Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat – 5/16/24

Dan Szymborski: There’s a time for every purpose under heaven, even SzymChat

Guest: why is ZiPS still so in on Jack Suwinski’s bat?

Dan Szymborski: One thing is I’m not sure taht wRC+ is working correctly on the FG page at the moment

Dan Szymborski: But it’s still an extremely small sample

Dan Szymborski: and full fat ZiPS isn’t that much more negative

Guest: With the new BatCast data, do you think it will turn out to be better to have tightly clustered A and B swings (in terms of length or bat speed), or to have a smooth continuum?

Dan Szymborski: Honestly, I’m not sure yet

Edward: Who does zips think grabs the lions share of the NYY C position going forward? Both great framers and strengths offensively

Dan Szymborski: Not sure ZiPS really has an opinion o that type

Dan Szymborski: I expect the amount of the job Wells grabs to be how much his bat plays

Maino: Is NYY bullpen a mirage?

Dan Szymborski: To an extent, but not Holmes

Gio: I feel like I need to stick with Jorge Soler – and reactivate him when he comes off of the IL this week – but I’m wondering if he’s going to bounce back.  What do you think?

Dan Szymborski: Mildly confident maybe?

Dan Szymborski: It was always going to be a bit of a struggle in the park he was in

Dan Szymborski: And if MLB’s monkeying with the baseballs again, I can see it hurting Soler more than the average palyer

Despair: Say some bad things about the Cardinals for the sake of my catharsis please

Dan Szymborski: I had a very mean AI thread yesterday

the person who asks the lunch question: what’s for lunch?

Dan Szymborski: I had a bowl of rice chex

Dan Szymborski: there’s chili in the slow cooker for later

Mary Kate Olsen: MARY. KATE. OLSEN.

Boo the whats for lunch guy: Boooo !!!!

LookAtThisGraf: When are we getting the “Padres MVP Jurickson Profar” piece??

Dan Szymborski: Literal answer: when someone at FanGraphs wants to write that piece

Dan Szymborski: Actual answer: I imagine someone will be interested if he’s still good by the end of May

Angelus Novus: Highly unlikely to happen but could you see the Os doing a bats for arm trade and targeting Crochet? What would the return for CWS look like?

Dan Szymborski: That woudl be a FUN trade, but I’m not sure the White Sox could get peak value from him now

Dan Szymborski: for him

Dan Szymborski: It remains to be seen how he’ll hold up in a full season to a starter workload, even a 2024 starter one

Judge: Judge, 1st 100 PAs: .183/.320/.354, .304 wOBA, 98 wRC+, 3 HRs, 46.3% hard-hit%, 11.1% barrel%, 0.3 fWAR
Judge, Next 98 PAs: .329/.454/.734, .496 wOBA, 231 wRC+, 8 HRs, 72.1% hard-hit, 26.2% barrel, 1.8 fWAR
1st in HR, SLG, wOBA, wRC+, hard-hit%, barrel%, and WAR in those 98.

Dan Szymborski: Turns out he’s good at hitting balls. Who knew?

Bobby Witless: Hey, are the Royals a thing, or is this a mirage? (You can’t answer “April!” anymore.)

Dan Szymborski: Yes…ish?

Alex: Do players get “punished” or “rewarded” in defensive ratings like OAA or UZR if another player makes a catch in the first players “area”?

Dan Szymborski: This talks about it towards the bottom IIRC

Dan Szymborski: https://www.sportingnews.com/us/mlb/news/mlb-advanced-stats-statcast-d…

Kyle Tucker Career: have you run Tucker’s rest of career projections? Is he reasonably likely to put up a HoF career with 400 hrs and 300 steals? Or is he more of a Shawn Green comparison

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS has him a bit short, 2163 H, 384 HR, 234 SB, 49.6 WAR

Dan Szymborski: so above green

Dan Szymborski: JAWS of 39.9

Dan Szymborski: Which puts him around Stanton (which is also where Stanton is likely tend up), Staub, Parker and those guys

Dan Szymborski: But ahead of Baines, who along with Morris, has become the WTF Veterans Committee example that tons of players are better than

Idiotic Failson: Do the Astros make the playoffs?

Dan Szymborski: I think they’re rather coinflippy

Dan Szymborski: The AL West hasn’t pulled away while they where down

Dan Szymborski: And as the pitching comes back, they get more dangerous

Dan Szymborski: The wins required for WC2 and WC3 have dropped quite a bit in ZiPS

Joe: Adley Rutschman is having his best offensive season, but he’s walking way less than league average, has one of the slowest swings in baseball, and is chasing everything. Yet he’s hitting the ball harder than he ever has. Explain?

Dan Szymborski: He has a contact % way over average and given how hard he’s hitting things, he’s incentivized to be aggressive more

Dan Szymborski: I’d have to think about it. He’d probably be fifth if he made it

Dan Szymborski: but I’m in Cincy BBWAA, so it’s unlikely I’ll be voting for AL Cy under any circumstances

Dan Szymborski: If they needed someone to cover an AL chapter with not enough voters and reached out to me, I’d suggest they reach out to Jay, who STILL hasn’t voted ina  year-end award because NY is so ddeep

Dan Szymborski: Oh, I didn’t paste the question

Will: Is Mason Miller on your early-season Cy Young ballot?

Dan Szymborski: That was the Q

Jack: Good afternoon (EDT)! I’d like to know how you decide what games to watch in a day. Starting pitchers? Teams? Leverage index?

Dan Szymborski: Mostly chaos

Dan Szymborski: Depends on what I’m doing at any given time

Guest: With several scouts and higher ranking baseball minds saying they have never seen such a talent gap between AAA and MLB, does zips projections need to be recalibrated to show this gap in futurre releases? One name comes to mind if Wyatt Langford.  He looked like a hall of famer in minors ( A, AA , AAA) but  has been less than replacement in decent MLB PA sample size.  His projection seems way to generous for 2024.

Dan Szymborski: I’ve looked at it, and in early over/underperformance, I haven’t found anything substantial

Dan Szymborski: Langford’s projection was unusually aggressive

Dan Szymborski: I think some of the perception is that people dont’ necessarily get just how massive the difference in offense between AAA and MLB is right now

Dan Szymborski: MLB is at 4.3 R/G now. International League is 5.2 and Pacific Coast at 5.8

Dan Szymborski: Basically a AAA pitcher’s translation at the moment is their actual AAA numbers

Dan Szymborski: while the difference in translation for AAA hitter and MLB hitter is more akin to the typical relationship between AA and MLB

V: Dan, i know this isn’t your department but Roster Resource is borderline unusable on Chrome

Dan Szymborski: Like right now? Or always?

Dan Szymborski: I used it this morning and didn’t notice anything]

Dan Szymborski: and I use Chrome

Rabbit ball question continuation: If the league hadn’t changed the rabbit ball, which disproportionately impacted guys like Bregman, Rendom, and Yelich, would those players have been easy hall of fame superstars? How many other ball/rule changes in history have impacted guys similarly for the better or worse?

Dan Szymborski: Rendon’s larger issue has been injuries; I don’t think a ball change did that to him

Dan Szymborski: and I’m not sure it disproportionally affected Yelich either

Dan Szymborski: he’s never been a huge loft guy

Dan Szymborski: And I’m not sure how much we can blame for Bregman. It could just have very well been an age 24-25 peak

Yosef: Hi Dan, which other statistic do you think can be combined with the new bat tracking data to help accurately evaluate player projections?

Dan Szymborski: I’m not venturing a guess until there are more years of data

Dan Szymborski: because there are always surprises

Grandal Richuk: Is there any hope for the Cardinals getting sold? I do not trust this ownership/management combo and they seem inseparable

Dan Szymborski: No idea.

Dan Szymborski: I talked a bit about their conservatism on Twitter yesterday and why one of the team’s strengths has become their weakness when shit hit the fan

Coma Guy: Hey Dan! I just woke

Mint Chocolate Chip: When you rank MLB managers, where does Brandon Hyde fall on your list?

Dan Szymborski: Pretty high

Dan Szymborski: I don’t usually rank managers

Dan Szymborski: I think of them more in large buckets

M’s Fan: As Julio’s struggles continue, is there legitimate reason to be concerned?

Dan Szymborski: More concern than if it was just April, but patience is still a virture

Dan Szymborski: 40 games still is pretty small big picture

Dan Szymborski: 162 games is pretty small big picture

Dan Szymborski: People vastly overrate the stability of ANY player

Judge: Provided he avoids any outfield walls, Judge should clear 5 WAR easily again, which would be 6 times. What’s your number of 5 WAR years (chosen bc it’s a round number) where you’re like, okay, that’s enough peak for me? (Ignoring that he has two years way above 5)

Dan Szymborski: I don’t really have a concrete of strictly X years past Y threshold

Al: would love to see Oakland keep Miller but you kind of have to trade him right? Just don’t see how that arm doesn’t break eventually during control

Dan Szymborski: A’s probably should since it’s going to be years till the organization really tries

Justin: How do the zips in season projections work

Dan Szymborski: Simpler in season model so that it can be run every morning

Dan Szymborski: Basically remixes the projection with new information

Dan Szymborski: When I cquote “full fat” ZiPS, it’s the full model

Coma Guy: Hey Dan! I just woke up from a 10 year coma and missed a lot of stuff. How has the understanding about a pitcher’s influence on BABIP changed in that time?

Dan Szymborski: Not significantly

Dan Szymborski: Long term pitchers have an influence, but it’s still relatively minor, especially after you factor out their defenses

V: Could PCA give us a 50 drs season?

Dan Szymborski: Ima gonna guess no

HappyFunBall: Do you have opinion on this Very Important Sandwich Related Topic: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2024/05/15/tacos-Mexican-style-sandwiches… ?

Dan Szymborski: impeach the judge

171: Do the spaghetti AI images typically get generated on fast days or non-fast days?

Dan Szymborski: Depends what I’m doing

Dan Szymborski: if something is computationally intense and there’s a lot of waiting between stuff, I do more AI nonsense

Dan Szymborski:

Dan Szymborski: It’s not like I have to babysit anything while it runs a prompt 50 times

David Rubensplash: How should the Orioles address their lack of outfield production?

Dan Szymborski: Stay the course. They have the talent in house

Sad Ceddy: How do the Orioles fix their CF problem with Mullins turning into his 2019 version again? His statcast is pretty grim.

Dan Szymborski: I suspect they wait on him

Yosef Gewurtz: Does FanGraphs offer internships?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t believe we’ve offered one before

Dan Szymborski: We’re a small business, and I’m not sure we’d be ideal

Dan Szymborski: And individual writers work fairly independently

Dan Szymborski: and we’re all online

Dan Szymborski: A young writer who wants to get into baseball analytics would probably be best served, I think, by simply pitching an article about a subject

Dan Szymborski: and then get paid for it

McGraw45: At what point is it fair to abandon your team for another? Do you have to switch leagues if you do that? (NL->AL, e.g.)

Dan Szymborski: I think that’s a personal decision

>this guy<: Dan, re: The Athletic’s trio of pearl-clutching articles about the death knell of starters, isn’t it possible the decrease in innings is a result of playoff expansion? when an extra win for a .500- talent team can get them in a playoff game, doesn’t cycling through 5 relievers starting in the 4th inning in May make more sense? I heard a national Athletic baseball reporter I kinda enjoy call the the decrease in starting pitching “disturbing” and all I could think was “look out the window, please.”

Dan Szymborski: I think moral panics are a problem everywhere, including baseball

Dan Szymborski: Teams are simply less aggressive for a lot of reasons

Falastin: Which CLE extension do you think takes more priority: Josh Naylor or Steven Kwan ?

Dan Szymborski: naylor. he’s closer to FA easily

Yosef Gewurtz: which player has surprised you the most this season? (Either good or bad)

Dan Szymborski: Flaherty

Homer: Did I understand you correctly that Jay Jaffe hasn’t voted in a year end award in his career to date?  That seems like an indictment of the voter selection criteria as much as NY state having a deep baseball journalist roster/minor league system

Dan Szymborski: correct

Dan Szymborski: unless he did one last year, I don’t think I’ve talked with him about it since last year

Dan Szymborski: but I don’t think he did

Dan Szymborski: BBWAA chapter heads assign the awards

Dan Szymborski: Cincinnati has like 10-12 people active at a time and not all want to vote

Dan Szymborski: so giving out votes is really easy

Dan Szymborski: Cincy has 11 right now

Dan Szymborski: McCoy, Wittenmeyer, Rosecrans, Jablonski, Snyder, Sheldon, Szymborski, Goldsmith, Stacy, Shusterman, Jason Williams

Dan Szymborski: By my count, New York chapter has 133 members

Dan Szymborski: out of 681 badges

Dan Szymborski: Milwaukee has 8

JasonKendall: Why are we still Rowdy Tellezing?

Dan Szymborski: The Pirates think there’s a position called mediocre first baseman

John B: Do you think Mozeliak has a plan B or C or D or E or F

Dan Szymborski: I posted them!

Dan Szymborski:

Dan Szymborski:

Dan Szymborski:

Dan Szymborski:

Dan Szymborski:

Dan Szymborski:

Belli: Bellinger would love a return to the 2019 ball

Dan Szymborski: Bellinger has the weirdest profile

Dan Szymborski: nothing ever seems to match what he’s doing, good or bad

Dan Szymborski: like last year, there evidence seemed to be the higher BA stuff was more sustainable than the power

Dan Szymborski: yet the power stayed this year and the higher BA stuff has eroded

Guest: Is FG still updating Asian league stats? I don’t see any NPB stats for La Tortuga. Does that mean he isn’t getting into games there, or just not updated on the site?

Dan Szymborski: We still update KBO

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think we ever had NPB

Reuben: Have you incorporated FG FV into your model? One of the things that always sort of bugged me about age*level in the model was the enormous amount of subjective scouting info was being estimated by that data.

Dan Szymborski: I do not

Boston baseball guy: The admission by the royals owner was refreshing but MLB holding teams ransom for tax payer money leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Makes me want to support mlb less. Do you think some owners realize that behavior turns off fans from their product or do they only care about the $?

Dan Szymborski: They know at the end of the day, most people don’t care about whether or not public money goes to something they like

Dan Szymborski: and that’s not matter what they support on the spectrum

Dan Szymborski: I’m against stadium funding because I’m a technocratic geolibertarian good government-er. And there are probably about 60 people in the US who agree with me.

Steveshu113: Love your work, Dan. Do you. see any rebound by Mullins? He could very easily be in a P/T role with all the talent on the team. Also, can Gleyber Torres rebound from this slow start? He seems to be pressing and his Statcast data is underwhelming.

Dan Szymborski: I think SOME rebound. What helps him is that the O’s aren’t quite as stacked iN CF candidates

Dan Szymborski: most of their OF prospects are corner types

Dan Szymborski: and with the offense cruising, Mullins would get a lot of rope even without him having such a long tenure

Homer: Do any projection/player value assessment systems attempt to correct at all for poor umpiring?  Been watching Acuna strike out looking on bad calls on balls out of the zone a lot this year but also seeing people discuss his “difficult making contact” – which made me think this direction

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS doesn’t

Dan Szymborski: Since ZiPS is looking at the big picture and it’s unlikely someone faces enough bad umpiring to have a real effect

Dan Szymborski: (though as with all things, I’m eager to be proved wrong and thus learning something more accurately)

Matt: Is there a way to project what the Phillies and Braves records would be if they swapped schedules? Seen people bring up the Phillies easy schedule so far a lot but not sure how much difference it really makes over 40 games. Couple wins?

Dan Szymborski: Probably not a huge difference

Broken Bat: What purpose did the Marlin FO gain in announcing Schumacher won’t return before then season started?

Dan Szymborski: It seems to have been fairly mutual, but it’s always hard to tell the truth of these thigns

Vacuum your place: Has intermittent fasting changed your life at all?

Dan Szymborski: No

Man who creates spaghetti images for a living: Why are you trying to put me out of a job with AI:(

Dan Szymborski: There aren’t enough spaghetti image creating jobs to serve me

Dan Szymborski: For those curious, I like spaghetti IA

Dan Szymborski: AI

Dan Szymborski:

Dan Szymborski:

Dan Szymborski:

Dan Szymborski:

Dan Szymborski:

Dan Szymborski:

Dan Szymborski: OK, thkat’s probably enough

YorDaddy: When can Astros fans be optimistic again?

Dan Szymborski: I think already they can be

jmichaelpenn: Does Oneil Cruz become the first Pirate to hit 40 HRs since Willie Stargell in 1973?

Dan Szymborski: I think it’s a very real possibility

Dan: If a student said they wanted work on research for you in exchange for a letter of recommendation what answer is closest to the truth: that could work, no that would be unfair to you, or no it would be to hard to incorperate your work into my creative flow so this has no value to me?

Dan Szymborski: I would encourage them to do their own research project that they get the credit for

Dan Szymborski: and if they’d like, pitch it to FanGraphs and get paid for it

Dan Szymborski: and have a professional credit

Dan Szymborski: And I’ll give a letter of recommendation only based on work that I read

Dan Szymborski: I don’t need people to do my work for me

Dan Szymborski: and anyone who does the stuff I do should work for their benefit, not mine

Dan Szymborski: I’m just a dumbass baseball writer with a useful secondary skillset

Stu: Did you make more than the 3 prediction cereals? They were so funny.

Dan Szymborski: I ended up making like 20!

Dan Szymborski: This is still the best one

Dan Szymborski:

Louie’s Arise: Is it too early to crown Javier Assad our new King of FIP Defiance?

Dan Szymborski: Yes

Dan Szymborski: though it is likely he has at least SOMEWHAT of an ability

Dan Szymborski: But with his BF, you still expect to see about 80% regression toward defense-adjusted FIP

Stantonian blast: What’s your short list for guys who should already be in? (Mine is Kevin Brown)

Dan Szymborski: Brown’s on there

Dan Szymborski: Grich, Whitaker

Dan Szymborski: He acts like a complete douchenozzle at every opportunity, but Schilling

John B: Baseball trade values is now subscription.  You really need to add something like this to zips/fangraphs.  It’s an awesome tool

Dan Szymborski: I’ve conisdered pitching the idea

Dan Szymborski: But I’m not sure how much of it ends up becoming a full-time job

jack: Does Coby Mayo represent an upgrade at any position for the Os right now in which he can realistically play

Dan Szymborski: Weirdly, probably not

Dan Szymborski: and that’s mostly because Os’

Judee: For what it’s worth, i just read a study that said intermittent fasting leads to much higher heart death than other forms of eating control…stay well

Dan Szymborski: True, but that was also survey data and didn’t really examine cause-and-effect

Dan Szymborski: and there are confounding variables

Dan Szymborski: Such as people more willing to go to intermittent feasting are likely the ones with the most pressing need to lose weight

Dan Szymborski: which would also tend to correlate with cardio events

Dan Szymborski: While my blood pressure and cholesterol are fine, my doctor was fine with it since it’s effective

Judee: “I don’t need people to do my work for me”

Judee: While we’re on the topic, if you’re not paying for FG, you should be.  That is all

Yosef Gewurtz: which AI Photo generator do you use?

Dan Szymborski: Midjourney for some things, Bing for others. Stability Diffusion when I’m feeling like not being lazy

Pirate: As a projection system guru, what do you make of the incredibly bullish Steamer projection Paul Skenes has? 2.88 FIP! Curious more of what you think Steamer is doing here

Dan Szymborski: it FEELS aggressive, but I don’t know the extend of data Jared’s using

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS uses college data when it HAS to

Guest: Hi Dan — I think you might have been tossed this question already but my friend and I are trying to come up with a way to graph playoff probabilities throughout the year for seasons pre-2016. For this example we are currently looking to graph the close ‘03 and ‘04 playoff races between the Yankees and Red Sox and how each teams probabilities swung throughout the year similar to how Fangraphs does this currently. Do you have any thoughts on how we might be able to accomplish this?? Would be super helpful. Thanks so much.

Dan Szymborski: oh lord

Dan Szymborski: you’d rpobably have to design a small sim

Dan Szymborski: with a dynamically changing rough estimate of team quality

General Musings: Have you ever been to the Dan River in North Carolina?

Dan Szymborski: No, but I might try and avoid it if it’s named because they drown Dans in that river

General Prattling: You get to pick any player who was born before 1500 AD and plop them in the batters box.  You have a few minutes to teach them the game and get some practice swings in.  If they get a hit off a random highschool pitcher, you win $10 million dollars.  Who are you picking?

Dan Szymborski: I dunno, Richard I? He was a pretty big dude and reportedly pretty athletic

Yosef Gewurtz: In your opinion, what is the best way to get into, and stay within the baseball analytics industry?

Dan Szymborski: Have the most people read your work

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

Dan Szymborski: thanks for coming everyone!