Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat – 6/24/21

Dan Szymborski: CHAT BEING NOW

DAN: Do you think the Giants rotation is going to sustain this success with the substance crackdown and/or escape more injury (such as the yearly Alex Wood 60-day trip)?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t have a real basis for saying which team will benefit from this really. It’s all an unknown right now

Dan Szymborski: But the Giants have enough wins bagged that they probably just need to go .500 the rest of the way to make the playoffs

Seth: Has perception of Christian Pache’s FV slipped due to his struggles offensively at the beginning of the season?

Dan Szymborski: He’s been lousy enough that you *should* think a little worse of him. But not *that* much.

Dan Szymborski: Think of a projection as a moving number that bends and changes depending on events after the projection. The performances since the preseason have inarguably not been good and that’s a part of his record.

KG: Any worries on Jo Adell?  Second year of struggling, this time in AAA.  That K rate is atrocious.  Power, sure, but seems to be it.

Dan Szymborski: He’s young and has some unfortunate breaks in development time

Dan Szymborski: So I’m highly concerned

Dan Szymborski: but I would be careful about writing him off

Dave: Are chili cheese fritos an acceptable topping for chili?

Dan Szymborski: No

JA: What your feel with the top couple picks of the draft with no clear cut #1 and 7-8 guys in the top tier? Draft the board or try to cut an under slot deal?

Dan Szymborski: Draft the board. It’s too bad you can’t trade draft picks in baseball

Kate: Is DeJong really this bad or is he getting severely unlucky?  xStats seem to think it’s more the latter.

Dan Szymborski: Hang on, let me just fire up zBABIP

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS doesn’t think he’s playing *great* or anything

Dan Szymborski: but thinks he should have a .257 BABIP from his hit data rather than his current sub .100 one

Dave: How does ZiPS handle projecting platoon players with clear platoon splits? Will it show projections based on platoon usage?

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS will assume that past platoon use will continue since it can’t project team intentions (and I keep my thumb off the scale).

Dan Szymborski: You *can* remix. L/R should be part of the basic package next year

Kate: Does Kim eventually end up with a full-time role (either in SD or elsewhere)?  Can’t help but feel like the lack of consistent PT in SD is hindering his ability to adjust.

Dan Szymborski: I think he does – I think he’s largely improved too

Dan Szymborski: It is a large adjustment to make

John B: Zips had an improbably high Projected WAR on Ha-Seong Kim –  something like 4 WAR per year for five years.  What do you think now ?

Dan Szymborski: It’s definitely looking high!

Derek: It’s your birthday?? Happy birthday!

Dan Szymborski: Friday was my birthday, but this is my first birthday at <groan> 43

YardGoat: Random question — Have you found anything that works to get cats to lose weight? Have a husky middle aged feline that needs to lose a few pounds

Dan Szymborski: My cats all lost weight with grain free from middle age

Dan Szymborski: Galileo at 10 vs. 16 after grain free

Dan Szymborski:

djtofu: Many Giants players are outperforming their pre-season predictions. Which ones do you think are most likely to continue to outperform vs regress?

Dan Szymborski: Posey I’m more optimistic about and Gausman too. I can’t see Crawford suddenly being THIS good though

Tons of Fuller: Assuming that the Angels didn’t hire Minasian to run the team the same way Eppler did, what can he do at the deadline (assuming they remain out of it) to recharge the team? Is this is a situation where he might have to take a step back to take a step forward? Does trading Rendon or Ohtani ever get on the table?

Dan Szymborski: Improving while removing those two would be VERY tricky

Jim Leyland Palmer: Have you ever had a proper Detroit-style Coney? Thoughts?

Dan Szymborski: I have not. It’s a little busy for me. I don’t like hot dogs that involve me making a godawful mess.

Dan Szymborski: I like Chicago hot dogs, but I can eat them without anything flopping on my shirt

Dan Szymborski: glopping

Derek: As everyone expected, the Dodgers and Padres beating up on each other means… The Giants are strengthening their hold on the division! Is this actually going to happen?

Dan Szymborski: I think the Giants fall short, but they do make the playoffs

Travis: What kind of alt-zips approaches have you tried? AIUI, zips regresses most things, which is how you get broadly accurate projections. Have you ever tried tweaking it to better perform on outliers or a specific subset of players? (Eg a “zips for pitchers who just added a new pitch and velo”; normal zips seems to take a while to adjust to real changes because of it being conservative by nature)

Dan Szymborski: The cohorts are designed to look at similar subsets

Dan Szymborski: Things like new pitch are hard to gauge ahead of time so no

Dan Szymborski: Though the more robust model of in-season ZiPS will know increased velocity

JA: do you think Gallo will be traded? If so what’s a realistic return, a top 100 prospect and a lottery ticket?

Dan Szymborski: I think you *maybe* get a back of the top 100 prospect from a team who REALLY needs Gallo and pretty much nothing else

John B: I’d love to see a wayback machine projection of curt flood after 1969 to see where he was headed had he not become the poster boy for breaking the MLBs grip on its labor. Seems like he might have been hallworthy on baseball skills only

Dan Szymborski: I’m actually on planning on doing that as a ZiPS Time Machine when the CBA negotiations are in full force

Kate: Do you expect workload management as a result of last year’s truncated season to spill into next year for some pitchers as well?  Or do you think most guys will be back to a normal workload next year?

Dan Szymborski: I think we’ll see things *more* normal

Erik: Do you believe ZiPS has any specific strengths or weakness compared to other projections? Any types of players it specifically loves or hates more than others?

Dan Szymborski: Unfortunately, this kind of calibration is low-hanging fruit, so I can’t rely on it to get better projections these days

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS does awful with Yuli Gurriel, but everyone tnds to also

Dan Szymborski: People tend to think that there may be certain types that projections do worse with, but outside of things like injuries, that’s not really the case and people see patterns where none exists

Dan Szymborski: Kyle Hendricks is a good example. ZiPS has missed on him a couple of times — though it always liked him even as a rookie — but people conclude there’s an issue with pitchers *like* Hendricks

Dan Szymborski: But…

Dan Szymborski: Just as an example, looking at ZiPS projections from 2004-2020 and everyone’s historical difference between projections and reality, the r^2 between ERA miss and strikeout rate is 0.006785 and the r^2 between ERA miss and fastball velocity is 0.001327.
And yes, ZiPS has missed overall on Kyle Hendricks, by about 0.4 runs of ERA over his career. But there are hard throwers that rank above him in this (ZiPS has underrated Jacob deGrom the second-most, behind Gavin Floyd, with a 95.2 mph fastball at 0.63 runs of ERA). And there are plenty of soft tossers in the ZiPS most overrated (Dave Bush, Jeff Francis, Joe Pineiro in the top 10 here).
I *wish* there was such an easy bias to find. I’d be ecstatic if there was an issue out there like this because I could improve the projections with an afternoon’s worth of work.
What it comes down to is that the errors are distributed exactly as you’d expect from random error; errors aren’t predictive in this manner. If someone out there has specific criteria a projection syst

Kate: How much (if any) has ZiPS moved on Bryan Reynolds since the season started?  I never really saw anything interesting there, but with the power ticking up, I’m wondering if he can be like Conforto-lite or something?

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS has ticked up 27 points of wRC+!

Dan Szymborski: There’s a lot of reason to like him right now

Dan Szymborski: And any contender that needs an OF should be annoying the hell out of the Pirates

Jim Leyland Palmer: I know your specialty is eastern medicine, but should Zac Gallen’s arm be considered a ticking time bomb? Is there a history of people rehabbing UCL injures like that and being completely out of the woods?

Dan Szymborski: Wait, what?

Dan Szymborski: I have zero medical speciality

Dan Szymborski: I took physics as my college science. My last biology class was in ninth grade. I’m aware that drinking poison is bad and I have a sorta basic understanding of where babies come from and that’s about it

Dan Szymborski: I consider every pitcher a ticking time bomb on all hours of the day, days of the week, and week of the year.

Ryan Weathers: Assuming that I’m a trade chip, and why else would I be in AAA if I wasn’t, am I a big enough headliner for the Padres to land a real differencemaker at the deadline?

Dan Szymborski: I think the Padres would, but I suspect they’re hanging onto him.

Kate: Is Josh Bell someone’s everyday 1B going into 2022?  Or is he moving into platoon bat territory?

Dan Szymborski: Honestly, I think he’s getting near NRI-or-a-trip-to-NPB territory

DL: What ought to be done with Anthony Rendon?  Is he hopeless for the reason of the season…?

Dan Szymborski: I think the Angels have to ride him if he’s healthy because I don’t think there’s a path to the playoffs without that happening successfully

Kyle: The Phillies seem to be in the exact same situation as they were last year, Girardi has been horrible and they have no depth. Think theres any saving them or is Harper going to waste his prime on the outside looking into the playoffs?

Dan Szymborski: As I said, I was disappointed in their offseason

Dan Szymborski: Because really, Realmuto only *maintained* the Phillies roster since they had him last year too

Kate: Patrick Sandoval: bad fastball, awesome secondary pitches, questionable command.  What are the best examples of this profile you can think of working on the MLB level?

Dan Szymborski: I dunno, Tom Gordon?

Dan Szymborski: Late career Al Leiter?

Mike: Do you think the Nats are starting to pull themselves back into the playoff picture? Also, what do you think about Victor Robles’s future

Dan Szymborski: It’s a tough road because I think the NL West will have three playoff teams

Dan Szymborski: I think the Nats have to add a starting pitcher and a 3B

Bendy Straw: SUBSCRIBE TO FANGRAPHS!!!

Dan Szymborski: ENCORSE

Dan Szymborski: ENDORSE

Bendy Straw: Dude, I’m 43…it’s not great

tz: Back when I was 43, Mike Trout had zero WAR 🙂

Dan Szymborski: I liked when I was one of the young guys of sabermetrics in the late 90s with Dave Cameron. I am most certainly NOT now.

Dan Szymborski: I got to talk with sport analytics students last week and I was old enough to be all of their dadas

Dan Szymborski: dads

Jake: How much do you think Zips struggled with not having a minor league season in 20? Eg. how does it treat a guy like Bobby Witt Jr, who basically started his career as a 20yo in AA

Dan Szymborski: Quite a bit. We’re missing good data for lots of players

Oddball Herrera: do you think there are enough Aliens fans out there these days that Nolan Gorman constantly has people yelling “you always were an asshole, Gorman” at him from the stands? If not, this is a huge missed opportunity

Dan Szymborski: That’s a really esoteric heckle

Guest: Hi Dan – do you and the guys that run ATC/The BAT ever hang out and swap ideas for your systems? Are there any elements that have spread from one model to the other or are they just too different?

Dan Szymborski: No. All the projection guys are friendly as far as I can tell, but we tend to keep our work to ourselves

Dan Szymborski: Now, it’s possible they coudl be having secret meetings that exclude me, but I don’t know about them if they do

Juan Soto: Thoughts on my performance so far? Is my value the same as before this season?

Dan Szymborski: I think nearly so

Norm: How are the indians still in the playoff hunt? Their roster stinks when you look at it.

Dan Szymborski: The Twins being awful has been very helpful

Dan Szymborski: And until Bieber, they’ve had few really serious nasty surprises

Bendy Straw: Dude, was just at Wrigley last weekend, and you can spill a Chicago style on yourself…

Dan Szymborski: You can, but the dogs without chili are an order of magnitude safer

Curly W: Say the Nats hot streak ends and they fall WAY out of contention (like even Davey doing his thing can’t bring them back). Could the Nats ship Scherzer and Schwarber for the Yankees for a package around Jasson Dominguez? Is that realistic?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think that’s enough for Dominguez

Guest: do you think front offices have casual days, where they wear their sport polos untucked out of their khakis?

Dan Szymborski: I’ve never actually inquired or really paid attention to what front office people are waiting

Dan Szymborski: Literally the only clothing thing I think about is the occasional “Oh crap, is this person going to be mad that I won’t wear a tie?”

tz: What’s the longest run of a player beating his ZiPS projections that you recall?

Dan Szymborski: Gryboski had a good run some years ago

A cat: Have you seen any trends or evidence that points to better performances  for older players that you would attribute to the shortened 2020 season? Less wear and tear leading to better off season recovery?

Dan Szymborski: Haven’t seen anything yet, but I’m certainly watching!

Appa Yip Yip: Dan have you considered using psychic powers in ZiPS to make it more accurate?

Dan Szymborski: I’VE GOT NONE

Joe: Who is your favorite in the AL East?

Dan Szymborski: I root for the Orioles. I still think my least-favorite team, the Yankees, will win the AL East

Fat Spielberg: Is there somewhere on FG that shows the projected WAR lost because of IL stays?

Dan Szymborski: I dont’ believe so, but I publish articles about this from time to time

JA: Most projections have Jack Leiter as a 2/3 SP. is that simply because scouts rarely put an Ace projection on a prospect or does he have concerns outside of minor control issues? I know he’s not Straus, but he has two plus pitches now, and has shown a feel for the change and slider.

Dan Szymborski: I think scouts are a bit more conservative about the comparisons

Dan Szymborski: because nothing gets remembered worse than a hilarious overrating

Dan Szymborski: Like I’ll always remember Sam Perlozzo comparing Ed Rogers to Alex Rodriguez.

Guest: may I purchase one of your MS paint memes as an NFT?

Dan Szymborski: That would be something fun to do for a charity thing

Dan Szymborski: I’d have to give it more thought

Dan Szymborski: or maybe a raffle for FanGraphs members

Dan Szymborski: I’ve thought about putting together a custom FanGraphs keyboard for a lucky subscriber

Guest: please rank the following pizza styles: neapolitan, detroit, chicago, pub style (thin crust), frozen

Dan Szymborski: neapolitan, chicago, detroit, pub style >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> st. louis > frozen

Tim: How good is Zips at predicting Plate Appearances?

Dan Szymborski: No, and not really designed to

Dan Szymborski: Unless you’re looking at PA across ALL levels

Perry Minasian: The Nats have to add a third baseman you say?

Dan Szymborski: Heh

Dan Szymborski: But seriously, Castro’s a weak spot and they don’t seem to be super interested in Kieboom in the near near future

Tim Tebow’s Thunder Thighs: I have made chili with ground beef, ground turkey, ground chicken, steak, shredded pork, chicken breasts & thighs, and venison. All of these are valid protein options for chili, but you tell me which ones you would disqualify.

Dan Szymborski: All but unground beef

Jordan Walker: Is it too early for ZIPS to be projecting high schoolers drafted last year? Asking for a friend.

Dan Szymborski: Depends if/where they’ve played

Dan Szymborski: and the error bars will still be obscene

John Denver: Dan, how can you find league wide average spin rate on Fangraphs?  I’ve been looking through the Pitching Leaderboard and that lets you find league-wide average stats, but I can’t find spin rate

Dan Szymborski: Best way to do it is with a custom statcast search with spin rate selected and broken down by league

Dave: If you don’t like Chicago style dogs; what do you like on yours

Dan Szymborski: I didn’t say I didn’t like them!

Guest: MLB would hate a geoist candidate, since their most valuable commodity is probably the land they own, right?

Dan Szymborski: heh

Dan Szymborski: Someone remembered I’m a georgist!

Pat: Why don’t projection models seem to predict substantial breakouts? Every year, it always seems to be in line with their trajectory. And if that’s typically how it goes, what value does it have? What’s being tweaked to get more ahead of the game instead of consistently relying on what the player did in the past?

Dan Szymborski: They do, but not where you’re looking for

Dan Szymborski: Let’s say that Joe .260 has a breakout season and hits .320

Dan Szymborski: A mean projection of .320 essentially would be wrong – just because Joe .260 *did* break out doesn’t mean that he was equally likely to hit better than .320 than worse than .320.

Dan Szymborski: Math is not Calvinist.

Dan Szymborski: Here’s Vlad going into the year

Dan Szymborski:

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS *did* see breakout potential with lost of possibilities for star level play. But just not at the over/under mark

Dan Szymborski: If you projected Vladito with a wRC+ of 194 as of today back in March as a *mean* projection, I’d argue that it was a bad projection

Dan Szymborski: And this is why I *never* really look at just mean projections when evaluating results, but the full calibration

Kretin: Is Ohtani the MVP so far?

Dan Szymborski: I’d give him my vote as of right now

Dan Szymborski: Just ahead of Vlad

Dan Szymborski: Though I’m in Cincinnati BBWAA chapter, so it’s far more likely that I vote on NL awards than filling in for an AL one

Willians: Do you think Keston Hiura will rediscover his form? I think we will — I feel it in my bones.

Dan Szymborski: I think there’s a chance

Dan Szymborski: But I won’t say more – Eric and I actually talked about this for the upcoming FanGraphs Audio

Alex Torres: Hi Dan, attempting to get more high school students into data analytics. Any advice you can give?

Dan Szymborski: Connect with their interests

Dan Szymborski: Like some of the kids no doubt play esports

Dan Szymborski: Talk to them about how data is mined for DPS data for different weapons or picks in MOBAs

Bendy Straw: Pub style, is also Chicago…know your pizzas

Dan Szymborski: Oh wait, I thought pub style was the thing pizza cut in squares, like less crappy little caesar’s

Bb: Do you plan to get married some day!

Dan Szymborski: I do not

Dan: You forgot New Haven Style pizza though to be fair I’ve never heard of St Louis style and it’s pretty similar to pub style.

Dan Szymborski: I haven’t had it

Dan Szymborski: St. Louis uses Provel, which I hate

Guest: Lamb chili FTW

Dan Szymborski: I think wasting lamb in chili is a crime

Dan Szymborski: Through lamb and apricots and chickpeas in a slow cooker with some ras el hanout

Dan Szymborski: THROW

Dan Szymborski: dammit

BringBackDeSpanielHair: In the past I’ve manually tweaked projections to what I consider higher percentiles for draft boards. In my shallow league I need to hit on stars and breakouts. Is Zips going to go public with percentile projections at any point?

Todd: Has anyone at FanGraphs told you to do real baseball chats instead of just fat jokes

Dan Szymborski: I do fat jokes?

Dan: If trying to decide what a breakout season would look like for a young player how far off would I be if I just took their 90% percentile projections?

Dan Szymborski: Sure, but take into consideration that there’s only a 10% chance of it if the projection is calibrated!

Dan Szymborski: But mean projections are bad places to find breakouts unless the odds of breaking out are extreme

Sy: What you thought was pub style is Detroit style!

Dan Szymborski: But Detroit style is thicker, no!

Dan Szymborski: err no?

Dan Szymborski: I’m a little worried I’m a pizza ingenu.

Dan Szymborski: I just want nice floppy NY-styles

Padres458: Morejon and Mateo for Schoop?

Dan Szymborski: Eww

Dan Szymborsnowbord: Whats been the biggest change from your mid 30’s to your mid 40’s? I need advice for ten years from now.

Dan Szymborski: I’ve got two herniated discs and pain sometimes shoots all the way down my left leg

Cleveland No Names: Spiders vs Guardians, who you got?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t like the Spiders name

Dan Szymborski:

Jake Cronenworth: Am I the Padres’ first baseman of the near future?

Dan Szymborski: No. I think benching Hosmer is a bridge too far for them

brad penny for your thoughts: hey dan just getting to the chat, did i miss any of your legendary fat jokes?

OddBall Herrera: Fine Todd, we’ll talk about real baseball instead of fat jokes.  Who do you think would win in a footrace (in their prime), David Wells, Bartolo Colon or Prince Fielder?

Dan Szymborski: What are all thee fat jokes I’m making?

Norm: Whats wrong with Schoop?

Dan Szymborski: He’s not a huge upgrade for the Padres at any position he plays that they would be willing to bench the incumbent

Dan Szymborski: And if I’m willing to play Schoop at first and bench Hosmer, I’d more aggressively go after Mancini

John Olerud’s Helmet: My Grace Lord Dan! All hail thee!! Al Bundy is the greatest TV athlete of all time!!!

Jake Cronenworth: So if Kim’s a starter and the Padres won’t bench Hosmer, where do I fit in?

Dan Szymborski: I think long-term, you’ll get super-sub time

Sharps: What happened to Braden Shewmake’s missing R?

Dan Szymborski: Brandon Phillips was born without a name but cobbled one together by going back in time and stealing letters from future major leaguers. He got one of the Ls from Welington Castillo and got an i by swapping out an extra o with Domonic Brown.

Dan Szymborsnowbord: What’s your all time starting 9 (baseball team that is, so I don’t get any of your wisecracks.  Dammit, my parenthesis is going to make you come up with a wise crack isn’t it?)

Dan Szymborski: Do you mean BEST or favorite?

Dan Szymborski: If I can use a DH (so best 10)

Dan Szymborski: I’d put Ted at DH so Barry can play left

Dan Szymborski: But I dont’ think there’s anyone unusual in who I would pick

Dan Szymborski: Except I’d actually put Trout in center. Baseball’s more competitive today.

Joe: The ASG uniforms are the equivalent of thinking that there’s only one definition of chili.

Dan Szymborski: BANNED

Aaron Judge, CF: No Rickey?

Dan Szymborski: I love me some Rickey Henderson, but I can’t put him in left over Bonds or Ted

Loge: To what extent do you buy in to the “Willy Adames just couldn’t see the ball at the Trop” narrative?

Dan Szymborski: Very mildly

Dan Szymborski: While I don’t doubt that he felt uncomfortable if he felt uncomfortable

Dan Szymborski: it’s too easy to fit numbers to a narrative

Dan Szymborski: Actual Home/Away stats aren’t as predictive of future home/away splits as generic home/away splits until you get to a LOT of seasons.

Padres458: How much worse is my starting 9 if I swap Gwynn for Ted?

Dan Szymborski: You’ll still have a great team!

Dan Szymborski: But I can’t take Gwynn over Ted

Dan Szymborski: But best vs. favorite will be very different results

Bendy Straw: Who’s pitching…Koufax or Gibson?

Dan Szymborski: I think I’m going Pedro or Maddux

Norm: Who is at 3B. Mike Schmidt or ARod?

Dan Szymborski: Schmidt

James: Who is your all time 1B?

Dan Szymborski: Still Gehrig

Marshall: Which position has the most hotly contested all-time top spot? CF?

Dan Szymborski: CF and SP are the hardest ones for me to pick

Oddball Herrera: Bullpen catcher?

Dan Szymborski: As a Baltimore native, Eldrod Hendricks of corse

Dan Szymborski: coruse

Dan Szymborski: course

Dan Szymborski: what is with my typing today?

James: Hornsby and Wagner up the middle?

Dan Szymborski: Morgan and Wagner

Dan Szymborski: On that note, time to end the madness for another week.

Dan Szymborski: Thanks for coming all, and I hope to see you next time.

Dan Szymborski: And yes, like 90% of the questions are baseball

Dan Szymborski: So complaining OMG 10% OF DANS BAZILLION RAPID FIRE ANSWERS WERENT BASEBALL will have no effect on me except to double-down.