem

Dan Szymborski: Year to year misses are uncorrelated, and I’ve found no common threads on large misses

Dan Szymborski: Which is too bad; I wish there were easy accuracy boosts out there to be found

Cats: Adding to the chorus of condolences here. It’s such a sad thing. Have you ever explained to us how you arrived at your cats’ names? Mercutio is an 80-grade name.

Dan Szymborski: No rhyme or reason really. I like historical and literary names

Dan Szymborski: I was going to name my sibling pair Antonio and prospero, but I thought that people who didn’t get the reference would think i gave that cat a random person name

Dan Szymborski: It’s weird to me when cats have common person names

Dan Szymborski: I know someone who has a cat Ed. That’s just so odd to my ears

Sir Nerdlington: Any idea how ABS will change the catching defensive value in zWAR? Do I need to start working with my kid on anti-framing and yoinking balls out of the zone?

Dan Szymborski: Probably not a huge amount in this sorta robot system

Dan Szymborski: Wish they just went to all robot location rather than this half measure

romorr: Phillies first, Dan? Where are the Orioles? Your bias isn’t showing.

Dan Szymborski: All random!

TameImp: Given that Gleyber Torres was only able to get 1 for $15mm last year, was his 2025 season bounce backy enough to get more bidders on board? Just seems like something in his profile that doesn’t excite teams.

Dan Szymborski: Hell get a better deal but nothing huge

Sir Nerdlington: The Cubs payroll is infuriating, but I’m trying to mature and give them the benefit of the doubt. Do you have any insight as to whether they’re spending considerably more than other teams on tech, FO staff (not scouts obv), amenities? Or is it just paying off the Hotel Zachary?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t. It’s one of the things least likely to be communicated to me.

Dan Szymborski: Teams are usually happy to talk shop with me, and everyone knows im not a reporter, but im still journalisty enough that there a limits on what’s shared

Patrick Kivlehan: What goes into the decisions regarding displaying “external” stats on Fangraphs? Thinking of the PitchingBot grades as a recent example, and wondering if something like SEAGER from BPro might make an appearance.

Dan Szymborski: That’s a question for Dave mostly! I’m sure price is a factor too

Mike: How do you do, zips for a team like the Twins who have maybe two guys in the bullpen, no first baseman, one catcher?

Dan Szymborski: I mean its mostly zips for the players currently associated with teams rather than actual team projections

Dan Szymborski: But that’s a pretty wordy article totle

Dan Szymborski: Uh oh I hot dog finger d a w about which nl west team is biggest threat to la

Dan Szymborski: I think in 2026 probably Arizona. Padres have a lot of pitching to find and limited payroll to do it

Dan Szymborski: Thank goodness, the internet’s back. I much prefer typing on a REAL computer.

Towson Marketplace: Thinking that Trent Grisham would be great get for Orioles… U in or out on him?

Dan Szymborski: He’d be interesting, but I’m not sure that he’d be a priority. If the Orioles want to spend money, I’d want a pitcher

Dan Szymborski: Is there anything even left at Towson Marketplace? Last I drove by I know PetSmart, and Ollies are there and Target

mmddyyyy: At what age do players stop getting faster?

Dan Szymborski: Very young

Tacoby Bellsbury: 1/30th of the way through, what’s the most surprising thing ZiPS has spit out so far?

Dan Szymborski: Well, the first ZiPS batch run, it projected 2000 hitters and named them all Zyhir Hope

Dan Szymborski: The Crawford projection is kinda weird in that ZiPS thinks he’s a very solid player right now, but basically has him plateauing at this level

Oaktown Blues: Which of the 2000 Zyhirs Hope had the most surprising projection to you?

Dan Szymborski: Well, the one in which Zyhir Hope projected to 7 point something WAR. That’s a lot for Hope

drplantwrench: do you have thoughts on the Angel’s coaching hires? are they doing something good for once?!

Dan Szymborski: Kind of a wait and see. I’m most optimistic abotu Keith Johnson

Insert Witty Name Here: Any ideas for a new cats name? I told my wife our next one is going to be Yoshinobu Yamamoto just because it’s so fun to say and I’m mostly looking forward to the Vet’s face when they hear it.

Dan Szymborski: I think Pet names are a personal thing!

Dan Szymborski: On that note, I have the next team ZiPS to finish for publication, so it’s time to go!

Dan Szymborski: I’ll see you all next time