Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat – 3/13/25

Dan Szymborski: It’s a chat!

Dan Szymborski: It’s a chat!

PCA: PCA breakout potential? This year’s Elly De La Cruz?

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS at least loves him

PCA: Savant shows both slurve and sweeper as unique pitches. This is MADNESS.

Dan Szymborski: I think there’s serious daylight between them

Datt Mamon: This season and long-term: Westburg or Vientos?

Dan Szymborski: I mildly prefer Westburg, but I’ve always liked him and there may be some mild favoritism

Pope Formosus: Assuming that I’m correct in understanding WPA as an essentially a random product of sequencing, what were the odds of the White Sox offense and bullpen both putting up the worst single season collective unit WPAs in known MLB history (since 1974)? Like they have to be near infinitesimal, right? Even if it seems logical that bad teams would experience more negative WPA events, the bullpen wasn’t even the worst unit in the league.

Dan Szymborski: I mean, it’s not TOTALLY random. It’s just that the randomness creaets a lot of noise

Dan Szymborski: If ALL you had was WPA to evaluate teams and players, you wouldn’t really do an awful job

Dan Szymborski: Ohtani-Judge-Soto were top three in 2024. Brandon Drury, Tim Anderson, Orlando Arcia were bottom three

David Stearns: How many games have the Mets dropped in their projections due to all the injuries? Same question for the Yankees.

Dan Szymborski: The Yankees dropped 2.7 wins in ZiPS after Cole injury

Dan Szymborski: (the Stanton effect is relatively small)

Dan Szymborski: I haven’t measured the Mets specifically, but Alvarez–>Torrens is a killer

Crates: How does ZiPS project context-dependent stats like R and RBI?  Is it just performance in previous years by similar players, or does ZiPS know something about the lineup quality?  I’m assuming it doesn’t know specific things like “Soto bats in front of Alonso” and so we should mentally bump up Alonso’s RBI projection, yes?

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS know vaguely the lineup quality, and your assumption is correct

Dan Szymborski: RBI is quite a model-able thing

Dan Szymborski: If you can project HR, AVG, SLG, and AB with RoB, you can model RBI quite well

Dan Szymborski: (that’s an r^2 of 0.914)

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS RBI *ought* to be improved this year as I’m explicitly projecting AB with RoB roughly now

RAGBRAI: After the big jump in SB in 2023, it somewhat leveled off with an increase of just over 100 last year.  Do you seeing it stay at about the same level as last year, an increase or a market correction to lower levels?

Dan Szymborski: I think about the same

Adam: The Rays just officially pulled out of their stadium deal. What happens now?

Dan Szymborski: they try and re-push to pay less and broadly make veiled threats. The usual stadium shit

Wrights_Back: McNeil down for a time.    Met fans are  learning the value of Stearn’s “flexible rosters.’

Jack’s Back?: Zips seems bullish on Jack Suwinski. Are you?

Dan Szymborski: Decently so

mmddyyyy: Player height measurements are better now, are weights better too?

Dan Szymborski: Probably, but I’m not sure

Dan Szymborski: Kruk was listed for a long time during his career at 5-10, 170, which is some funny crap

Well-Beered Englishman: If you had to take an MLB GM job tomorrow, which jobs would you most and least want to step into?

Dan Szymborski: Reds because I wouldn’t have to move

Dan Szymborski: Athletics because I simply would not work with John Fisher

Dan Szymborski: Not that anyone’s asked me to be their GM

dfpfromchicago: Hi – total newbee here.  I’m kind of excited about Jack Leiter in my mixed 10 team pts league.  Is it smart to drop Robbie Ray for him? Walker Buehler?

Dan Szymborski: That’s a bit premature unless you have keepers

Insert Witty Name Here: Does anyone know why Elly stopped his torrid SB pace in the 2H last year?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t remember specifically, but there’s a common pattern in which once guys are crushing the ball, teams will pull back on the stolen bases a bit

Dan Szymborski: Ohtani’s use was fairly unusual

ZiPS enjoyer: Hey Dan, big fan of your projections. Are there any “ideal world” type modifications you would make to ZiPS that just arent feasible right now, whether that’s because of complexity or computing power?

Dan Szymborski: I’d LOVE to be able to run it every day and have it be more automated

Guest: just curious why ZiPS doesn’t project QS or holds?

Dan Szymborski: Holds and saves are so situational that I’ve avoided it because there have been bigger fish to fry

Dan Szymborski: though the final preaseason ZiPS *will* have saves

Dan Szymborski: I’m always working on things with ZiPS and I’m growing increasingly aware of the clock.

Dan Szymborski: I’m probably now in the second half of the time I have to work on the ZiPS project

Dan Szymborski: At 46, I already feel that I’m not as computationally sharp as I was when I created ZiPS initially

Dan Szymborski: That’s not the near future, but there will come a day when I can no longer usefully improve/add things to ZiPS

Dan Szymborski: Unless I die suddenly, which has the same effect.

Crates: How embarrassing is it for all the mid-market non-spending wild-card-contending teams to watch the A’s extend their young stars

Dan Szymborski: I mean, the A’s are only getting their payroll UP TO embarrassing

Dan Szymborski: When I lost 17 pounds in my first month of dieting last year, nobody could have been shamed by that. I was able to lose 17 pounds by having a boatload of pounds to begin with

Crates: Over/under on how many of the current crop of young studs the O’s ever extend: 0.5

Dan Szymborski: Over. I think they’ll sign one at least

Frank Thomas the Tank Engine: Which ZiPS projections caused you to do a double take this year? Which one was the craziest because it was a screw up, and which one was real but most surprising?

Dan Szymborski: The Cubs offense generally

Frank Thomas the Tank Engine: According to ZiPS, which remaining free agent has the highest projected WAR?

Dan Szymborski: Barry Bonds

Dan Szymborski: (kidding)

Dan Szymborski: Verdugo maybe?

Devil Ray Jay Johnson: Do the A’s actually move to Vegas in the next five years, or do they get stuck in limbo (also known as Sacramento)?

Dan Szymborski: I think they will

mmddyyyy: Does the league keep talking about the CBA unprompted?

Dan Szymborski: Probably

Quarantino Martinez: Are the Rays going to fix Joe Boyle? Not like a pet, like a pitcher.

Dan Szymborski: I hope so!

y: is zips going to add bat speed, exit velo, stuff+. seems like low hanging fruit well correlated to success

Dan Szymborski: I’ve had lots of this stuff in ZiPS for a while

Dan Szymborski: Not bat speed, simply because the data is still relatively new, and it seems a lot of this has been captured indirectly

War2d2: re: The Rays, do you think at any point the league will try to “Frank McCourt” Sternberg over the stadium mess? It seems like he’s getting enough negative press that they might be getting tired of him. I don’t think they necessarily disprove of the methods, so much as they don’t want the scrutiny.

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think MLB thinks teams getting bad press for extorting stadium deals is a big negative

Dan Szymborski: The question is if the Rays become embarrassing enough for NON payroll/stadium issues

Dan Szymborski: And even then, who knows. They didn’t McCourt the Wilpons

Dan Szymborski: This is a good excuse to post this oldie that I made like a decad ago

Dan Szymborski:

Dan Szymborski: A real deep dive that will only interest Baltimore people

Dan Szymborski: Frank McCourt’s ex-sife, Jamie McCourt, is Jack Luskin’s daughter. Yes, THAT Luskin.

Guest: Do you know which player ZiPS is most certain about (smallest standard deviation)?

Dan Szymborski: not offhand

Guest: Sorry if this may have been asked before, but does ZiPS have any issues or difficulties with projecting “Quad-A” type players?

Dan Szymborski: No. Not that some won’t miss, but a similar number of established major leaguers of similar ages also suck going forward

Dan Szymborski: Like yeah, David McCarty’s exist, but so do Carlos Baergii

Well-Beered Englishman: Reds GM would also be a cushy gig because you’d be praised for simply not acquiring more infielders.

Dan Szymborski: But it would be bad for the Skyline team sponsorship and I still get the occasional hate DM from someone still angry I didn’t vote for Jonathan India in 2021

ZiP It: For the ZiPS Top 100, how “close” are #100, #101, #150 and #200 in terms of predicted production? And just for fun, who are numbers 101, 150, and 200?

Dan Szymborski: fairly close and it gets really close past 200 or so

Dan Szymborski: Christian Moore was 101, Hao-Yu Lee was 150, Ralphy Velazquez was 200, Tirso Ornelas was 250, Blake Dunn was 300, Ben Peoples was 350, and Justin Riemer was 400

Insert Witty Name Here: What data would Baseball Idiot Savant collect?

Dan Szymborski: all non playing facts of players? Like track the cheesesteak record

Frank Thomas the Tank Engine: Dan, give me something, anything, positive about a White Sox player

Dan Szymborski: Andrew Benintendi has never revived mercantilism on a national scale.

Frank Thomas the Tank Engine: How will the tariffs work on the Blue Jays? Each time the Blue Jays score, it will count as 1.25 runs, right? And for the U.S. teams, each score only counts for 0.75 runs, right?

Dan Szymborski: 25% of their wins are divided among the rest of the league after April 1st

Ceddy B Ready: y0, homeslice, can you give me a concise explanation of how ZIPS projects someone playing a new primary position. Joey Ortiz for instance moving his glove to SS for 2025.

Dan Szymborski: I have a whole model for that

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS can project any player at any position

Dan Szymborski: it uses real defensive measurements at a position, implied (defensive measurements at other position), and some other things. For example, there’s *some* correlation between speed data and how a player adjusts in a move to the outfield

Dan Szymborski: Now, some fast players are crappy outfielders (Alex Sanchez), but there’s a relationship

Ceddy B Ready: Elly was tired, son! Running fast is hard.

Dan Szymborski: I agree

Guest: athletics beating out the rockies for least favourable. a damning indictment of the a’s.

Dan Szymborski: I think that the Monforts have not run the Rockies well at all, but they’re not actually trying to tank, which is a big deal

Devil Ray Jay Johnson: The Chuck Finley Memorial Question:  Which player who retired at least 2 years ago would have the best current ZiPS projection?

Dan Szymborski: I THINK Greinke?

v2micca: I’m seeing a lot of projections for the Braves that are really bullish on Spencer Strider making his return in May or June and I just can’t buy it.  deGrom had the same procedure a year earlier around the same time period and he didn’t return until the after the following All-Star Break.  What is different with Strider?

Dan Szymborski: Projection systems themselves shouldn’t be considered good predictors of playing time for a guy like Greinke

mmddyyyy: Do newer stadiums have smaller playing surfaces?

Dan Szymborski: I’m not sure the correlation is that strong, and basically 90% of stadiums are now pretty new

Dan Szymborski: now, I’m confident that newer stadiums have smaller FOUL territories

David Stearns: Most likely of the big three in the nl east to miss the playoffs?

Dan Szymborski: Mets

Dan Szymborski: I think Mets have the most iffy pitching

Dan Szymborski: and there’s that Mets tendency towards dramatic implosions

Dan Szymborski: Like if the Mets won 117 games, the entire team would catch measles or something during the playoff bye

Reds2024!: How often is the FanGraphs zips database updated?

Dan Szymborski: In season, FG updaets it every morning

Ceddy B Ready: As a Denver resident, the Monfarts are terrible owners. Fundamentally misunderstanding sports science and are resistant to admitting such things. BUT… they would like to win. And they have been installing better decision-makers at all levels. Still not convinced the Mile High City needs a MLB team.

Dan Szymborski: Yeah, that’s the issue with the Rockies. I really enjoy being in Denver, and I think ownership wants to win

Dan Szymborski: And they really have been adding competent people in the front office. But the staff is still small and there’s a lot of work. The Bridich era was absolutely terrible

RAGBRAI: With recent injuries in NY do both Baty and Acuna make the OD roster? Which if either would I want in an NL only?

Dan Szymborski: I suspect they do. Not sure any is fantasy relevant

Adenolith: Are you a believer in using SGP for drafts?

Dan Szymborski: I actually have my own version of fantasy replacement value that I was able to make while I was at ESPN

Dan Szymborski: based on the best players likely available on the waiver wire

BaseballBundesliga: What are some of the fastest acting metrics that influence your RoS projections? FB velocity and swing speed?

Dan Szymborski: changes in walk rate and K rate tend to be real very quickly

Dan Szymborski: In-season is relatively simple, as it needs to run every day

CocoPuffs: As a lifelong A’s fan, the start of the season is hitting me so hard, it’s so depressing. Add in the state of the world, it’s just insane. It’s gonna be a long summer

Eddie Gaedel: I was looking at Jett Williams’ scouting report and it got me wondering: why don’t we see more short players? It feels like baseball is the only major sport where being short can be an advantage. They might lack power, sure, but wouldn’t the smaller strike zone raise their OBP, and also lower the bar for pitch selection and contact? Especially with modern pitchers having less command.

Dan Szymborski: It can, but power is a big deal, and it’s a bigger deal now.

Dan Szymborski: The short players generally have to bring power

DFlo: Dan, have you looked at any expert league draft results? If so what player would you say has the most value according to ZiPS that isn’t showing up in fantasy drafts.

Dan Szymborski: I haven’t really dug into that

Guerrero: If Vlad needs to repeat 2024 to get $500m, how well would he have to do to get $585m (his rumored ask)? That’s like a $6m increase in AAV

Dan Szymborski: I can’t say offhand! lol

Dan Szymborski: My brain can’t run ZiPS

mmddyyyy: Why isn’t a player’s age based on the calendar year?

Dan Szymborski: It just shifts around the edges really

Dan Szymborski: and honestly, one year one way or the other isn’t super huge

Guest: Your feeling of computational stagnation might be influenced by bad data. Just because you can’t squeeze big improvements isn’t due to your logic skills, it’s probably due to it being harder to find marginal gains in a mostly mature model. That or you have early stage dementia.

Dan Szymborski: No, I mean in the sense that 20 years ago, I could juggle like a dozen tasks at once

Dan Szymborski: But I can’t do that as well as back then. I’m more absent-minded, more distractable

Quarantino Martinez: Who will be the next 200-win pitcher?

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS said Sale and I’m sticking with it for now

Guest: Probably a question for Jaffe but would Barry Bonds getting one at bat redo his HOF eligibility? I figured Bonds would be the best ZiPS projection for a retired player for about 20 years.

Dan Szymborski: It would!

Dan Szymborski: Minnie Minoso and Jose Rijo both got back on Hall ballots

Dan Szymborski: Rijo was five percented the second time as well

Dan Szymborski: and Minoso got back on the ballot in the mid-80s after his White Sox appearance in 1980

Dan Szymborski: though I wouldn’t put it past the Hall to say “screw that” and declare that Bonds won’t be put back on the ballot

Bad New Bears: Pretty sure DeGrom had an a second Tommy John in 2023, with or without the internal brace, I do not know.  But Strider had the brace only as a precaution, after the bone spur affecting it was addressed.  Seems quite different?

Ceddy B Ready: I feel like by the time I turn 50 my brain will be so smooth and dense that I can go bowling with it. Multitasking be damned.

Devil Ray Jay Johnson: How often do you get recognized? Where is the oddest place that someone has recognized you?

Dan Szymborski: Extremely rarely if I’m not wearing my BBWAA card on a lanyard at a game or a conference

Dan Szymborski: I’m rarely on TV

Dan Szymborski: Oddest was this guy at Five Guys who ate his ENTIRE CHEESEBURGER standing up while waiting for his fries to be ready

Dan Szymborski: Talked with him for about five minutes

Dan Szymborski: My work is more recognizable than my name, and my name is more recognizable than my face. And the first two are usually unseen by people in public!

Dan Szymborski: It’s not like I wear a shirt with my name on it.

Dan Szymborski:

Dan Szymborski: (not an image of me)

appa yip yip: have you ever run a zips projection for what bonds’ slash line would be if he stepped up to the plate today? can zips even regress age that high?

Dan Szymborski: I ran it semi-seriously for a few years after he stopped being signed, but ZiPS doesn’t have anything useful to say about him at this point

I am the Apple: I know you’re doing a full ZiPS run right now cause you haven’t opened it up once for these questions. Busted Mr. Szymborski. Stop doing the job you’re paid to do and start giving out free information to the people.

Adenolith: Is there another projection system you find particularly interesting or innovative? Something you saw and thought, I wish I’d come up with that?

Dan Szymborski: It’s not like everyone makes all the insides viewable!

Dan Szymborski: I just try to focus on what I do and what I *can* do

RAGBRAI: Are ‘true’ closers going to be a thing of the past? Seems more and more teams are taking a by committee approach

Dan Szymborski: It’s far from completely gone, but that’s the long term trend

Dan Szymborski: I think long term, the borders between starter and reliever become far more blurred

Dan Szymborski: A world in which teams cared about win stats was kind of a buttress of the traditional roles

Dan Szymborski: I wouldn’t be surprised to find in 2040, that the majority of pitchers throw two to four innings per appeaerance

Bubbles: On Baseball Savant, you can export all pitches to a hitter for minor leaguers. This is useful because you can then calculate things like o-swong %, EV90, etc. Would it be possible for Fangraphs to show this data on minor league players? I plan on working on some Python scripts to generate this info when I have time.

Dan Szymborski: We  have a ton of raw data available, it’s just a question of the time and practicality

Fish: Say the Marlins (lol) get Tucker and Vladdy in free agency. Is that enough for them to contend next year?

Dan Szymborski: No

Pinstripes: Thanks for chatting.. I see the Yanks added C/3B Jesus Rodriguez to the 40 and he played a bit this spring. Will there be a projection for him?

Dan Szymborski: He ought to be on the final projections

Dan Szymborski: There’s a post-spring training run

Dan Szymborski: taht uses spring training

PCA: What is SGP?

Dan Szymborski: standing gains points

Dan Szymborski: basically, a framework that estimates the marginal value, in standings, from the addition of a particular player

Ceddy B Ready: My OOTP project for this year is to test the “stopper” method with every team to see if the 9th inning is more important than ending rallies before it’s a problem. I haven’t found a good way to measure this effect IRL.

Oaktown Blues: Was intrigued by your suggestion that the A’s trade for Alcantara. Do you think they could put together a worthy return package that didn’t include Wilson or Kurtz?

Dan Szymborski: I THINK they could, but it woul dhave to be a pretty big package

appa yip yip: if zips could have a baby with any other projection system which projection system would you prefer it have a baby with

Dan Szymborski: I think OOPSY so I can have an excuse to visit Finland?

Trevor: Who’s your favorite breakout pitcher this year?

Dan Szymborski: Hey, I’m not spoiling one of my tentpoles!

appa yip yip: i respect this man’s power. i love walking and eating a sandwich. have done it with burgers.

Dan Szymborski: I do not like walking while eating

Dan Szymborski: I don’t even like working while eating

Dan Szymborski: when I have a piece I have to wrap up, I will not eat, drink, or go to the bathroom

Dan Szymborski: Because the homestretch is Game Time

Ceddy B Ready: The only food I multitask with is string cheese. Playing and eating is peak goodness.

Adenolith: If you want to run ZiPS every day, could we just try and crowdsource you like 50 PS4s to start your own mini-super computer?

Dan Szymborski: This would be the folding@home project that least benefits society

Quarantino Martinez: Seeing as how it’s decidedly NOT April, is there anything you’re seeing in March baseball, injuries aside, that seems meaningful?

Dan Szymborski: At least let me have the WHOLE spring!

Dan Szymborski: On that note, it’s time for to hit the dusty ol’ trail for this week

Dan Szymborski: Thanks for comign everyone!