Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat – 5/14/20

Dan Szymborski: AND GOT HERE

Dan Szymborski: I was finishing an article and it was a race against the clock!

Danny Almonte’s fastball: If you could make a chimera of any 2 current pitchers, who would they be for: the best, the most fun to watch, the most unique?

Dan Szymborski: A Bartolo Colon who pitches like Gerrit Cole!

Dan Szymborski: AND HE WOULD BE ALL OF THOSE THINGS

Danny Almonte’s fastball: Player you love who has a surprisingly low WAR?

Dan Szymborski: Joe Orsulak

Dan Szymborski: I also loved watching Marty Barrett bat as a kid.

Bart: 50% 0f zero income is still zero!

Dan Szymborski: Take THAT Bob Cratchit and your dumb kid.

Danny Almonte’s fastball: what fascinates you still about baseball, given with how involved you are? (Could be a serious and non serious one!)

Dan Szymborski: That players in the field never have emergency bowel movements.

Dan Szymborski: Like the RF starts running in randomly and is replaced because lunch is disagreeing with him.

Danny Almonte’s fastball: What aspect of baseball that we currently can not quantify reliably do you think is the biggest missing piece?

Dan Szymborski: INJURY STUFF

Danny Almonte’s fastball: What fascinates you about life?

Dan Szymborski: The hard problem of consciousness.

Bring Back Mookie: Dan, when you guys do the MLB The Show streams, are you guys actually playing the game? Or is it just simming through it while you guys chat?

Dan Szymborski: We’re just simming. It’s fairer that way!

tonyp: Dan did you secretly write the deadspin article about regional food rankings

Dan Szymborski: I did not, though it sounds like something I write.

Seeforman: For each of the Rolling Stones, identify a ball player whose style of play best matches the musician.

Dan Szymborski: Oh god, I’m not sure how to approach this

Dan Szymborski: Would Jagger be Jeter? Lots of charisma but Jagger wasn’t really a guitar player like most of the rest of the band.

Dan Szymborski: Richards is a pretty terrific and also a straightforward guitarist, without a lot of the noodling around of his contemporaries

Dan Szymborski: Maybe Strasburg? I’m not sure how to transfer over the drugs.

Dan Szymborski: Charlie Watts was kind of into another sport (jazz) and he’s unassuming relative to the others

Dan Szymborski: Maybe Adam Dunn? Baseball wasn’t his first love and he might have made a pretty good TE for Texas

Szan Dymborski: I miss baseball

Ted the Question Asker: Are there NCAA ZiPs? Is that even how to phrase the question?

Dan Szymborski: I do rough translations, which I only use RARELY if a player is going to be called up very quickly and I HAVE to project them.

Alex K: Do you think it’s possible to ensure player safety if the MLB does play this season?

Dan Szymborski: Not 100%, but I think that there are a lot of measures that can be done.

Dan Szymborski: And realistically, with the country generally opening back up, I’m not sure the players are in any *additional* danger they wouldn’t be otherwise

Danny Almonte’s fastball: How long after it’s first form did it take for you to be confident in ZIPS? Just curious what the process was like, from starting with an idea to becoming confident in publicly sharing it

Dan Szymborski: A year maybe?

Mad Joe-Don: Do you think a truncated season would make owners more or less likely to consider rule changes that address pace of play issues?

Dan Szymborski: More

Ben: Thoughts on the Kurkjian sex tape?

Dan Szymborski: Wait, what?

Dan Szymborski: That sounds like a lie

Ted the Question Asker: Thoughts on the Freddy Peralta from before the shutdown? I loved it, am starting to believe Ken Tremendous on this Stearns guy playing 48th dimension chess

Dan Szymborski: I’m fairly optimistic about Peralta. Uptick in velocity even if the results weren’t great in 2019

Dan Szymborski: Still command issues, but he’s young

Insert Clever Name Here: Just wanted to say well done with the Joe Mauer piece.  Definitely a great article in general, and a fascinating “what-if” scenario.

Dan Szymborski: Glad you enjoyed it! While we’re out, I’m going to do a ZiPS Time Warp every other weeik.

LFC Mike: I had to wait a week to ask you this…does your mom follow the trend as set by Mr. Pitt and eat her candy bar with a knife and fork like she does her taco’s?  She would be pretty hip if she does.

Dan Szymborski: I honeslty can’t recall her eating a candy bar.

Dan Szymborski: But she eats lots of things with fork and knife. Pizza — even easy to hold pizza — and tacos

Dan Szymborski: and cheesesteak

Seeforman: Brett Lawrie used to be my Jagger: bouncing all over the place but never really matching expectations

Dan Szymborski: That’s a bit unfair given his career.

Guest: Hope you and your family are well Dan.  Not sure where to direct this, but would be cool if the site could add games finished for pitchers, I like to look at this in combination with saves and run metrics when reviewing fireman.

Dan Szymborski: I can mention it, is it available in the custom? I really don’t honestly know

Dan Szymborski: It’s not. I’ll bring it up

Ted’s Question Emporium: What are the current demographics of baseball today?

Dan Szymborski: Lots of people inside their houses!

Insert Clever Name Here: And now, which band best matches baseball players who have released songs or covers of some kind.

Dan Szymborski: I can’t do MULTIPLE rock history baseball qs unless we REALLY get dead

Danny Almonte’s fastball: what do you think is an idea, baseball related or not, that you believe that you are most likely to be wrong about?

Dan Szymborski: Am I developing asthma or not.

Dan Szymborski: I don’t THINK I am, allergy season has been very bad for me this year

Dan Szymborski: but I have a lot of the symptoms of a silent case of asthma

Dan Szymborski: and I think I’ll have to ask my doctor about it next time I’m there normally

Dan Szymborski: (Most of my family has asthma)

Ted’s Question Emporium: Do you think there is a hero in all of us? My aunt May gave a pretty good speech on the matter much time ago and said she does

Dan Szymborski: At some point, we’ve all had a hero inside of us, though some of us call it a hoagie/grinder/sub/etc.

LFC Mike: What do you think the minor leagues look like next year? How many teams could fold?

Dan Szymborski: I think MLB will largely get their wish.

Dan Szymborski: It sucks, but at this point, they can just wait to see who can’t survive the season and keep the rest.

Stevil: How is MLB going to watch and prevent teams from being sleazy and offering under-the-table incentives to undrafted players, other than a good hard “You better not, or else…”?

Dan Szymborski: MLB can institute some very dire things.

Dan Szymborski: And really, if they’re willing to do it now, they’d probably be willing to do it before

Dan Szymborski: we’ve had caps for awhiel!

ben: As of today, do you think there will be baseball this year?

Dan Szymborski: Yes

Insert Clever Name Here: This is legitimately the first I’ve ever heard of anyone eating a taco with a fork and knife.

Insert Clever Name Here: Just did a look to see what was meant about a tape, found nothing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Soundwave: With a universal DH this season what are the chances an NL team receives the most production in baseball from that position?

Dan Szymborski: Fairly low, but it *is* possible if a team moves a player to the position due to defense.

Dan Szymborski: Like Castellanos COULD be the DH. But he’d still have to outhit Yordan and J.D>

Bologna Tugboat: Eating tacos with a fork should be punishable by death. For God sakes.

Duchess: Who is the worst player currently on an active MLB roster, excluding Rule 5 picks.

Dan Szymborski: Chris Davis

Evan: Have you ever looked at a ZiPS projection for Michael Jordan? Legitimately can’t decide if I want to believe Terry Francona (MJ would’ve made the majors) or if I want to believe that a 31-year-old who hit .203 in AA stood no chance.

Dan Szymborski: I haven’t, mainly because it’ll be predictably awful

Bologna Tugboat: Favorite event to watch on ESPN 8 “The Ocho”? I found professional rock skipping to be exhilarating. That said, some dudes could really benefit from a Rapsodo/Edgetronic. Poor spin efficiency on those rocks.

Dan Szymborski: SCHOO BUS FIGURE OF 8

pepper: If the minor leagues are materially cut back, then wouldn’t that lead to a boom for independent leagues?

Dan Szymborski: It MIGHT, but I’m not sure how much of the interest in these teams goes away when they’re not connected with prospects and such.

Dan Szymborski: This is a tough question for me to answer because I simply don’t have the perspective of a more casual fan who just likes the sport

pepper: If I owned a team and we had 50 man rosters, then I’d add Mike Tyson as a “designated hitter”.    NO ONE would throw at my batters as in a bench clearing brawl, we’ve got Iron Mike on our team!

LFC Mike: A knife and fork is acceptable for a soft taco.  But if the soft taco wraps itself in a complete circle doesn’t it become a burrito?

Dan Szymborski: It’s nestled, not encased

ben: Is lack of minor-league games due to COVID the final nail in the coffin of Tim Tebow’s career?

Dan Szymborski: If his play can’t end it, nothing will!

Szan Dymborski: Like, I stopped watching football for several years because the NFL wasn’t addressing concussions enough…

Dan Szymborski: I still watch the NFL but I feel vaguely dirty

Szan Dymborski: At what point do the fans have a responsibility to boycott baseball to enforce some semblance of decency towards minor leaguers?

Dan Szymborski: I tend to be of the belief that a boycott only matters if it both has concrete goals that can be achieved and a plausible path to success.

Dan Szymborski: Short of those two things, you’re only denying yourself the product, not the seller.

Alex: I didn’t get to read Craig’s article yesterday about the proposal for resuming play. Was gonna read it now. Why was it taken down?

Dan Szymborski: Was it?

Dan Szymborski: I’m unaware of anything going on but my piece.

Ted’s Question Emporium: Szan you missed the offseason, they found a workaround ASAP

Dan Szymborski: Wait, what’s going on?

Some Dummy: Any players instagrams have you changing your opinion on their value? Vlad’s looked like he’s cut weight for example, but pictures/the internet lie

Dan Szymborski: No, I don’t really care about people’s pictures unless they amuse me.

Guest: Is there a world where it makes sense for players to exchange some form of revenue sharing this year for access to the owner’s books going into the CBA negotiation next year?

Dan Szymborski: I actually have a piece in the hopper FOR SOME POINT guessing what an actual revenue sharing proposal would need to have with it to at least be debated and taken seriously.

Dan Szymborski: Becuase this one can’t be and isn’t.

Guest: Thanks Dan on the games finished, in your time at Baseball Think Factory, I remember you publishing a ZIPS for players who were major league ready but left in the minors too long/WAR translations (Edgar Martinez, Carlos Delgado, Brian Giles come to mind).  If possible, can you do a refresh to modern day data dump?  Or  maybe an idea for a multi article series?

Dan Szymborski: Did I do all those guys?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t recall, honestly.

LFC Mike: Greetings Dan.  So far Han Dong-min has an OPS of 1.440.    Sustainable?  or is your answer “It’s May”?

Dan Szymborski: MAY

pepper: I’m not boycotting baseball or football for the sins of the owners.  This is my entertainment rather than a crusade.  Players do have the option to pursue other careers.   It’s a free country.

Dan Szymborski: Everybody’s entitled to their opinion.

Dan Szymborski: I don’t boycott mostly because I don’t see the structure to make a boycott plausible. AND EVEN MORE IMPORTANTLY, since this is my job and I have a fairly high threshold for outrage to switch to a new career at 41.9

LFC Mike: If your chili is thick enough can you eat it with a knife and fork or would that be punishable by death?

Dan Szymborski: You could also fix their chili

Guest: “Everybody’s entitled to their opinion.” – but some opinions are less valid than others

Dan Szymborski: Yeah, but I’m not troubled by bad opinions. I’m sure I have some too.

TooDamnTall: I just want to be part of the fun

Bologna Tugboat: Let’s say you owned a fine restaurant specializing in Mexican fare. You and your staff take great pride in your food. You see some lady named Karen eating her taco with a fork/knife. Do you consider kicking her out, or swallow your pride and absorb the slap to your face for the good of your public image? Moral dilemma…go.

Dan Szymborski: As a restaurant owner, part of my job is pleasing the customer.

Dan Szymborski: I assume; I’m not actually a restaurant owner.

Dan Szymborski: There have always been pieces I’ve been less interested in doing for others that I do because people really like the piece.

Seeforman: With the likelihood of a higher percentage of games being played in the day,

Dan Szymborski: What?

LFC Mike: so Chili  is officially a spoon only food?

Dan Szymborski: You can fork it, but there shouldn’t be a knife.

Ted’s Question Emporium: What if Karen says some dumb Karen shit?

Dan Szymborski: Then that’s her problem.

Dan Szymborski: Anyone who is actually threatened by crappy opinions probably isn’t quite as certain about their good opinion as they think.

Dan Szymborski: And frankly, at this stage of my life, I’m interested in a vigorous, interesting opinion that I totally disagree with than something I agree with that bores me.

Insert Clever Name Here: Honestly, at this point in quarantine, I’ve just been accepting of all the weirdness that people have done instead of being confused by them.  Like racing Roombas, a pirate metal song about Harambe, people dressing as Batman at intersections, etc.  Before I would have been questioning everything.  Now, it’s “Honestly, I don’t even know, let’s go with it.

LFC Mike: What if Karen’s dining partner ate their burrito with a knife and fork?  Perhaps they are tourists from another country and are unsure of themselves and correct customs?  This could turn into a national incident if you are not careful Dan.

Dan Szymborski: Hey, I’m not the guy throwing out the person!

Ted’s Question Emporium: NCAA broadcast rights are up again in 2022 or 2023. Who takes home that money?

Dan Szymborski: In the end, the NCAA always does!

Ted’s Question Emporium: Will anyone care about minor league salaries once those players are in the NCAA? Not only are they amateurs again but getting a big time super valuable university edumacation!

Bologna Tugboat: In that case, let’s start drinking chili through smoothie straws. Human sanctity no longer matters.

Dan Szymborski: I’m just saying that if chili is cooked properly, there’s no way a knife needs to be in the mix.

Dan Szymborski: If you just throw a giant steak in the chili whole without dicing it, if the chili’s cooked long enough, you should be be able to eat that steak with a spoon!

Ted’s Question Emporium: But who is the NCAA?!?! Can I assume 6 very old white guys?

Dan Szymborski: A larger number of old white dudes.

Insert Clever Name Here: There’s also the Dodgers with the amount of depth that they have that would benefit from the DH, not only with their MLB-ready guys, but even with some of their fringe guys if one of them steps up.

Dan Szymborski: I’ve proejcted this!

Dan Szymborski: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/another-day-another-new-plan-projected/

Dan Szymborski: There are 74 people in here right now (way off our normal numbers). I want at least HALF of you to ask a question, even if it’s an unrelated question that may not make sense.

Guest: From the Martinez, Delgado, Giles comment, I found the URL: https://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/oracle/discussion/3_decades_of_mi…

Dan Szymborski: Ah, yes, the translations! I thought you meant like ZiPS Time Warp with projections and stuff.

Bologna Tugboat: Wrong. Quite the diverse group:

Bologna Tugboat: http://www.ncaa.org/about/who-we-are/office-president/ncaa-leadership-…

Dan Szymborski: But who gets the money?

Downstairs Quinter: WTF is that smell?

Dan Szymborski: lavender and farts

Owner: Where can I sign up for ‘Merica’s free sports stadium with land and tax breaks program?

Dan Szymborski: The Frank McCourt School of Business.

Dan Szymborski:

Owner: I am a BIZNESS, man, not just a businessman!

Bologna Tugboat: No way of knowing, so why assume?

Dan Szymborski: https://www.radio.com/sports/ncaa-football/gallery/richest-living-coll…

Isolated Thinker: The 3 batter minimum.  The universal DH.  Short season.  Expanded rosters.  Safety issues.  Handling the players who view the pandemic differently, etc.  NL managers will be dealing with major strategy changes.  Such a much bigger gamble bringing in a reliever now. Mistakes will be amplified.  Do you think managers will have shorter leashes considering the short season?

Dan Szymborski: I think longer leashes because nobody really knows what things will be like.

Guest: Is there an MLB the show FangraphsLive every Friday including this Friday? And what time?

Dan Szymborski: There is! 2 PM ET

Dan Szymborski: That is a suspiciously on-topic question. Are you lurking Meg?

Owner: Now will Inget further tax breaks if I enroll in this McCourt school? bettering myself!

Dan Szymborski: You do have to get a fancy suit.

Dan Szymborski: And special hand cream to make your handshakes wonderfully leathery.

Questionless amusement: Long time reader, no meaningful questions🙂.  Also brain dead from cabin fever.

Dan Szymborski: These questions are mostly not meaningful.

gifman: im the gifman

Dan Szymborski: But how do you pronounced your name?

Dan Szymborski: the G in giraffe or the G in grapes?

Guest: Is Fangraphs in need of new members to support the site? I heard of a very reasonable membership fee of $20.

Dan Szymborski: There is!

Dan Szymborski: And the bigger one kills off all the ads, and ads frigging suck.

Joe: Impossible question, but why does it always feel like fans side with ownership on everything?

Dan Szymborski: Because many fans think players are just “playing a kids game”

Dan Szymborski: And many fans envision themselves playing baseball as opposed to owning a billion dollar business

Insert Clever Name Here: The Guest question now makes me curious: Have there ever been times where you’ve asked questions on your colleagues’ chats anonymously just to see their response?

Dan Szymborski: Nah, I don’t wanna troll them.

Dan Szymborski: Given my personality, I’m always on the bring of being muted by my colleagues on Twitter. No reason to force the issue.

gifman: Are any Fangraphs writers using this time for continuing education efforts? Maybe deep dives into new modeling techniques or languages (ZiPS is excel based, right? Would now be a good time to port it over to Python/R?)… that would be an interesting thing for readers to follow along

Dan Szymborski: We’re shorter staffed, so I haven’t gotten quite as much extra time as you would think!

Dan Szymborski: And I’ve been working on more practical things to direclty imprve our offerings.

Alex: Here’s my weird question: Due to your haircut, chili opinions, or any other quirkiness, were you ever bullied in high school? Without knowing you, you seem like the stereotypical bullied type who grew up to be wildly more successful (prominently working in baseball!) than any of the bullies.

Dan Szymborski: No, I was never bullied. Part of that is likely because I was close friends with the biggest school bully.

Dan Szymborski: One summer in high school, we played a every game of an entire season of Tecmo Super Bowl against each other!

Dan Szymborski: Tom Rathman had like 2000 rushing yards

Dan Szymborski: Overall, I was in the general “middle class” of high school, social-wise.

Dan Szymborski: I didn’t get bullied and I didn’t bully others. Honestly, most people who weren’t specifically my friends probably don’t have any recollection of my existence.

Dan Szymborski: I had an extremely non-dramatic high school experience.

Dan Szymborski: I probably had more friction with teachers than any students.

Dan Szymborski: I was the student that teachers would simultaneously love and hate.

John and Jeff: Two Radio Guys: More important to successfully defeating evil: standing or fighting?

Dan Szymborski: Standing. UNLESS you know brazilian jiu jitsu

Dan Szymborski: But you gotta Royce Gracie evil if you’re not standings.

Insert Clever Name Here: Admittedly made that comment right before noticing the new article.  Oops…But also would be interesting to see the Diamondbacks especially, since they’ve got both Cron and Lamb as immediate options, with Smith and Beer as possible options depending on how they fare.  Plus, gives at least an option to make use of Tomas that isn’t a defensive drain.

Dan Szymborski: From taxi squad to DH, I have Arizona as team with 5th most benefit

Derek in Little Rock: Dan, were you as disappointed as me that you couldn’t play the Detroit Tigers over 56.5?

Dan Szymborski: I hadn’t gotten to the point at which I was seriously considering over/unders yet!

TooDamnTall: Can you make a Zips projection about how many rainbows I will see this year?

Dan Szymborski: I would imagine I need some rainbow data plus your region.

Dan Szymborski: I guess a combination of sunlight/humidity and historical rainbow data?

Insert Clever Name Here: Also quite a few fans use the argument of “If you don’t like it, just find another job”.

Guest: Dan check your slack.

Dan Szymborski: I don’t see any notes in my slack

gifman: ZiPS seems WAR agnostic (as in it projects a lot of related things, but there’s no zWAR that I know of), how would you alter the stand WAR framework if you were to generate your own?

Dan Szymborski: For one, I’d have positional value change long term

Dan Szymborski: and two, I’d use an adjusted FIP, regressed differently based on a player’s history.

Dan Szymborski: I believe you should treat Tom Glavine’s 1992 WAR differently in 2005 than you would in 1992

Alex: Great revenue idea for fangraphs inspired by seeing you on ESPN yesterday.

Alex: Didnt finish my question

Dan Szymborski: We still have a deal with ESPN!

Dbo: Do you make up not getting bullied in HS by hosting a chat where random strangers bully you about your opinions on chili and sandwiches?

Dan Szymborski: Am I being bullied?

Dan Szymborski: I thought we were having an amiable exchange of crazy ideas.

pepper: “but some opinions are less valid than others”.   sure, that’s true.   But the judgement on what is a less valid opinion, is also an opinion and that is driven by your own personal bias rather than anything that can be factually proven.   “less valid than others” is just a fancy way to say to the other person….I think you’re an idiot and so I choose to be dismissive of what you said.

Dan Szymborski: Sometimes, you gotta do that.

Dan Szymborski: ATTN: MURRAY CHASS

LFC Mike: Dan  without ads you have PBS. For every Downton Abbey  you get the guy painting trees for an hour then he hangs the picture up in a low end motel near the airport.

Dan Szymborski: I WANNA BE BOB ROSS

Lorenzo: List these classic shows in order of preference of binge watching:  The Simpsons, Beavis and Butthead, Family Guy.

Dan Szymborski: Simpsons FG B&B

John and Jeff: Did you see Bauer’s tweet calling the owners’ media based strategies out? I imagina it’s time to leak some more dirt on Bauer

Dan Szymborski: I haven’t actually seen that one!

Joe: “Yeah, but I’m not troubled by bad opinions. I’m sure I have some too.”

Joe: “Yeah, but I’m not troubled by bad opinions. I’m sure I have some too.”
Like, say, chili orthodoxy.

Dan Szymborski: No, I’m sure about that one.

TooDamnTall: If forced into a fight, are you a puncher, a kicker or a rassler?

Dan Szymborski: wrestler

Fired Guy: Dan, what kind of article do you hate writing but it does okay numbers and so you do it anyway?

Dan Szymborski: THAT IS A SECRET

Fired Guy: The ad-free membership really is a game changer.

Blue Morpho: Is this the type of season that benefits implementing many rule changes or do you think it would be better playing them out in a normal season?

Dan Szymborski: I rather see goofy rule changes in a OMG WE JUST NEED THEM TO PLAY season

Dan Szymborski: rather than a normal one

Bologna Tugboat: I mean, yeah. Coaches are grossly overpaid just like every other professional athlete, considering what they do. I truly believe universities are the ones getting off the hook here. Between their endowments and exceedingly inflated tuition rates, most universities (especially private) are collectively ripping off American families an an annual basis. Like, Ivy league schools are receiving bailouts right now…what???

Dan Szymborski: The issue is fairly complex — a high percentage of endowments are targeted to specific things — and I’m not educated enough in the data to have a strong opinion

Guest: Whoops, missed the chat again!

Dan Szymborski: THERE STILL SOME CHAT TO SQUEEZE OUT OF OUR CHAT SPEAKING MOUTHS

Woody: Is the proposed taxi squad is just a substitute for the AAA team since the minors won’t be playing this year? Do you think they will get more MLB time than ordinary AAA players? Does that make guys like Jo Adell worth drafting?

Dan Szymborski: I think largely so.

Dan Szymborski: And possibly.

Dan Szymborski: I think teams that are out of it will go to minor leaguers much faster than usual assuming this is how the taxi squad goes

Dan Szymborski: MLB hasn’t specifically said there’s no minor league season but realistically…there’s no minor league season

Dan Szymborski: I think you would need COVID-19 to just POOF disappear and I dont’ think it’s going to do that.

Dan Szymborski: There’s a financial motivation to have an MLB season there isn’t for milb, sadly.

Questionless amusement: I’m sure you’ve answered this a million times, but how do you handle managerial competence in ZIPS team projections.  For instance, the managers that play their veterans rather than younger players, resulting in de-optimization or de-randomization?  Maybe fewer of those managers, but does it ever show up in a retrospective look at results (recognizing health is a much larger factor).

Dan Szymborski: I try to guess what the team is going to do in their depth charts.

Dan Szymborski: Not much of an effort otherwise

gifman: Say in 20 years you’re thinking of retiring- would you ever put ZiPS in the public domain? Just put the file on github or whatever and let people make changes that you oversee? How much is your job stability tied to ZiPS vs. your ability to interpret it? I think it could be super cool to put a ZiPSlite on github and see how people alter it, letting FG host it on player pages, etc

Dan Szymborski: I haven’t really considered what to do eventually.

Dan Szymborski: And I’m also not sure about my job stability in that sense becuase I don’t hire me.

Dan Szymborski: In other words, I’m not sure WHY people keep giving me money for certain.

Alex: Great advertising idea for fangraphs after seeing your espn article yesterday: Like European soccer teams, they should loan out some of the writing talent to other contributors and let you advertise that you’re from fangraphs (the authors keep the money, not fangraphs). Don’t know if this would work and the other sites probably wouldn’t go for it, but I thought it was an interesting way to possibly bring in more site traffic. Thoughts?

Dan Szymborski: Dunno, this is more Dave’s department than mine.

Dan Szymborski: I am gleefully happy to be paid to NOT have to worry about those things.

gifman: Eric (and Kiley) seemed to have a bias towards specific spin/release angle patterns for pitcher projection (high spin, vertical slot, etc). Have you looked into how much those factors add to a projection system?

Dan Szymborski: Still very early in this data

Zack: Presuming that 2021 is a “normal” style season, how much of your day is spent debating how much to factor whatever 2020 is into the projections? I assume it depends so much on what (if any?) we get…in the worst-case scenario where we get no baseball (SORRY), do you just age everyone a year and re-run 2020?

Dan Szymborski: Weirdly, 1994 and 1981 didn’t make projections worse.

Dan Szymborski: Which I’m still figuring out because it’s the opposite of what I expect.

BarryBondsJuicedForOurSins: Quick, don’t think, first name: Most underrated player in baseball is _______

Dan Szymborski: Bobby

Isolated Thinker: Did you ever heavily invest in a player’s rookie card?  I have about 20 Hensley “Bam Bam” Meulens cards if anyone is interested.

Dan Szymborski: I didn’t. I just liked opening packs.

Questionless amusement: Similar to Arizona question, getting Howie extra at bats has to help Nats.

Dan Szymborski: Nats are hurt on the other side by weaker high minors depth

pepper: For example, does anyone think the minor leaguers are being paid appropriately?   Let’s say we agree that these folks are underpaid.    I suppose someone could hold an opinion that we should boycott, protest and hold a crusade to change the world to how we think the world should be.   OR….we could say that the decision to enter the minor leagues is a personal choice to willingly accept less pay in hopes of a larger pay-off down the road.   I see no reason to deprive myself of a personal pleasure, which a boycott would do, in order to rectify a wrong that the minor leaguers willingly accepted.   but I’m sure mine is just a less valid opinion….lol.

Dan Szymborski: I think I disagree with you, but I don’t think it’s a Chass-level thing!

Dan Szymborski: I don’t feel right, in most cases, imposing my values on other free parties.

John and Jeff: Nancy Meyers: can she make a bad movie?

Dan Szymborski: I didn’t particularly care for I love trouble

gifman: If you were a team with a strength in one area (say swing changers, you’re good at getting high EV GB guys to get to LDs like LAD), would you draft players that you think you can optimize, or draft players you’re bad at developing and pick players you can optimize off the scrap heap?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think I’d have an overlapping philosophy of this type

Downstairs Quinter: Aren’t fans inherently on the side of ownership due to the fact that we root for teams? It’s tough to imagine a fan getting excited for Albert Pujols huge contract if it means a decade of mediocre or worse teams, for example. Or is it that it’s easier to identify a player who “doesn’t deserve” his salary based on performance, but much harder to do so for an owner

Dan Szymborski: It’s possibel: the laundry factor

LFC Mike: Dan..  what’s for dinner and are you making enough for all of us?

Dan Szymborski: Pizza and no

TooDamnTall: Shijiazhuang, China

Dan Szymborski: what happened? is this a rainbow question?

No, Your Name!: Is there a reason zips doesn’t forecast quality starts?

Dan Szymborski: I never really thought about it is all

Pass The Boof: Most underrated sandwich? Most overrated?

Dan Szymborski: underrated croque madame

Dan Szymborski: overrated po’boy

LFC Mike: Dan  How about a “Chili Wars”  podcast. You could really cut loose…expand your brand…

pepper: Well, if you want to drop Murray Chass bombs, who can argue?   but if you are trying to weigh opposing opinions of (a) we should boycott baseball to get better minor league pay and (b) if a player doesn’t think the pay is reasonable, then find another job……I’m willing to accept that I strongly disagree with one of those without being dismissive of the person offering the opinion.

Scotty M: FanGraphs opinions 1. Draft is bad.  It holds down wages

Guest: Clase got 59 days of service last year, so he gets none this year? Of course the Indians get rewarded for dumping money.

Dan Szymborski: If there’s no season, the Red Sox make out like bandits in Mookie trade!

LK: Ty for the chat and the temporary escape from reality.  If you were given the opportunity to host a radio show and you can hire anyone to be your co-host, who would be the candidates?  Realistic and unrealistic choices.

Dan Szymborski: I’d love to do a radio show wiht one of The Greatest Generation guys.

Dan Szymborski: Realistically, another baseball writer would be more practical

Dan Szymborski: I’d love to do one with Todd Shapiro, who I did a lot with with Canada Laughs and Canada Talks on SiriusXM

Dan Szymborski: We always melded well.

Scotty M: FanGraphs opinions:  The draft is bad.  It holds down wages.  (Also FanGraphs) Shortening the draft is bad.  Can you explain better than Craig?

Dan Szymborski: I’m sure Craig was more detailed than this!

Dan Szymborski: But eseentially, it comes down to first principles.

Dan Szymborski: I’m sure I have some very differing principles from people here and my colleagues.

Dan Szymborski: A lot of things that people say must be a right, I don’t think is a right. I think many of these things are *nice* but not rights.

Dan Szymborski: But I rub salt and vinegar seasoning in my eyes than talk politics so that’s as far as I’ll go

Zack: When people talk “millionaires” for the players, they always forget that these guys’ careers are so short. if you take an average person’s five-figure salary and value it over 30-40 years of work, vs how short an average MLB career is, its more understandable. It isnt Gerritt Cole, but its more relatable.

Zack: Players come and go, the fans (and by default, the owner) stick around longer.

LFC Mike: Make your mom tacos tonight…be a good son.

Dan Szymborski: I’m going over to make pizza for her

Dan Szymborski: So I’m nto making enough for you all

TooDamnTall: You seem like a fairly lovable curmudgeon Dan, but how often do you lose your shit on someone?

Dan Szymborski: Like seriously losing shit? Almost never.

Dan Szymborski: My outrage is more frustrated bemused bluster. I’m rarely actually *angry* about anything.

Blue Morpho: Will your patented “It’s April” answer simply carry over to whichever month the season starts and will it have the same meaning?

Dan Szymborski: Of course and absolutely.

John and Jeff: Does Terminator: Dark Fate know their kill box was like a giant open warehouse with many exits? Such a dumb movie, waste of Mackenzie Davis

Dan Szymborski: I haven’t seen it!

Caveman Jones: Would you go to a baseball game if it was 50% capacity seating? 25%?

Dan Szymborski: Dunno.

Pass the Boof: Word. Po’boys can kick rocks.

FanGraphs = BestGraphs: What’s the latest on the subscription front?  How many more friends do I need to convince to pony up?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t have the latest numbers, but it’s always helpful.

Dan Szymborski: Only peopel that have the wherewithal of course

Bologna Tugboat: Subjective of course, but I think my overall point is that the value received vs. price in regards to our modern university system is way out of wack, especially considering the resources/alternative learning opportunities the average American has at their disposal when compared to 20-30 years ago. Student debt is crippling.

Dan Szymborski: I don’t disagree, but I imagine my solution would be VERY different than to most people reading this.

Dan Szymborski: OK guys, I have tto go over to mom’s and make pizza dough.

Dan Szymborski: So I will see you all next week! Fun chat and thanks for all the cool Qs.