Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat – 4/9/26

Dan Szymborski: And awaaaay we go!

Kyle Manzardo: I have the largest difference between xBA and real BA among qualified batters, is there hope for me or am I broken?

Dan Szymborski: I think you’ll be fine

Guest: “more tools than can be found at a Florida spring break kegger” just give Dan the Pulitzer now

Dan Szymborski: Pulitzer Prize for B- Snark

Guest: it’s April and it remains to be seen if he’s replacement level, average, or better, but is it too early to say Jordan Walker is meaningfully better than he was 2024-25?

Dan Szymborski: Given how lousy he’s been, I don’t think saying he’s meaningfully better is a stretch

Dan Szymborski: His contact rate still sucks, but he’s been legitimately better (though far from amazing) at not swinging at crap and he’s hitting stuff pretty hard

Jake Jortles: Hey Dan, do you have a player that you enjoy watching even though the numbers in front of you say they’re not that good, and that they’re never likely to be good?

Dan Szymborski: Would it be trolling to say Jake Mangum? He’s fun

Dan Szymborski: I tend to like speedy, aggressive players way more than their value, and slop throwing pitchers, especially relievers.

Orioles are the Damned Yankees: In this grand simulation we call life, does the Guardians’ rotation  have the skills to be top 5 in the league, and please explain why their ‘ace’ is their worst starter?

Dan Szymborski: Top 5 is a real ask

Dan Szymborski: Though Gavin Williams was one of my final cuts from my booms list. I couldn’t figure out how to coherently express my feeling there

SCJH: How do you/should we approach defensive ZiPS projections for relatively inexperienced guys that differ wildly from what Statcast is telling us about a player? Thinking about Ben Williamson here specifically (who Statcast thought was just average in his time last year) but I know it pops up in other contexts too.

Dan Szymborski: Both the ZiPS and the small sample sizes should be taken with a grain of salt!

Dan Szymborski: a LTO of grains

Dan Szymborski: LOT

Dan Szymborski: FRV is better than the probability based ball-by-ball methodology I use for minor leaguers

Dan Szymborski: BUT a season of the ZiPS methodology is better than small sample size FRV

Dan Szymborski: (I’ve looked at the first three months of seasons of FRV and the ZiPS minor league one and the ZiPS minor league one was more predictive, but it’s not over full seasons)

Mike Lommler: Do you have a favorite absurd SSS stat of the season thus far?

Dan Szymborski: Dillon Dingler top 5 xSLG

Viper: How often do sites update the per plate appearance portion of their projections? PA/AB can change daily changing quantities but I am referring to the skills portion of the projections showing quality.

Dan Szymborski: I’m not quite sure how to answer that. Projections are generally updated as a whole and every day

Dan Szymborski: Though ZiPS uses a simpler model in-season than season-to-season

Dan Szymborski: for the simple fact that it takes more than a day to update ZiPS unless I use two computers

Guest: Is it time to give up on Kaz Okamoto and chalk it up to a longer, tougher transition than hoped? He looks lost and I have other options (like Andres Gimenez).

Dan Szymborski: I’m going to April this one

Dan Szymborski: I mean, 109 wRC+ vs. 111 depth chart preseason, 119 ZiPS is a nothing difference over a dozen games

Dan Szymborski: That’s not even all that big a miss over a season!

Ken: Hi Dan, Thanks for chatting with us. I see that Diamond-Mind is using the ZiPS for a projection season again this year. Do they receive the after spring training version with updates?

Dan Szymborski: They do not as it’s quite labor intensive to create the disk, so work has to be started on that from their end pretty early

Guest: I know April is usually pretty bad for hitters, but is this April worse than usual?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think so? April usually sucks, but we’re also still early April, where the best pitchers have more of an IP gap than usual. 3 times through the rotation instead of 2 is a bigger diff than 30 times through compared to 28

Dan Szymborski: And early April is colder than late April

Look At This Sotograph: I’ve got 3 cat tattoos (“cattoos”), how many you got?

Dan Szymborski: I have no tattoos

Yu like that: Whats up with Wyatt Langford is he still jealous Roman Anthony was getting all that WBC love?

Dan Szymborski: Sorry, gotta April this one!

Look At This Sotograph: Don’t you hate pants?

Dan Szymborski: I actually do.

Dan Szymborski: I will wear shorts until it gets down to the 50s

Dan Szymborski: My mom saw me outside her window from across the street shoveling my sidewalk this winter in 4 degree weather in gym shorts and no jacket and called me on my cell phone to yell at me

Dan Szymborski: Any time I can wear shorts, I will.

Dan Szymborski: And since I work from home, the most used part of my wardrobe is my 8 or 9 Champion gym shorts

Uncle Spike: What’s Esmerlyn Valdez’s ceiling?  He had a strong year last year, crushed the AZFL, crushed spring training and has a strong start to AAA as a 22 year old.  Small sample size but 25.5 BB%, 12.8 K% and has already hit 5 balls over 109 MPH.

Dan Szymborski: Pretty high ceiling, he has big power upside

Dan Szymborski: Only limit may be his contact rate (though it has improved) and the lack of defensive value

sliptoad: normally i give credit to variance but is there something going on in the astros medical staff? it seems like this team has had the most WAR lost to injury for years in a row and this season has started off poorly again

Dan Szymborski: Dunno, since medical staff is the part of a team I never talk with, and my knowledge of the human body is basically limited to “don’t drink poison” and the ability to roughly describe some of the biological process of how babies are made

Dan Szymborski: But they were tops on my value-lost-to-injury piece last year

Dan Szymborski: Dodgers/Braves where the year before IIRC

War2D2: Dan! DAN! The pipes are calling me! From glen to glen AND down the mountainside! What do I do?!?

Dan Szymborski: Well, the summer’s gone and the flowers are dying, so seek warmer climes?

Detroit Tigers Hitting Coach: How long will it take for Kevin McGonigle to learn our process of hitting? Around here we take all pitches until we have two strikes and then assume every pitch after will be a fastball

Shandy Koufax: very Early season alarmist nonsense: Jacob Wilson spiking his K% and SwStr% and chasing a lot more looks really bad

big John: Would you have been thrilled if the O’s locked up Jackson Holliday to this deal a couple of years ago? shows the downside

Dan Szymborski: I would have. and everything has a risk

Cat Latos: What do my cat frens do?

Dan Szymborski: Justinian is sleeping next to me on his pillow on my left desk

Dan Szymborski: no, he’s awake, just in limbless mode

Dan Szymborski: Last I saw Constantine, he was trying to get in my amazon box that’s sitting in the entranceway at the front door, but there’s nothing in it of interest – it has my subscribe & save order of dishwasher pods and a packet of Sui mi ya cai and a think of laundry detergent

Dan Szymborski: Cassie is sitting in one of the guest rooms on the bed where she usually is this time of day. She needs to have a tooth extracted, which I’m going to have done in a few weeks; I heard from the vet about 15 minutes before chat that her blood work is all good, so no anesthesia worries

Dan Szymborski: Last I saw the kittens were bopping each other in the face in their roiom

Kevin Kobel: Do you think they’ll be more “okay, not great, not awful” teams this season than usual?

Dan Szymborski: probably not

ed: Ben Rice Top 10 wRC+ ROS by ZiPs! Thoughts?

Dan Szymborski: It’s not that crazy

I am the Apple: Has a player, team, or agent ever been upset with you personally about a ZiPS projection?

Dan Szymborski: Mostly the occasional player

Dan Szymborski: Teams/agents don’t take bad projections personally. They know how projection systems work

Dan Szymborski: I’m not sure how front offices 20 years ago would act, but I only talked to a few teams 20 years ago

Andy: What do you ends up happening with Didier Fuentes? He’s probably got 120-130ip max this season, do they use the bullets now and shelf him when Schwell and others return?

Dan Szymborski: I think they use him early

Kevin Kobel: I know ZiPS isn’t so down on the Giants, but they appear to be a poorly put together Frankenteam. They’ve seemed that way for quite a few years under two different front offices. Do you still have some faith they’re at least a solid WC contender this year?

Dan Szymborski: I still think they’re reasonable contenders, though not first tier

Busch League: Obligatory “it’s April” aside, any thoughts on Michael Busch’s slow start? He seems to be seeing the ball very well and having some bad BABIP luck, but the bat speed and maxEV is noticeably down.

Dan Szymborski: Nothing all that insightful. I’m just not worried yet

Guest: Who couldn’t use a change up once in a while from “A Dan, a plan…”

Guest: DANAMA! DANAMA-A-A-A-A-A

Guest: what does ZiPS make of Corbin Carroll’s HOF (I know) odds now vs ASB 2024?

Dan Szymborski: Don’t have ZiPS open (and I don’t really model HOF % though that’s on the faraway to do list)

Dan Szymborski: But his outlook is about the same

Guest: “for the simple fact that it takes more than a day to update ZiPS unless I use two computers” what do you mean your electric costs wouldn’t justify this

Dan Szymborski: I laughed a little when I saw that me, mostly living alone, uses about twice the electricity of an average household monthly

Dan Szymborski: and that’s WITH a high efficiency a/c that’s less than 10 years old and no electric car

Dan Szymborski: OK, I checked, not quite double

Dan Szymborski:

Dan Szymborski: that’s in kwh

I am the Apple: Is there a part of ZiPS that’s limited by computer power? Besides time to complete, obviously.

Dan Szymborski: not really at this point

Dan Szymborski: Even the 5900X can deal quite nicely with anything robust enough for my mind to be able to put it together

I am the Apple: Has ZiPS ever had a near-death experience?

Dan Szymborski: No, I am on obsessive backup guy

Doug Sisk: Devin Williams looks like his old self in 2026. Was last season just randomness, or was he a lesser pitcher last year for some reason?

Dan Szymborski: I hate randomness/luck as words simply because they also apply to thing we can’t possibly know. I always thought he’d be fine

Your Name: You’ve mentioned before that ZiPS is equivalent to team projections for external players, but team projections are better for their own players. What data do you think that the teams have for their own players is missing from ZiPS and will it ever be possible for you to get that data?

Dan Szymborski: It’s hard for me to say honestly, since teams are generally very protective of some of the internal things they have

Dan Szymborski: and I speculate that’s the missing ingredient

Dan Szymborski: because I don’t think they’d do better with their own players and not the rest of the league if it *wasn’t* proprietary stuff they were tracking

I am the Apple: If MLB gave you full access to every piece of proprietary data they have – from internal scouting reports to clubhouse dynamics, how much better would ZiPS get? Assuming you had infinite time to figure out the right way to integrate and test it all

Dan Szymborski: Probably a little. Just how much would depend on how much my brain can get around all the new stuff I’d suddenly have

Dan Szymborski: I suspect that long-term proejctions woudl get a bigger bump than shor tterm

Insert Witty Name Here: What was that woman’s name who was hanging out with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

Dan Szymborski: Mona Lisa

Dan Szymborski: well, you’ll ahve to google her yourself

Your Name: Local media is touting the Konnor Griffin extension as a reason to believe that Pirates’ owner Bob Nutting is opening up the wallet. I think if anything it is the opposite, as Griffin arguably left a lot of money on the table. Thoughts?

Dan Szymborski: I dont’ think it heralds any change

Wood: Your mother did the right thing.

Dan Szymborski: Oh, the snow was so powdering and delicate, it took me less than 10 minutes

Dan Szymborski: powdery

War2D2: I’m a “wear jeans until it’s triple digits out” guy, but my brother is very much a “shorts and t-shirt until 0°f” guy. The story of your mom yelling at you has been played out hundreds of times in his life.

drplantwrench: is this the year jo becomes the true 5 tool star that had been promised? are he and jordan walker’s fates somehow tied?

Dan Szymborski: I’m not sure I’d go that far. The catches were cool though

O: Hi Dan, do you think projection systems are too harsh on hitters who come up young and struggle? How could a model detect a real talent change as opposed to a small sample artifact when those players figure it out? Thinking about Jordan Walker here.

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think so, simply from testing

old teammate: Do you have any thoughts on Nate Furman in the SFG system? Unique profile imo

Dan Szymborski: I kinda wish the Giants seemed more interested in taking a look at him, I know he’s had some shoulder issues

Dan Szymborski: Without those, I’d be more grumpy about the Giants playing around with Arraez

Guest: Hey Dan, happy Thursday. As I watch the heart of the Mariner’s order whiff around like they are trying to swat at moths around a lightbulb…I’m wondering (hoping??) that the WBC participation set the regular preparation timeline back. Maybe not being able to gear up against lower level stuff right away somehow impaired them. Do we have split stats showing how all WBC participants have failed this April vs previously? Does this theory seem viable?

Dan Szymborski: Someone on Reddit actually had something on this like a week ago

Dan Szymborski: https://www.reddit.com/r/fantasybaseball/comments/1sauuq0/wbc_players_…

Dan Szymborski: iBut I haven’t really dug into it

Wes: Is there any benefit to a projection system that assumes 1.000 BABIP, or am I just reaching for an excuse for you to develop something called YiPS?

Dan Szymborski: lol

Jeremy: Following up on a question that came up in the comments on your Konnor Griffin post: do players who debut in the majors at a very young age tend to peak at a younger age than the typical player?

Dan Szymborski: They usually can

Dan Szymborski: People who hit their peak earlier are naturally going to be called up earlier

Dan Szymborski: Griffin’s ascent won’t be as even as ZiPS; it’s just that ZiPS is confident he’ll break out, but not postiive WHEN

Insert Witty Name Here: I’m morbidly interested in knowing how Dan describes the biological processes of how babies are made and ZiPS projection of successfully creating said baby.

Dan Szymborski: heh, gotta save that chat for OnlyDans

Dan Szymborski: Like everything else, my parents/grandparents gave me adult reading material at 4/5 for any question I asked

Dan Szymborski: I’m likely one of the few little kids who asked “What happens when you die?” to be given reading material on the physical process of putrefaction

Dan Szymborski: I was an utterly voracious reader (and still am)

Dan Szymborski: I was also already a bit of a troll as a little kid too

Dan Szymborski: When my kindergarten teacher, Ms. Waller, made flash cards of words that kids would pick, she grumbled when the word I wanted her to pick was “Czechoslovakia”

Dan Szymborski: I’m still a giant ass at heart, but I’m more able to discipline myself interacting with others than when I was five.

RetireNutting: Griffin’s deal shaped so the Pirates don’t have to pay him much at all if they end up rebuilding again:

Year 1 2026: $1M salary/$5M signing
Year 2 2027: $2M salary/$3.5M signing
Year 3 2028: $4M salary
Year 4 2029: $6M salary
Year 5 2030: $12.5M salary
Year 6 2031: $21M salary
Year 7 2032: $26.5M salary
Year 8 2033: $27M salary
Year 9 2034: $27M salary

Kevin: What, if anything, are MLB teams or you doing with AI tools to improve the effectiveness or usefulness of projection models?

Dan Szymborski: I’m not sure specifically of anyone using AI for *this* but then again, I don’t

Dan Szymborski: know everything

Fin: The Red Sox are 4-8. The Mariners are 4-9. The Blue Jays are 5-7 and are running out Lauer, Corbin, and Scherzer this weekend. Which of these AL contenders are you most worried about?

Dan Szymborski: Probably Red Sox because this is a really bad division to spot a few extra games

Dan Szymborski: I was actually banging the drum for the Jays to sign another pitcher this ofsfeason

Your Name: The Fangraphs team should buy you a used super computer from a university or national lab or something.

Dan Szymborski: I don’t know if I’m smart enough to take advantage of that level of power

kittens?: am I out of the loop?

Dan Szymborski: Mercutio passed away last year from very sudden acute kidney failure caused by pancreatitis and I adopted two kittens in Feburary

Guest: I used to run computational fluid dynamic models out of my apartment and I feel your pain. It also put my computer out of commission for days

Denji: How many new FanGraphs membership sign-ups would it take for Appleman to let you expense a supercomputer that could do a full fat overnight ZiPS run?

Dan Szymborski: I know it’s a joke, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be a good use of money. Full-fat daily ZiPS isn’t going to bring in as many new subscribers as adding even more writing talent or new features

Karl Hungus: Does ZiPS use data on individual pitches? If yes, do you ever see the effect of throwing a particular pitch more/less over a season?

Dan Szymborski: It does not, but I’m working on things for a future miodel

Dan Szymborski: the current ZiPS is always a few years behind the one with the most bells and whistles that’s still being put together

Wrights_Back: Regarding your ‘randomness’ comment (“I hate randomness/luck as words simply because they also apply to things we can’t possible know”) – and ignoring the plagiarist Donald Rumsfeld – you should read up on Frank Knight, and “Knightian uncertainty.’  
Basically, there are things you CAN know and things you CANNOT know.  Identifying these as separate categories is the key to eternal prediction happiness.

Karl Hungus: Does it bother you that Ray Liotta hits right/throws left in Field of Dreams when Joe Jackson was the opposite?

Dan Szymborski: A bit

Dan Szymborski: I’m not as bothered by this kind of thing as others

Your Name: https://gsaauctions.gov/auctions/preview/282996

This bad boy is a measly $500k

Dan Szymborski: If I had an extra 500K just come in, I’d have a new Bösendorfer piano and 350K added to my portfolio!

Tom Rinaldi: What ever happened to Carter Capps?  How come no one else has adopted the jump-off-the-rubber strategy?

Dan Szymborski: Didn’t his elbow evaporate?

Guest: Does ZiPS include any extra allowance for off-season adjustment, or is data from September weighted roughly the same as data from the following March/April?

Dan Szymborski: there’s a significant dropoff in weight

Your Name: Is there value in stacking different styles of pitchers to keep hitters from gaining familiarity either within a game or a series?

Dan Szymborski: I think so, but I can’t prove it

junk hearts fg: Junk doing a mlb article that says fangraphs help made him better this year….. how many recruiting calls does the fg team get from mlb teams every year?

Dan Szymborski: I dunno, I haven’t really asked that

Dan Szymborski: I’m pretty adamant that I’ll sell you data for the same price I sell it to everyone else or you can ask me for free talking shop over a beer, but that I’m really far better suited for the job I have now than working for you

Perry Como: Has tunnelling always been a thought process for pitchers, and when did the name get so popular?

Dan Szymborski: As far as I’m aware, the basic concept has always existed, but it was more foggy and instinctual and wasn’t really put into words that much until recently

Insert Witty Name Here: OnlyDans…Rather, Lieutenant, Szym, Marino.  Unsubscribe.

Your Name: How many 100 win teams would exist in your ideal league distribution?

Dan Szymborski: Four.

Dan Szymborski: One of my fanciful musings is that not have a set season length. Just throw everyone in one big division in each league and the first six teams to win 100 games in each league make the playoffs

Dan Szymborski: I have a lot of impractical musings

Dan Szymborski: Like opening day shoudl be a 24 hour thing, with a game starting every 90 minutes around the clock

Dan Szymborski: or that the distance from home plate to first base should be shorter, like 86 or 88 feet

Dan Szymborski: I also want to see an independent league experiment with runners with two outs scoring as long as the runner beats the batter running to first base, to encourage some weird, aggressive third base/two out strategies

Arathorn: How often do you fully rerun ZIPS, taking into account season-so-far? When do the in-season stats seem to start actually mattering?

Dan Szymborski: The minimum is six additional times, right aruond thet 15th each month

Dan Szymborski: in practic, probably a dozen times

Guest: If cats were baseball players, what type of player would they typically be? I’m thinking so-so hitters who steal lots of bases à la Vince Coleman

Dan Szymborski: That’s probably accurate

Dan Szymborski: no plate discipline

Dan Szymborski: even my big fat cat constantine becomes an olympic sprinter when he hears the dinner song

Guest: Jose Caballero is highly cat coded

The Brice is Right: Zips liked Brice Matthews over the “experts” – what does it think of his start to 2026?

Dan Szymborski: It’s not ecstatic, but it hasn’t been much playing time

Insert Witty Name Here: The cats have a dinner song?

Dan Szymborski: Yeah, I’m not sure how it happened, but I can summon all the cats instantly if I sing “Who is the hungriest cat, the hungriest cat, the hungriest cat? Who is, the hungriest cat in the whole wide world” to a tune I’m not sure the name of

Menthol: Caballero is horse coded.

Onion: Were you a part of this press conference?
https://theonion.com/nation-s-big-guys-in-shorts-announce-they-run-hot…

Dan Szymborski: heh

Dan Szymborski: I knew the article without clicking on it

guessed: Is there anything real to that old superstition that players who hit HR for their first MLB hit don’t usually wind up being good major leaguers? Asking re: Carson Benge and if hexes are real when they happen to the Mets

Dan Szymborski: never tested it, but probably no!

Pennsylvania Fats: speaking of songs What was that link to the fangraphs villain song again?

Dan Szymborski: I’ve tinkered with the instruments a little to add more brass.

Dan Szymborski: https://suno.com/s/bseCYKKtEOGuFago

Dan Szymborski: And on that note, it’s time for me to head out for another week

Dan Szymborski: See you all next time! or some of you since I doubt I get 100% attendance