Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat – 12/4/25

Dan Szymborski: And awaaaaay we go

Dan Szymborski: or, heeeeere we go

Lowetide: I noticed a ‘Wilbur Wood’ comp on the Marlins and am now looking forward to Robby Snelling’s career. How often does the Wood comp show up on these lists? He was unique.

Dan Szymborski: Not often, I don’t think

JT: Does Zips not care about optimal launch? Trying to figure out why it loves Michael Harris so much

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS does, but Harris is also still quite young, and *should* have higher BABIPs

War2D2: Hi Dan! What kind of contract does ZiPS see Imai getting? I’ve read everything from $135m to $200m. I’d love the Cubs to sign him, but sadly don’t see them even trying at either price.

Dan Szymborski: I don’t have it on hand, but definitely lower. ZiPS does not like any of the current NPB pitchers as much as it liked Yamamoto, Imanaga, or Sasaki

Guest: im mentioning ZiPs in a research paper and wondering what I should cite for it

Dan Szymborski: Depends on the context, but just my name and the name of the model is probably enough?

Guest: If you’re the Mets, would you prefer to trade for Pablo Lopez or Joe Ryan? Lopez will likely cost less in prospect capital and Twins might want to shed more payroll as well… curious to hear your thoughts!

Dan Szymborski: Mets advantage is money, so I thinkit makes sense to leverage it. I think Lopez is slightly higher upside anyway

War2D2: Food talk: My dad’s from LA, my grandma and cousins lived their whole lives there, I lived there for a year in the 90s in addition to bi-yearly visits throughout my childhood, my brother has lived there for the last 20 years, and for my entire family the official sandwich of LA is the pastrami from The Hat. I had no clue that the French dip was even a thing until you used it as a metaphor in a playoff article. I’m not saying you’re necessarily wrong, but given my LA bona fides I was dumbfounded when I read that.

Dan Szymborski: But I swear that I always associated french dip with LA! And double-checking, there was a LOT of talk about LA french dips

Dan Szymborski: LA’s a pretty big place, so there’s more than one thing

diddem: David Peterson’s Zips forecast is really good.  Why?:

Dan Szymborski: Can’t really say offhand!

Dan Szymborski: (I’m doing this from a place that I don’t have ZiPS)

Potato: Yankees and Red Sox currently looking up at the Jays, right? (Not just geographically)

Dan Szymborski: Probably, but only by a little

matt w: Is the +5 Def projection for Konnor Griffin +5 for a shortstop? If so, isn’t that pretty high for someone many people evaluate as a future outfielder? And can you send a request to the baseball gods to please let us have this?

Dan Szymborski: It is as a shortstop. The baseball gods don’t listen to me, however

I am the apple: How does ZiPS handle a comp who hasn’t finished playing?

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS will use the information for as long as it has the information, and then move towards the cohort when it doesn’t

Old No. 7: Are you a Winter Olympics guy? Comp for Lindsey Vonn in MLB?

Dan Szymborski: I enjoy the winter olympics, but not in any analytical way. It’s more surface level enjoyment, so I can’t claim to have much to offer for the question

Dan Szymborski: but I do like watching the complete events.

Dan Szymborski: on streaming

Dan Szymborski: I never really watch network coverage of Olympics – I’m interest in the competitions, not so much the people, and there’s too much of an American focus

Dan Szymborski: We were one of the families that actually got that Olympics Triplecast PPV for Barcelona in 1992

Jobo: Could a person “project” third-base coach send/success rates for an experienced coach based on a projected roster and schedule?

Dan Szymborski: I guess it’s possible, but it’s not something I’ve done or really, honeslty, given much thought to

Lowetide: The Padres have zero starting pitching. Will they run with Mason Miller as a starter, or invite the world’s sore arms (like the 1987 Montreal Expos) and hope to find Dennis Martinez and Pascual Perez?

Dan Szymborski: I assume they’re going to basically HAVE to take some low-cost fliers and roll the dice

Gerard: Do you see the orioles more likely signing an Imai, King, Suarez, Valdez, or trading for a top of rotation pitcher? Or perhaps both?

Dan Szymborski: I think a trade is more likely, though I’m more bullish on the O’s actually spending money than I was a few months ago

Reep: So Miami will be a serious Wild Card threat when the ink dries on the Schwarber and Alonso contracts?

Dan Szymborski: I think they’ll still be on the fringe.

Dan Szymborski: Unless you’re assuming that they GET Schwarber and Alonso

Ral Cipken: Is zips an Andy Pages believer or does it think he punched above his weight class this year?

Dan Szymborski: kinda in th emiddle

Paul Schaal: Has any player with contact/whiff rates like Spencer Jones’s ever had big league success? I just don’t see how he doesn’t wash out at this point?

Dan Szymborski: His contact rate is definitely shockingly low even in the minors

Dan Szymborski: Unfortunately, we don’t have a long history of contact rate in minors

Dan Szymborski: I’d definitely be curious to see Kris Bryant

Dan Szymborski: Strikeout rate itself isn’t as big a deal for a slugger as some think in the minor

Dan Szymborski: Simply because they’re incentivized to to be aggressive since they’re doing so well when they do actually win the hit-ball lottery

Dan Szymborski: But Jones contact rate is SO low I’m not sure he’ll adjust as well as some others

Jonathan: Should I be worried that Atlanta is just running it back again with two years of underachieving?

Dan Szymborski: Depends who you’re a fan of! I think it’s very possible Atlanta ends up the best team in the division, but there are a LOT more things that can go wrong, and more likely to, then a few years ago

Wireless Joe Jackson: I’ll trade you your Kindle for my sunglasses.  I know you have them – I’ve looked everywhere else.

GA Blood: One thing that regularly catches my eye when looking at the ZiPS articles are minor leaguers that I otherwise wouldn’t expect to get an opportunity for playing time in the coming season. Ian Lewis on the Marlins is an example. It seems like a significant portion of the data set it produces is for these types of guys. I know it’s playing time agnostic, but how do you QA that data if there isn’t a viable sample to compare it against?

Dan Szymborski: There isn’t a great way, unfortunately. Though usually guys projected well year in and year out DO eventually get chances in the end

Wireless Joe Jackson: If you were running the Twins, would you trade Ryan/Lopez/Buxton?   It doesn’t seem like they’re good enough to compete as-is and it doesn’t seem at all likely they’ll improve the team by spending any money.

Dan Szymborski: I wouldn’t have BEFORE, but I would NOW

Dan Szymborski: simply because I think the die is cast

Older than you: Is Cedric Mullins really an upgrade over the Rays growing pile of 1.0 to 1.5 win outfielders? Any ideas why this is how they would decide to spend $7M?

Dan Szymborski: I personally don’t think so

Guest: Thank you for ZIPS. And conversations. May 2025 be a positive in your rear view mirror, and 2026 offer love and peace. May your weight losses continue as planned, and

Dan Szymborski: It’s been going even better since i started GLP-1. I don’t care if it’s cheating!

Dan Szymborski: I really gained weight during the COVID era. Too few activities and too much doordash

Dan Szymborski: Even when I played sports, I was overweight, but then I got overweighter in college, with the beer:sports ratio changing and the overweighterer in covid

SALARY CAP: For you, what would be an appropriate salary cap and floor for the league?

Dan Szymborski: What the free parties agree to, honestly.

Dan Szymborski: I’d prefer no cap/floor and a proper revenue sharing that gives more money to COMPETITIVE small market teams.

Dan Szymborski: but I am neither a player or an owner, so I don’t have skin in the game

Dan Szymborski: I wrote a few years ago how *I* would do it as dictator of baseball

Dan Szymborski: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/mlbs-competitive-balance-tax-is-anything-b…

Dan Szymborski: Basically, I would give a small market team that wins 95 games a HUGE chunk of the revneue sharing pool and a small market team that wins 60 games *nothing* of it

mmddyyyy: At what age do babips project down?

Dan Szymborski: It tends to be a young player skill – whiel there are fast players with high or low BABIP, BABIPs very easily go downhille when the speed does

Wireless Joe Jackson: Thoughts on the Grayson Rodriguez trade?  Seems like an early favorite for Fangraphs commentariat most maligned off-season move.

Dan Szymborski: I hate the trade, but I think I hate it more that Grayson Rodriguez’s injuries have cost so much of his trade value that he could only fetch Taylor Ward than I do the trade itself, if that makes sense

Dan Szymborski: THough I personally would not have done the trade. I’d rather the gamble on the high-upside arm. Taylor Ward’s always going to be Taylor Ward

RH: Will there be projections for the WBC once rosters are out?

Dan Szymborski: I was thinking about doing that, but I haven’t realy decided

Old No. 7: If Brewers are fighting to make the playoffs and need a boost, do they call up Jesus Made this year?

Dan Szymborski: If he improves and hits like he did in A-ball in the high minors, they may need to call him up either way!

Philip: This is probably too messy for you to want to touch on, but there is lots of debate in the Skaggs trial about what his future earnings would be. This seems like something ZiPS could project pretty easily. Would you ever do a Time Warp for Skaggs?

Dan Szymborski: I admittedly shy away from doing Time Warps for players who die as it’s really hard to avoid being gauche. LIke I won’t do one for Fernandez or Taveras or Ventura. I still haven’t really gotten to the point where I’m comfortable doing Bostock or Munson

War2D2: Again, not saying you’re wrong about the French dip, this might just be a my-family thing. That said: next time you’re in LA, go to The Hat (there’s a few locations, though the one in Alhambra is the original) and get a pastrami. You won’t regret it.

Dan Szymborski: I do like a good pastrami. I have to remember to get one ready for opening day

Ral Cipken: Which GLP-1 is working for you? And this kind of cheating is okay!

Dan Szymborski: I’m doing compounded GLP-1 and injecting myself weekly. I’ve really liked it – it sends a pretty strong signal for me to not get carried away with eating or drinking

Paul Schaal: On the flip side of contact skills, is Arraez’s contact skill too good? He makes contact with everything, including pitches he has no chance of doing anything productive with.

Dan Szymborski: I think I did a piece on this!

Dan Szymborski: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/luis-arraez-has-entered-the-contact-rate-d…

mmddyyyy: They say the New York market could support another team. Where would you put the stadium?

Dan Szymborski: New Jersey

Guest: whats the order for the Zips projections release

Dan Szymborski: Random

mmddyyyy: How long have you been writing?

Dan Szymborski: On baseball on the web, since 2001. And I was active on usenet and de facto writing a lot on usenet going back to 1996

Seeforman: Your favourite Christmas carol? And ZIPS’ favourite carol?

Dan Szymborski: I tend to like older, more traditional carols lke the coventry carol. I especially like ones that have more folk song-esque origins

Dan Szymborski: I’m an agnostic, so I don’t *directly* connect with CHristmas on that level. FOr us growing up, it was always a party holiday

Dan Szymborski: Weirdly, for a non-religious person, I probably am in the 99th percentile of ownership of albums of religious music, thanks to classical music. I have something like 73 individual requiems, I think

Dan Szymborski: I enjoy listening to Berlioz’s L’enfance du Christ this time of the year, but mostly because I enjoy the piece

Dan Szymborski: I do enjoy one of Alan Menken’s least successful musicals, A Christmas Carol, and usually listen to it once this time of year, typically after I pick up mom and we drive to my sister’s

Dan Szymborski: Jacob Marley’s song is great fun

Max: Would you ever do articles about running ZIPS on historical teams, then comparing that to actual performance? I’m fascinated by alternate histories.

Dan Szymborski: Ihaven’t, but it’s something to consider

Guest: If you’re the Orioles are you in on Schwarber?  I’ve seen some fans clamor for him but I’m not really all that convinced unless we move some players.  It feels like the Orioles should be locking up pitchers instead.

Dan Szymborski: Schwarber is great fun, but other teams have more of a need

Darren: I know this is not your department, but if you add up the FLD projections for all players in the Depth Charts which I think is Steamer you get -1506….seems a bit off

Dan Szymborski: That seems odd

Mooser: Steamer seems to like Cody Ponce…what does Zips say?

Dan Szymborski: A bit less excited

12 to 6: Cole’s in Los Angeles claimed to have invented the French Dip (and its a good one) and has been around for over a century. French Dip culture is indeed a thing among the sandwich cognoscenti on the west coast.

Dan Szymborski: It’s good to know I’m not losing my mind. At least on this subject

mmddyyyy: How many players would you guess will still be on the same roster in 2035?

Dan Szymborski: I dunno…5?

Guest: have you been keeping up with the reddit marble race

Dan Szymborski: I have not

Guest: You’re running an expansion team and can select any 26 current free agents. The rest of your org is generic AA caliber players. How many wins are you expecting?

Dan Szymborski: 81-81?

Dan Szymborski: I’ll have some stars and a really good pitching stuff, but my outfield and 2B will have issues, my catcher will be old, and injuries could wreck things if I can only take 26

2 Cents: Not cheating. I am not a doctor, and obviously obesity is not schizophrenia, but from a patient perspective, i don’t see a substantial difference between anti-schizophrenic medication and medication that blocks food noise.

Dan Szymborski: The thing is, I don’t think that the compulsion is as strong. It really is discipline with me; I don’t have an addiction to food or drink, so much as I hadn’t had really any hugely negative outcomes

Dan Szymborski: My blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar are also basically normal, so it’s seemed less urgent. But as I approach 50, I’m trying to be more reponsible and think long-term with my health

Dan Szymborski: Since I’m simply going to decline from here on out, I need to start taking care of these issues *before* they happen

Dan Szymborski: I’d like to have 30 more years where I can get a lot of good work done, and once my brain starts to really start to fade, I hope for a relatively quick end at tha tpoint

Thomas: What do you expect out of Jordan Walker next year?

Dan Szymborski: little

Max: Most surprising transaction this offseason? I know, its early.

Dan Szymborski: I was actually surprised Cease got THAT much

Dan Szymborski: even with the deferred money bringing it down

mmddyyyy: How many people are in the chat right now?

Dan Szymborski: THis has been a relatively small chat, it peaked at around 150

Guest: How confident are you that Schwellenbach will be able to pick up where he left off before his weird injury?

Dan Szymborski: Mild-to-moderate

Rob: The French Dip was invented in LA, either at Phillipe’s or Cole’s (both claimed it) and Phillipe’s is still operating. But if you do get a Pastrami sandwich in LA, you have to get the one at Langer’s. A NYT food critic even said that it was better than any pastrami in NYC.

Dan Szymborski: I did have a Langer’s from Goldbelly – my sister got me a year of sandwiches a few CHristmases ago

Dan Szymborski: was delighted to get a roast pork from John’s Roast Pork. I already was well familiar with their roast pork, but it had been awhile since I had been in Philly

Dan Szymborski: I like Dalessandro’s for cheesesteak

Guest: There should be a team in Hartford  to bleed some fans from Boston as well as the NY teams. Is Vegas too far to do the same to the LA teams?

Dan Szymborski: I think Vegas is too far

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think the A’s will do that well in Vegas. Baseball isn’t an EVENT sport in the way football is

Be Better: When a team like the Pirates say they will be aggressive in the offseason, after the laughter subsides, how should we think about that? I mean, given your Zips projections, does adding 20mil to that roster really matter? Would 50?

Dan Szymborski: It COULD in the right areas

Dan Szymborski: I’d rather the Pirates spend $30 million a year on one dude

Dan Szymborski: than $6 million each on five random veterans

GA Blood: Gotta go with Staten Island for a 3rd NYC team to maximize the obnoxiousness

Dan Szymborski: I am a fan of trolling

Dan Szymborski: we did have a fun staten island even back in 2016

Dan Szymborski: I was still with ESPN, and the staten island yankees did a sabermetrics day, and David brought the whole FG crowd in

War2D2: re: A Christmas Carol: What has become a tradition for me is to listen to the audio book of Hugh Grant’s reading of it on Christmas Eve as I put out the presents for the kids. It’s like 2hrs long. I highly recommend it.

Little known fact: Dickens’ original title was “A Tale of Two Sandwiches” and was, in fact, about Los Angeles.

New UK fan: Re the 26 current free agents question: Is your 26th free agent a 6th starter or the fourth man on your bench?

Dan Szymborski: Would probably be a starter

John B: You said zips had a mix of bwar and fwar in the past.  Is it still 50-50 or is it moving towards one or the other metrics?

Dan Szymborski: It’s still conceptually in the middle. I’ve done a lot of work in modeling ERA/FIP/team D interactions, and ZiPS will still give a player some credit if they ERA below D for long enough

Idiotic Failson: I was just reading that AZ was looking at Pete Fairbanks, and that sort of tangentially mentioned that Lawlar was blocked in the infield. That got me to looking at their rotation and…woof…could the Yankees pry Lawlar away with some combination of Schlittler/Volpe/some other parts?

Dan Szymborski: I think Arizona will ask for a LOT

Idiotic Failson: If they put a team in Staten Island I hope Arte Moreno buys it and calls it the New York Angels of Staten Island

Dan Szymborski: The New York Angels of Anaheim of Staten Island

War2D2: I just turned 50 in September. I don’t have a need for GLP-1, but I was in awful physical condition for a guy that  used to be relatively athletic vs. my peers. I joined a gym this year, and I have to say that I strongly recommend it. I’ve had issues in the past with not really committing, but something about hitting a half century made me more serious about it. Plus, with age comes discipline, and waking in with the knowledge that “yeah, the next 60min will suck, but then it’ll be over and my back won’t hurt when I get out of bed in the morning” is a huge motivator.

Dan Szymborski: Yeah, the problem is that I’ve never really been really incentivized to keep weight down

Dan Szymborski: I’ve always had a strong build with it as I got it from my dad (he was 6’5, 230 pounds of muscle, and was in the navy)

Dan Szymborski: Even as a kid who played for the travel team in little league at 2B, I was a bit overweight for my age and never fast. I was good defensively because I had very good reflexes and heedlessly charged into every hit ball

Dan Szymborski: I took a LOT of bad hops right into the face, a couple that ended up in profuse nosebleeds that I happily wiped with great pride at the time. I have a tendency to get WAY too competitive and I was in playing baseball.

Dan Szymborski: I was never a fast runner, my hip was damaged during childbirth and the rotation is weird, but the repair would have been traumatic at the time. Also, my parents were supposed to keep an eye on that, and my goddamn mom apparently forget about it, and only got around to telling me I had been supposed to be keeping an eye on my hip, after I mentioned my hip was bothering me at age *38*

Dan Szymborski: Which has made me very suspicious about what other health things I was supposed to keep track of but she spaced out on

John B: Can i assume AI tools will make pulling data out of your model exponentially better?  How will we see it ?

Dan Szymborski: For working, I only use AI tools to double check my visual basic code since I’m an awkward coder

Dan Szymborski: I use AI for what I believe is it’s best purpose: batshit insanity

Dan Szymborski: https://x.com/i/status/1996458784928268779

John B: Ive asked before but a Zips version of Baseball Trade Values would be AWESOME

Dan Szymborski: It’s sometime I’ve always thought about tinkering with

War2D2: Yeah I’m 6’5” and paid my own way through college by working construction and literally digging ditches, so I USED to be 230lb of muscle. Now I’m like 280lb of veal and visceral fat.

Ral Cipken: Is this the year that Jackson Chourio becomes Acuna lite?

Dan Szymborski: Probably not

Idiotic Failson: You going to watch the world cup?

Dan Szymborski: No, I just never really understood association football

Dan Szymborski: I tend to like sports that I enjoyed playing as a kid

Dan Szymborski: and I *hated* playing soccer

Dan Szymborski: There’s too high a ratio of running to getting to do stuff

mmddyyyy: Do you do any kind of fitness tracking?

Dan Szymborski: No. I’m trying to lose weight in ways that don’t require a lot of clerical work, because I’d eventually get lax with clerical work

Dan Szymborski: “Dont’ eat every other day, inject yourself with something once a week, and walk where it’s feasible” is a pretty easy gameplay loop to get down

J: The French dip is definitely an l.a. thing and for what’s it worth while great, there are no “the hat” locations in los angeles proper.

fanoftheman: if you were writing a Cooperstown Casebook-style book about underappreciated baseball statisticians, who would be at the top of the list?

Dan Szymborski: Sherri Nichols

Dan Szymborski: on that note, time for me to head out for another week, before you guys tempt me to get a sandwich on a non-eating day