Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat – 5/25/23

Dan Szymborski: It is chat time!

Well-Beered Englishman: What’s a weird historical hot take you had that you can fess up to? This morning, I was remembering when I used to think, “How will the Angels make room for Mike Trout when they already have Peter Bourjos?”

Dan Szymborski: I liked the Soriano-Wilkerson trade. The Wilkerson part.

Blake: Is Mitch Haniger going to get it going?

Dan Szymborski: To an extent.

Ray: When does Shane McClanahan get universally recognized as a top five pitcher in baseball?

Dan Szymborski: Maybe I’m in a bubble, but I think people are already at that point.

The Ghost of Bobby Thigpen: Hi Dan. In the last Power Rankings, the White Sox were estimated to have around a 6% chance at the playoffs.

Does that feel low to me because the division is hot garbage? Or am I being overly optimistic that they are only 5.5 games back?

Dan Szymborski: The number of teams is as important as the games

Dan Szymborski: And there are three teams in the sameish position as the Sox

Grayson Rodriguez: How much hope is there for him still? He looks overmatched at the big league level, and seems like he’s lost his command since the injury.

Dan Szymborski: Plenty of hope. When he’s cruising, he’s been downright solid

Dan Szymborski: But there always seems to be an inning with thim in which everything blows up

Tim: How does ZiPS handle projections for switch hitters who stop batting from both sides (hopefully Ozzie)?

Dan Szymborski: It doesn’t, really, until after the event.

Scot: Any idea whats been up with Kevin Alcántara’s BB rate this year? It went from 12% in 21, 11% in 22 to 3.8% this year. I get higher level of comp, but his K% has basically stayed the same. Thats odd, no? Thanks.

Dan Szymborski: It’s certainly a concern, though I wouldn’t go into full panic about that

Dan Szymborski: it’s too bad that he’s not in AAA since better statcast things available

Dan Szymborski: Would really need to dig into his swing rate which I can’t really get here right now

Guest: Should the Giants make Casey Schmitt the starting shortstop for the rest of the year? Crawford’s defense looks like its fallen off a cliff

Dan Szymborski: I think he should be starting most days

Dan Szymborski: I wrote about Schmitt last week

Dan Szymborski: Unfortunate, the site is having hiccups at the moment

Bryce Miller: How long do you think he can keep getting away with throwing fastballs 70% of the time? He’s shown he is capable of utilizing his offspeed pitches more, such as during his third start vs Detroit, but overall he’s relied heavily on his fastball.

Dan Szymborski: I do think he has to stretch out eventually.

Kyle: Are you a believer in Miller (SP)?

Dan Szymborski: Yup

Guest: Have you done a study of which teams are best at player development? Maybe take the projected 5 year WAR for the teams’ prospects and compare to the actual WAR for that time period?

Dan Szymborski: I haven’t

Dan Szymborski: The site’s being worked on as we speak

BABIP: Were you surprised to see the BABIP on <75mph fly balls be over 0.600? It certainly matches the eyeball test with the frustrating little bloopers ending up in no-man’s land

Dan Szymborski: I wasn’t, but I also knew the data beforehand! lol

Dan Szymborski: Those little slow ones just fall onto the ground before an OF can get to it

Derek Lowe: Do Groundball pitchers break expected stats? We keep hearing guys like Stroman, Elder, Cobb are bound to regress, but the 10 top GB% starters are all significantly outperforming their expected stats outside of Ashcraft. 9/10 is a significant trend and most of those are outperforming xERA and xFIP by over a run!

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS doesn’t have a problem. I haven’t tested Statcast’s implementation

Bird Crap: Hey Dan, do you rerun the ZIPS prospect projections or update the list in-season? I’m wondering if Jordan Westburg’s performance so far has moved the needle at all for ZIPS. (It hasn’t for Eric’s list, he’s still outside The List). Can you give me a back of the napkin 80th percentile projection for him? I don’t really understand why he isn’t up yet, 40 man roster be damned.

Dan Szymborski: I don’t usually en masse during the season

Bird Crap: Also…those City Connect uniforms have gotten panned by the interwebs…but I think they are decent, maybe a little better. Your thoughts? Is the lack of a crab a criminal omission?

Dan Szymborski: I’m kind of meh on them

Dan Szymborski: Don’t need a crab

Dan Szymborski: but I tend to like the uniforms if they look good and have some connection to the team and not just the city

Dan Szymborski: Some of them are just uninteresting

Dan Szymborski: and some just cram too much stuff into them

Dan Szymborski: and they end up like this

Dan Szymborski:

Dan Szymborski: I think Braves have the best City Connect so far

Dan Szymborski: A lot of it ends up being like

Dan Szymborski: Hey, let’s put a ocelot on the jersey. Random? Well, if you were a TRUE fan of this city you would know Dali visited this city once in 1951

Lucas: Who wins the AL East and can they send four teams to the playoffs?

Dan Szymborski: They can and they may. Money’s still on the Rays

Sodo Mojo: Is Bryce Miller for Robbie Ray an upgrade ROS or is he going to crash to earth soon?

Dan Szymborski: I mean, Ray’s not throwing any more injuries…

Rip Calkin: If you’re the O’s, do you mess with success by trying to work in Cowser/Westburg/Ortiz (more than to date)? Or do you let things ride as long as the winning continues? Elias has been fairly dogmatic in his commitment to the long-term so far, but seems caught in a dilemma now.

Dan Szymborski: You always mess with success

Dan Szymborski: When you don’t mess with success, you’re chasing yesterday’s victories again

Oh Oh Oh O’rioles: Are we nearing Westburg time? Gunnar and Mateo have been pretty meh, as has 2B.

Dan Szymborski: Hopefully he won’t displace Gunnar

Didace: So, you like City Connect that looks just like old uniforms?

Dan Szymborski: No, but I do want to see some kind if unifying element

Wes: Do the 10 people in this chat making the A’s pitching staff have to audition or is it more of a dibs system? I’ll call dibs now just in case.

Dan Szymborski: It’s whoever’s willing to work for fame, I think

Justin: If you could own any piece of baseball memorabilia what would it be?

Dan Szymborski: I’d like to get a ball from the first game I have memory of, a Mike Boddicker start against the Red Sox

Thought Experiment: If MLB were to expand, how do you think the expansion process would work? Would there be an expansion draft and a major league team playing right away, or would a new organization be allowed to spend a couple years building up a farm system before fielding a big league roster?

Dan Szymborski: The latter, like with Arizona/TBV

Dan Szymborski: TV

Dan Szymborski: TB

Cave Dameron: How chunky do you like your peanut butter?

Dan Szymborski: Very

Sadtrombone: It seems like ZiPS still thinks the A’s have an above-replacement team going forward. Is the only way to change its mind jettisoning the vets off the roster? Or is it just against the nature of ZiPS to project above replacement performance?

Dan Szymborski: Replacement level is REALLY bad

Dan Szymborski: and the teams that lose the least and the teams that win the most are the least likely to be in close approximation of their median outcomes

Dan Szymborski: Kinda like how MOST lottery winners are having a lucky day

Dan Szymborski: Nobody has the MEAN outlook of winning the lottery, but lottery winners exist

Dan Szymborski: Teams that win 45 games are far more likely to be unfortunate 50-win teams than fortunate 40-win ones

Dan Szymborski: A .350 hitter is more likely to be a fortunate .320 hitter, not an unlucky .380 one

Syndergaardengnomes: Why are the Mets so reluctant to just plugging Vientos in at DH and moving on to other issues?  Yes, he will strike out.  He will also likely outhit Vogelbach and Pham…

Dan Szymborski: There’s a real vein of conservatism in a lot of their decision making

I draw my sword at thee, Mercutio: Any update on our feline friends?

Dan Szymborski: Justinian is asleep on the top of the PC

Dan Szymborski: my main one

Dan Szymborski: I’m not doing anything right now that requires me chasing him off

Dan Szymborski: Everything runs about 6 degrees C hotter when he’s sleeping on top, so I don’t want to do anything particularly CPU hungry

Dan Szymborski: The other three last I checked were looking through the kitchen screen because there was a long-haired black cat hanging around in the backyard and they all had to stare

Dreamin: If there was any component of play that isn’t measurable at the moment you could make measurable what would it be?

Dan Szymborski: I would love to have a brain readout of the exact instant a player makes the decision to swing or not swing

M: If you could only pick one, would you rather your favorite team have elite pitching or elite hitting and why?

Dan Szymborski: Elite hitting because injury

fewer than the A’s: any ideas on how the Guardians offense could be improved?

Dan Szymborski: I think they’re too aggressive at the plate. They’re a good contact team, but their quality of contact has been sub-meh

Dan Szymborski: And contrary to conventional wisdom, contact teams are streakier offenses than teams wiht similar runs scored that hit a lot of homers

KatzOnAKeyboard: Is there a way to tell when a stat should see some regression? Looking at Brash’s BABIP it feels like that has to go down at some point, yet he just keeps on getting BABIPed

Dan Szymborski: It’s not a linear or a binary thing

SoJo: Cat hair isn’t good for your RAM…

Dan Szymborski: The top is an exhaust

Dan Szymborski: I get far more cat hair from the front intake

Dan Szymborski: which I do have to clean out regularly

Meowsa: I work in the field of Data Engineering (essentially, building pipelines for data to flow through). Is this something MLB teams need? I don’t really know what the scale of data an MLB team will deal with at any given time.

Dan Szymborski: If something you do is useful, a team will want it

Dan Szymborski: The best way to get a job in baseball is solve a problem a team has

Izzy: Is Riley Greene finally great at baseball?

Dan Szymborski: I certianly hope so, I had him on my breakout list!

Chad Ogea: Which current MLB player would you pick to win an Olympic decathlon?

Dan Szymborski: Witt?

Dan Szymborski: One of the fastest and a strong arm

Prime Number Hunt: When kitties aren’t asleep near the PC fans, have you used your processing power to hunt for mega-primes before?

Dan Szymborski: no

jas: Given the way the Cardinals brass has handled personnel decisions this year, do you find it kind of surprising how consistently good they’ve been? It looks more and more like it was a run of things consistently breaking the right way, rather than being able to deftly maneuver around things that go wrong

Dan Szymborski: I think it’s a competent front office, but it’s a very risk-averse one

Dan Szymborski: and sometimes, when a lot of things go wrong, that has a real negative effect on your ability to handle it

petey: are some of the lower cost nats now developing trade value? Candelario, Williams, Thomas,..?

Dan Szymborski: SOME. People tend to overrate trade value of guys like this

Rob: Does MacKenzie Gore look like a #2, #3 or something else to you in peak?

Dan Szymborski: I think he’s sub ace. 2/3ish sounds about wright

Un-ionization: Do you believe MLB front office employees will begin to bargain workplace rights, or at least to keep their electrons for themselves?

Dan Szymborski: I would guess no.

Dan Szymborski: There’s not really a lot of leverage

El Mago: Javier Baez has stopped striking out.  After leading NL with 184 Ks in 547 PA in 2021, he improved to 147 Ks in 590 PA with Tigers in 2022.  This year Baez’s 590 PA K-pace is down to 107.  Is Javy without Ks like bald Samson?

Dan Szymborski: His contact rate has been trending upward. Problem is, he’s also hitting less hard too

Meowsa: Re:Olympics: Tyler o Neil?

Ross: Are you buying the Kelenic breakout?

Dan Szymborski: increasingly

Meowsa: Would you be willing to have your cats be in a movie where they start playing baseball for the Oakland As? Which is most likely to accrue the most WAR?

Dan Szymborski: Sure. Probalby Justinian who is the most active

Rob: Tatis running some wild Statcast numbers. Looks like a 70 D in RF nearly 80 sprint, 80 arm. Running low strikeout rate but also super low walk rate. 75 percentile power. Think he gets back to 90 percentile exit velo? If so are 7+ WAR seasons still in future?

Dan Szymborski: It’s a possibility, but seven WAR seasons are HARD

Guest: is the sine-like curve of fly ball exit velocity to outcomes a fundamental flaw of the game

Dan Szymborski: I woudln’t say that

Dan Szymborski: I’m not sure a pure linear relationship between hitting the ball hard and getting a hit is necessarily a good thing

Dan Szymborski: I think it’s better that it’s *one* of the important thigns

Jerry: Should the Mariners try and make an early trade for a bat? Or should they standpat because of the hole they have dug in the standings.

Dan Szymborski: The M’s should make a trade for a player they need as soon as they can get a team to part with such a player

Dan Szymborski: There’s no time like the present, where possible

J-Rod: How are you feeling about Julio Rodriguez? We are 50 games in and he is still a below league average hitter.

Dan Szymborski: nic

Uninvited Guest: How does one find out what problems a team needs solved? I assume they don’t make that too public. If any teams need an environmental clean up, can you give them my number?

Dan Szymborski: I think the A’s need environmental cleanup, but they don’t like paying for things

Mariners: If there was an elimination game today, would you go Castillo, Kirby, or Gilbert?

Dan Szymborski: Still Castillo

lee_rumbah: Hot honey on pizza y/n?

Dan Szymborski: Meh

Dan Szymborski: I like spicy things but I’m not big on sweet

Baseball Fanatic: This isn’t a question, I’m just here to say how fortunate we are to be blessed with daily baseball throughout the summer and into fall

Dan: If a player had access to six seconds of time travel could a low level org guy become a impact major leaguer. So average speed but 20s in other skill now knows  exactly how a ball will curve and if it will be called a strike before making a swing decision. On defense they can start their break as soon as the batter starts swinging (repositioning before the pitch is rule out for paradox reasons)

Dan Szymborski: I would imagine that this was the case

Dan Szymborski: If you know exactly where something is going to be, it’s like hitting off a tee

Rob: Where did all the top 1B go? Early 2000s was full of them. Is conditioning and training the cause? Are we simply selecting for better overall athletes? Seems like the 2 tool 1B with good enough D is going the way of the pocket quarterback.

Dan Szymborski: I think we’re more willing to keep players at prime defensive positions than we used to

Josh: How are you liking all the rule changes so far?

Dan Szymborski: Except the zombie runner still being around, just fine

Ross: What are your thoughts on the idea that the pitch clock is causing a big increase in arm injuries this year? Seems like pitchers have been dropping like flies.

Dan Szymborski: I’m unconvinced

Manfred Man: Would the implementation of the Manfred Man be improved if the runner had to actually run like a zombie in the movies?

Dan Szymborski: slightly!

SoJo: You seem slower than normal today…crappy questions, running mobile?

Dan Szymborski: Sorry, been checking the site and seeing what problems are

Dan Szymborski: and I had to go to the bathroom at one point

mmddyyyy: Do you read chats by other writers?

Dan Szymborski: Not really. I think of chats as a conversation between the writer and their readers

Dan Szymborski: and it kinda feels creepy, like I’m eavesdropping

Who’s Fabio?: I was a shortstop in the minors but I could make a spot start for the A’s.  I was on the A’s radar at some point in the early 2000s.

Rob: World WAR Z zombie or traditional?

SoJo: Have you seen anything on the financial impact for concessions with the shorter games?

Dan Szymborski: I haven’t

Dan Szymborski: I know teams are serving beer longer

Dan Szymborski: I’m not sure it makes as much a difference as people speculate

Dan Szymborski: I don’t eat more on days I’m awake longer

Mike M: How would you rank the following in order of most preferred to least preferred?  expansion, automated balls and strikes, removal of extra-inning runner, tacky baseball

Dan Szymborski: automated balls and strikes, removal of extra-inning runner………………………..tacky baseball…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….expans

Guest: “I don’t eat more on days I’m awake longer” hmm, I’ve never compiled the numbers, but I’d bet that I do

Dan Szymborski: Though you’d have to adjust for health

Dan Szymborski: When I was horribly ill back in early February

Dan Szymborski: I was literally sleeping 16 hours a day for a week

Dan Szymborski: and I ate almost nothing (I lost 17 pounds in a week). But not because I was awake less!

mmddyyyy: For scale, what would pitchers need to get to balance metal bats?

Dan Szymborski: shotguns

KCbbq: What happened to Taylor Ward this season? Started off great then blamo.

Dan Szymborski:

KCbbq: Will Bryce Miller’s tendency to over rely on his fastball lead to an eventual implosion as the league figures him out?

Dan Szymborski: As I said above, there’s a risk

Dan Szymborski: Baseball is a game of adjustment. If you’re too one-note, people will figure out how to hum your tune.

Dan Szymborski: Tony Cingrani was one pitcher wno learned that the hard way

Sharps: Which MLB players would make the best pro wrestlers, and vice versa?

Dan Szymborski: Now O’Neill I think would be a good pro wrestler

Meowsa: *unless you’re Mariano rivera

Dan Szymborski: See, Mariano was one note. But the cutter was the brown note, so batters were too busy crapping their pants to ever be able to adjust!

Dan Szymborski: I’m kinda offended that on MLB the Show, he doesn’t JUST have a cutter

mmddyyyy: Do reporters keep score?

Dan Szymborski: Like fans, some do, some don’t

Dan Szymborski: I’m not personally a fan of it. I don’t want to do paperwork

Dan Szymborski: I want to have the option of wandering off from the press box to get beers, maybe chat wiht some random fans, help myself to seats in different parts of the park

Farhandrew Zaidman: Don’t try to make sense of MLB The Show arsenals. Kershaw’s had a change up for years, which, ok?

Dan Szymborski: I *am* glad that for Devin Williams, Sony just decided “yeah, that’s obviously a goddamn screwball that is.”

mmddyyyy: Do writers get fangraphs email addresses?

Dan Szymborski: I’m sure people can ask for one if they want

Dan Szymborski: and David would give them one

Dan Szymborski: It’s never come up for me

Dan Szymborski: I didn’t have an ESPN address either

mmddyyyy: How hard does a pitcher have to pitch for them to throw “Hard”?

Dan Szymborski: I’ll say 95 mph. Makes it consistent with hard-hit rate for batters!

SoJo: Can I just encourage everybody on this chat to support Fangraphs with a yearly subscription?!?

Dan Szymborski: Of course!

Dan: How many Yankees right now are better at SS defense than Volpe. I understand that this doesn’t mean it’s wrong to play him there

Dan Szymborski: In the last three decades how many years was their starting shortstop one of the best five defensive shortstops in their organization?

Dan Szymborski: On that mean note, I will head off for the week

Broadcasting Crew: If you could choose one broadcast team to narrate your life which squad would you go with?

Dan Szymborski: The old Miller/Angel team I grew up with on 1090 AM

Dan Szymborski: nostalgia and all