Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat – 11/21/24

Dan Szymborski: Welcome!

Dan Szymborski: Since it decided not to post in the queue for some reason at 11:40 and I had to force it at 11:57, there’s no queue built up, so feel free to ask any question, no matter how ridiculous

Dan Szymborski: And there’s a good chance I’ll be able to answer it, since asking me about how I evaluate pretzels or how many weird AIs I’ve made of Lindsey Graham is way better than awkward silence

Kate: Would Grant Holmes projection be worse if he was projected in the rotation?  In terms of how ZiPS projects his role, is that something you do manually?

Dan Szymborski: As a default, ZiPS will project a player based on their recent usage. It looks at the last four years and VERY heavily weights recent play.

Dan Szymborski: However, I have clickboxes for “full-time starter” or “full-time reliever” which will cause ZiPS to go back and translate the past baselines for a pitcher into full-time starter or full-time reliever lines, and then make a new projections

Dan Szymborski: Err, by default, it goes by the current player’s use

Dan Szymborski:

Kate: What should we make of Reynaldo Lopez and Strider having the same ERA projection?  Seems like ZiPS is buying what Reynaldo is selling?

Dan Szymborski: Not too much, mostly coincidence! Strider’s better, but there’s more risk

Dan Szymborski: Lopez really showed that he’s a solid starting pitcher, though I don’t know if you can really expect 180 innings out of him or anything

Chris: Would the Red Sox entertain trading Trevor Story to ATL in a similar salary dump like the Chris Sale trade? Or do the optics of his comeback make that unlikely

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think it’s entirely crazy. The REd Sox have done a lot of things that aren’t great optics!

David Stearns: Chances Lindor ends up the best shortstop ever once his career is over?

Dan Szymborski: Fairly low. Now, his best chance, of course, will be the best shortstop AS a shortstop, so that you can push out Wagner from a third of his career (and then knock him down a few pegs playing pre-integration)

Dan Szymborski: A-Rod for the same reason (well, nto the integration part)

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS has him finishing about 15 WAR behind Ripken though, so his stardom will have to linger longer than expected

Joe: Is it realistic to think the Orioles can improve their roster from last year, given that they need to re-sign or replace Burnes and Santander just to maintain?

Dan Szymborski: They *could* but I’m not sure they’ll shell out the kind of cash to make the team BETTER on paper

Dan Szymborski: I expect the O’s, long-term, even with a presumably better owner, will go more then Mariners .540 route.

Dan Szymborski: But maybe I’m wrong? The proof of the pudding is in the eating

Idiotic Failson: I would like to speak to your manager. I find it wholly unacceptable that the Yankees have not signed Soto yet.

Dan Szymborski: While it’s a joke, I had actual Reds fans loudly demand the Reds fire me for my 2021 ROY vote, as little sense as that makes on so many levels.

Idiotic Failson: What does ZIPS want to give Anthony Rizzo for a contract?

Dan Szymborski: Projecting Rizzo in a neutral park, ZiPS would offer one-year, $3.4 million.

Dan Szymborski: Let’s just say…ZiPS isn’t particularly optimistic

Old dude swap: Jays send Springer + Barger to STL for Arenado. STL pays down Arenado to equal Springer total $. Who says no?

Dan Szymborski: Meh. I see the benefit for the Jays but not so much the Cards.

Ross: How do you think it’s best to use / consume the player comps ZiPS spits out?  The Danny Tartabull and Brian Giles comps for Michael Arroyo really caught my eye.

Dan Szymborski: For fun. They’re the marginally best comps in a massive group of similar players

Dan Szymborski: Keep in mind that unless I linked the wrong one, it’s not the Brian Giles you want

cm: How come no struggling American minor league player has never attempted to adopt a Japanese batting style?  Given the success of Japanese players, you would think even mediocre players might give it a try.

Dan Szymborski: I think it’s for the same reason that you didn’t have a lot of guys actually able to inside out a medium hit against the shift: professional baseball is so competitive that it’s hard to succeed with your second-best approach

Dan Szymborski: And you don’t really have the hitting coaches to aid hitters with that approach

Hi Dan: Whether or not this gets posted just want to say I appreciate all the team write-ups for ZiPS!

Dan Szymborski: I appreciate you guys reading! After all, it’s your eyeballs or wallets that enable me to do ZiPS stuff publicly

Refugee: How many games does a replacement level team win? I’ve seen the number hover between 45-50, but I’m not sure how analysts calculate this number.

Dan Szymborski: 47.6 wins. Basically, FG/BR had different ideas, so there was a meeting and they decided to unite the replacement levels at a level so there were 1000 WAR per season

Dan Szymborski: This may seem weird, but INTERPRETABILITY of WAR is actually as important as strict accuracy

Dan Szymborski: We’re not building rocket ships, and the underlying stat being stable as to the denominator is more useful than trying to figure out if 47 or 49 or 53 wins is “ideal”

Luke: What do you think about the Rays acquiring all of these low slot release pitchers at last season’s trade deadline? The Tanner Houck profile. Is their stats to back up that low slot releases are effective keeping ball in the park ?

Dan Szymborski: Because sidearmliness is next to godliness!

Cromulent: As we head into free agent season, what does ZIPS think are the worst contracts already on the books?

Dan Szymborski: (I actually haven’t really studied slot and HR vs. peripherals with any depth)

Dan Szymborski: I haven’t done a detailed rundown of this

Dan Szymborski: but I’m pretty confident that Bryant is up there. Rendon too. And sadly, Strasburg (it’s not his fault, of course, but from a contract standpoint, the Nats are not overjoyed by the situation)

LB: So how bananas is Kristian Campbells projection and is it better then Langfords was last season?

Dan Szymborski: Just regular bananas. You can get a banana, but you can’t get the Gob special frozen banan

Serious only: It’s really cold, which of your cats is the warmest and are they available?

Dan Szymborski: Justinian’s the only good option of the four.

Dan Szymborski: He’s not the biggest or warmest, but he’ll sit on your lap and stay there

Dan Szymborski: His brother is Constantine is chonkier, but he also will tend to continually get up and reposition and he’s a much moodier cat. Mercutio has good bulk but he’s always been an awful groomer so he’s not as niceiiii to have on your lap as Justinian. Cassiopeia only really goes on your lap to have your undivided attention to her demands of meow.

Jackson: Rosenthal just reported that the Cubs want to trade Bellinger. Would the Cubs be likely to eat any of his contract to get a deal done? Does he have any real value otherwise?

Dan Szymborski: I imagine they’d eat some.

Guest: Does ZiPS have a way of sussing out if poor performance was due to playing through injury? Some combination of player results where ZiPS can say it was more likely due to injury than actual decline or random variation?

Dan Szymborski: When there were discrete injuries with missed time, ZiPS is aware of them, though the precision is limited

Dan Szymborski: it doesn’t know if someone played through an injury

Gray: How much of a chance do you think Felix has to stay on the ballot for a second year?

Dan Szymborski: 50/50

Dan Szymborski: Santana getting so little consideration is a bad sign for King Felix, but the ballot isn’t quite as clogged as it was back then and the voter base is a bit more modern

Dan Szymborski: remember, when Santana was voted on, NONE of the internet-only or internet-mostly writers had 10 years in the BBWAA

Dan Szymborski: Or a few, I forget the exact year Santana was

Dan Szymborski: The BBWAA only started allowing internet writers to join in 2007

Dan Szymborski: Next year is a pretty big sea change for the Hall ballot

Dan Szymborski: If none of the current writers from the Class of 2016 die or abandon their membership in 2025, there are something like *80* new voters next year

Dan Szymborski: Including 26 MLB.com writers. That was the year they started allowing MLB.com writers to join

Dan Szymborski: include me and Jeff Z.

Dan Szymborski: Some of the writers who get votes next year: Apstein, Bastian, Mark Bowman, Maury Brown, Callis, Casavell, Castrovince, Footer, Ghiroli, Harding, Hoch, Karabell, Langosch, Mayo, McTaggart, Melewski, Meoli, Merkin, Doug/Bryce Miller, Nicholson-Smith, Petriello, Jesse Sanchez, Sheldon, Eric Stephen, Szymborski, Zolecki, Zimmerman

West Texas Lizard: Who are some first-year Hall of Fame nomineees that you want to see survive the 5% cutoff and stay in the conversation?

Dan Szymborski: King FElix! I like when the previous question answers the next question!

Dan Szymborski: I’m not going to get away with it that easily am I/

Dan Szymborski: Pedroia/Kinsler

Guest: Are the Phillies legitimately interested in Juan Soto or are they just trying to drive up the price the Yankees and Mets will have to pay?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think it’s preposterous, though I don’t think they’d be one of the top contenders

TJ: So Harris gets a 108 ops+ last year, puts up a 97 wRC+ irl with basically identical secondary markers (I guess his BABIP was a little lower), and the projection jumps 15 points to a 123? Am I missing something?

Dan Szymborski: You might be missing something, but so am I. I was legitimately surprised by it, to the extent I re-checked it. But then I saw that Steamer was predicting something similar

Dan Szymborski: So you may be missing something, but I don’t quite know what it is. It can’t just be age; ZiPS knows that the improvement rate of already-star players when young isn’t that high

Gray: Do you think the BBWAA will switch to digital ballots for HOF voting anytime soon?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t see why we couldn’t

Dan Szymborski: The year-end ballots are digital

West Texas Lizard: Who was the best defender in baseball that didn’t receive a Fielding Bible award or Gold Glove this season?

Dan Szymborski: Hmm

Dan Szymborski: Lindor?

Dan Szymborski: Crow-Armstrong?

Anon: Detroit going to do anything this offseason? Any sort of challenge/bad contract swap ideas for Javy?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t know if they WILL be, but I could imagine the Tigers dipping their toes into the second tier FAs

David: Which Free Agent do you think the Mariners end up with? None is a viable answer.

Dan Szymborski: I think they’ll get a third tier OF and reliever, but I don’t see more than that

War2d2: I’m depressed about the Cubs’ management running them like a small-market team. I didn’t think they’d try for Soto or Burnes, but I thought they’d at least make a run at Fried. They’re signaling through the media they’re more likely to max out at Eovaldi. As sad as it makes me to ask, what do you think the Cubs’ best moves to make on the margins are? Assuming their tightwad owners won’t let them anywhere near the luxury tax.

Dan Szymborski: Did they categorically state no Fried? I would have thought they’d be in the mix

Dan Szymborski: I do think there’s payroll upside for the Cubs, but I think ownership won’t really explore it until the team is probably an 85-90 win team without the additions

David: Whats the ZIPS projection on Austin Shenton? Assuming it would just have him as a first baseman.

Dan Szymborski: OH right, is that you who asked on Blue Sky oN Twitter? Someone did and I totally forgot to follow-up

Dan Szymborski: REopening ZiPS, but give me a few minutes

Idiotic Failson: I’ve seen this question asked/answered several different places, I’m interested in your take. Is it better to sign Soto and consolidate his WAR in one position, or spend a similar amount of money on say…Bregman and another player or two for similar WAR spread across players?

Dan Szymborski: It depends on the team. For a team that’s generally competent most places but unspectacular? Like the Mariners? Soto. For a team that has a couple highlights and some BIG holes, then there’s a case for spreading it around more. Note that the Mariners will not sign Juan Soto

Scotty: Does ZIPs ever predict a mediocre starting pitcher to be an elite reliever? Or is more conservative and assumes that transitions to the pen make them better (usually) but doesn’t predict big breakouts that way?

Dan Szymborski: If you give me a sec, I’ll tell you. Gonna filter for best projected relief ERAs for a guy with an ERA+ of 90 or below

Dan Szymborski: the best projected ERA+ as a reliever for a guy at 90 or below are Keaton Winn (125), Joe Boyle (123), Hayden Birdsong (112), Luis Patino (112), Dane Dunning (106), Spencer Howard (106)

Dan Szymborski: Now, the guys with the most overall ERA imrpovement projected as a reliever

Dan Szymborski: are Dustin May, Hunter Greene, Garrett Crochet, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Drew Rasmussen, Matt Boyd, Tyler Glasnow, Yariel Rodriguez, Packy Naughton, Keaton Winn, Blake Snell

Dan Szymborski: Oh, and David, Austin SHenton projects at .221/.308/.387 with a 102 OPS+ and 0.9 WAR as a 1B in 436 assumed PA

Tyler: What do you think about bregman to the brewers or tigers

Dan Szymborski: II’m not sure he’s really ideal for Tigers and I can’t see the Brewers going after him, even if that’s a good fit (which I think i tis)

Dan Szymborski: Now one team I think could go after him strongly is the Nationals, who have made some noise about spending more money

Sirras: I led my office’s fundraiser for a charity. We raised $35k for a charity benefitting sick children. How many WARE (wins above replacement employee) is that worth? Note that WARE heavily weights bringing in new business and minimizing fees but does have some factor for culture.

Dan Szymborski: I think we need to know how many of you there are

Dan Szymborski: And how much data there is on a replacement level fundraiser

Dan Szymborski: I can think of many cruel ways to get data on this

Dan Szymborski: LIke have two girl scout troops raising money side by side in the same location. One has cookies, the other does not

bbtm8: Hi Dan, I appreciated your article on NL ROY. I was surprised to see you lean so heavily on narrative reasoning. When voting on ROY, 1) how much do you consider WAA to show, as a commenter put it, “who was more awesome” vs. “who had more WAR”, especially given different debut dates for rookies? And 2) Do you consider non context neutral stats such as WPA or RE24?

Dan Szymborski: I consider WAA more heavily for careers than for single seasons

Dan Szymborski: One of the things abotu know how to use stats is that you also need to know the limitations of the tools

Dan Szymborski: and I didn’t feel that our generalized tools could decide a question like this very well, given the differences

Chris: Does ZIPS have a projection for sasaki next year?

Dan Szymborski: I haven’t run it yet

Dan Szymborski: I should have already, but the thing is, Dan at 46 remembers his mental to-do list much more sporadically than Dan at 26 did

West Texas Lizard: You’re a brilliant guy. I love to hear unpopular opinions. Give me a reason why Oliver Marmol earned a third-place vote for National League Manager of the Year.

Dan Szymborski: I mean, he kept teh team from murdering each other after 2023? That’s something? And if part of the job is figuring out how to keep the job, he did a damn good job after 2023

Billy: Just putting this out there… and I know you haven’t run the Rangers and Astros projections yet… if the Mariners had a healthy Alex Bregman for 150 plus games at third base would they be the favorite in the AL west?

Dan Szymborski: I think it would pretty close between Astros and M’s, but I don’t have confidence it makes them the clear FAVORITE

Guest: Who will end up up with a better career Betts or Judge?

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS says Betts by a hair. Both are projected to finish top 10 in JAWS among RF

Idiotic Failson: If you could throw 115 mph would you ever have to learn a secondary pitch, or is that velocity enough to get hitters out with even modest command?

Dan Szymborski: I think I’d need a secondary pitcher after my shoulder was obliterated

Syndergaardengnomes: JD Martinez going to retire?  His second half was rough last year, but the underlying metrics were still pretty strong…

Dan Szymborski: As far as I know, he intends to keep playing

bbtm8: Would you trade ZiPS in exchange for the Skyline Chili empire?

Dan Szymborski: Absolutely. Unless I have to then eat the chili every meal for the rest of my life

Dan Szymborski: But I could sell Skyline’s assets for more than I could sell ZiPS for

CR: What does Zips think of Willson Contreras at 1B? And how bad will the Cardinals be next year when they are done dealing everyone away but their failed prospects.

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS projection for Contreras as 1B is .239/.342/.418, 112 OPS+, 1.6 WAR in 399 PA

Kevin: Can you remind me how the player comps in the ZiPS projections work? In the Braves’ ZIPS, for example, Raisel Iglesias is comped to Mariano Rivera and Bobby Howry, two relievers with completely different career outcomes.

Dan Szymborski: They’re recent past focused

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS calculates a baseline for a player based on their recent history

Dan Szymborski: and then compares it to every other recent history baseline for every plaeyr in the database

Dan Szymborski: which is like 180,000 hitters

Dan Szymborski: What matters a decade ago doesn’t really matter

Dan Szymborski: err what happened a decade ago doesn’t really matter

Dan Szymborski: and we’re using the cohort to help us predict the future, so we can’t USE The future to predict that!

Reno: Thoughts on new Hearthstone buffs/ nerfs?

Dan Szymborski: Haven’t looked at he m yet!

Guest: Jackson Merrill had a great rookie year – I doubt anyone saw that amount of success coming last year.  Was his season strong enough that it feel outside of ZiPS’ range of outcomes (like was his season more than 100% percentile)?  How often do you get a season that’s so good/bad that the percentile falls above 100% or below 0%?

Dan Szymborski: OK, last question (I don’t want you guys to have to type out more that I can’t get to while I’m opening this)

Dan Szymborski: 96th percentile for OPS+

Dan Szymborski: On that note, time for me take off for another week!

Dan Szymborski: Thanks for coming!