Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat – 6/25/26

Dan Szymborski: Oh thank goodness, there are questions in the queue

bkgeneral: The Braves seem to lose another pitcher every week.  Their record is still great, do they have enough depth to overcome the injuries?

Dan Szymborski: I think so, but it may be closer than they’re comfortable with, especially if they have a quiet deadline

Dan Szymborski: I’m not *highly confident* the Phillies are five games better than the Braves, but I think that it’s not unlikely

Dan Szymborski: If that makes sense

Woody1937: Juan Cespedes of the DSL Angels set an unofficial record with 8 stolen bases in a game last week while going just 1/4 with a walk. Whats the oddest statline you can recall?

Dan Szymborski: It’s not quite the same thing, but my favorite game oddity is this game from 2008

Dan Szymborski: https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/HOU/HOU200806120.shtml

Dan Szymborski: In the space of like 10 minutes, they did all the possible strikeouts – strikeout looking, strikeout swinging, strikeout foul bunt, strikeout runner safe at first on dropped third strike, strikeout runner out at first on dropped third strike

Auswan_Kletin: Hi Dan, as a Yankee fan I was surprised to see that Austin Wells was not on the ZIPS decliners list. Where does he stand now compared to before the season?

Dan Szymborski: 228th of like 1900. 101 coming into the season, 91 now

grandbranyan: Let’s say a team had a +1.07 R/G differential over their last 402 games, a +1.57 R/G differential over their last 194 games, and a +2.10 R/G differential over their last 52 games. What kind of R/G differential might your human brain computer project for that team over their remaining 84 games this year?

Dan Szymborski: 1.7-1.8ish? the weights aren’t that terrible

NicklePickers: Curious if Zips has increased excitement for these White Sox callups

Dan Szymborski: wait, who’d they callup? teel’s back but he was injured

Talfred: Do you have any sort of standard for what qualifies a hitter as “streaky”? People assign that quality to players all the time, but no one seems to bother to define it at all.

Dan Szymborski: I don’t, and really, it means whatever people want to believe

Dan Szymborski: and frequently, people frequently don’t even project who *IS* streaky correctly

Dan Szymborski: let alone underlying causes

Dan Szymborski: for example, people will swear to sunday that home run teams are streakier scoring teams

Dan Szymborski: In fact, if you look at the last 30 years (and I have), among teams with similar runs scored, the more HR reliant team has a small but real edge in that they’re *more* consistent scorers, not less

Dan Szymborski: Just to crib my old tweets on it

Dan Szymborski: Not in the way people want to believe, either. Teams with a high percentage of hits being home runs have less game to game volatility in their runs Based on data since 1993, you’d expect a team with 4.5 r/g and 9.4% of hits as HR to have a CV of 74%. For 4.5 r/g and 20.0%, 65%

Dan Szymborski: https://twitter.com/DSzymborski/status/1980429292598358392

Dan Szymborski: Not in the way people want to believe, either. Teams with a high percentage of hits being home runs have less game to game volatility in their runs Based on data since 1993, you’d expect a team with 4.5 r/g and 9.4% of hits as HR to have a CV of 74%. For 4.5 r/g and 20.0%, 65%

Dan Szymborski: (Those are the Pirates and Yankees HR/H%. The Pirates had the fourth highest CV in baseball (stdev 80.1% of their mean) while the the Yankees had eight lowest (stdev 69.1% of their mean)

Dan Szymborski: Sorry, for some reason, twitter text posts poorly into jotcast

Dan Szymborski: that’s coefficient of variation

Talfred: I feel like fans usually overestimate what the return will be for players traded near the deadline – particularly for rentals. Your thoughts?

Dan Szymborski: Generally yes

Dan Szymborski: I think the older, the more likely it is

Dan Szymborski: because they have a lot of experience in some absolutely crazy deadline trades

Dan Szymborski: Like, today’s internet would go ABSOLUTELY BATSHIT over the Jeff Bagwell-Larry Anderson trade if it had happened today

Dan Szymborski: This wasn’t just hindsight. By my calculations, Bagwell had a *176 wRC+* for New Britain

Dan Szymborski: and yes, Larry Andersen was really good then

Dan Szymborski: but they traded BA’s #32 prospect for *one month* of a good reliever

frank: In your article about Veen and other call-ups, you say “ZiPS translates his minor league line as the 16th-best among minor league hitters this season (.280/.357/.466).” Where can we find these stats on our own, or this list? Alternatively, where can we find ZIPS’ Major League Equivalencies or ROS projections? Great stuff ….

Dan Szymborski: You can’t, unfortunately. We don’t yet have a mechanism for automatic translations in our system

Dan Szymborski: and it’s not something I can update every day unless I get way more clever

Dan Szymborski: I may have extra time to finally get something David can translate into the FG system this offseason….

Jeremy Fox: Are the teams that are underperforming their ZiPS projections so far mostly doing so for the reasons you would’ve expected before the season? Or are there surprises? For instance, I did not have “The Red Sox are short on good starting pitchers and outfielders” on my bingo card.

Dan Szymborski: Some are different

Dan Szymborski: Like, I wouldn’t have had “Tigers fighting to stay out of last place with and Skubal injured” and NOT have assumed the pitching was awful

Dan Szymborski: and I would have been dead frigging wrong

Iszy Licht: Who do you and zips think is the mostly likely to break Reggie Jackson’s career SO record?

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS says James Wood

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think he’ll be healthy enough to do it or good enough to get playing time after 2027, but Stanton COULD theoretically braek it first, but Wood would be projected to eventually break that record

NicklePickers: What does Zips say about the importance to a pitcher of catching a ball at first base? Asking for Eegan Kakin.

Dan Szymborski: banned! lol

MorboTheAnnihilator: Hi Dan! The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated

Dan Szymborski: Hey morbo!

MTF: Davy Andrews article left one possible (partial) explanation of Kwan’s nightmare year as being badly-beaten-by-BABIP. Does Zip see any hope?

Dan Szymborski: To an extent

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS thinks Kwan should have, from his hit profile, a .271 BABIP instead of his current .236. But .271 is still below his history enough that we should at least adjust our expectations downwards

Dan Szymborski: kwan’s 2027 projection has dropped from an OPS+ of 107 to 100

eccentricatlfan: Brendan mentioned yesterday that there was a whole host of Baumann headlines that apparently had to be squashed by Meg. In the public interest, any insight into them that can be shared (if not the list itself)?

Dan Szymborski: lol, no I don’t know them

Dan Szymborski: there was one I seconded though since it came up in slack

Dan Szymborski: sorry, I was trying to find one

Dan Szymborski: Call Me Big Daddy When You Braxton Ashcraft is ready

Dan Szymborski: (you’ll either get the reference or think it’s insane)

Dan Szymborski: I’ve had a couple headlines spiked before, for good cause

Dan Szymborski: Back during COVID, when the A’s announced they were just going to release a ton of minor leaguers to save money

Dan Szymborski: I was writing on the COVID update that week, and my original title for the article was Oakland A’s: “Fuck You, That’s Why”

lmb2020: Is Len Koenecke’s story well known? I enjoyed that easter egg in your article yesterday.

Dan Szymborski: it doesn’t seem to be, which always strikes me as surprising

Dan Szymborski: because the story is absolutely amazing

Dan Szymborski: a baseball player drank a QUART of whiskey, then got in a fight with a pilot for control of the plane, and then was killed by a fire extinguisher

Dan Szymborski: that is an absolutely crazy story

Auswan_Kletin: Would Dillon Dingler net a greater return in trade than Skubal at this point?

Dan Szymborski: Yes

Baseball Learner: Paul G or Judge: who end the season with more career home runs and do they get to 400?

Dan Szymborski: I think Goldschmidt will have a few more HRs and they’ll both fall a bit short this year

Dan Szymborski: Though it really depends on the exact return for Judge

Dan Szymborski: And that may depend on what the AL East loosk like in a month

Dan Szymborski: If the Yankees have a seven-game lead or something, I can see them being extra careful with Judge

MorboTheAnnihilator: Have you considered using one of the various AI products to translate ZiPS from excel to python for you? Or, are you concerned that doing so might trigger the AI singularity?

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS has just SO many interlocking “modules” that I’m not even sure where to begin

NicklePickers: Sorry, got cut off on my White Sox question. I meant guys like Braden Montgomery and Jacob Gonzalez.

NicklePickers: Jacob Gonzalez seems to have changed his approach and blossomed at AAA. Has that registered with Zips?

Dan Szymborski: Montgomery’s up to a 105 this season (up from 94) Jacob Gonzalez is up by a simialr amount

Dan Szymborski: 680519 Mario Camilletti 64 75.390   686554 Oliver Dunn 79 90.057   694378 Jacob Gonzalez 69 79.430   695731 Braden Montgomery 94 104.866   656537 Derek Hill 76 85.906   808959 Munetaka Murakami 123 133.061   678246 Miguel Vargas 106 113.791   664774 LaMonte Wade Jr. 94 100.673   572191 Michael A. Taylor 67 73.485   680753 Adam Hackenberg 56 61.117

formerly matt w: Hi Dan! Was Braxton Ashcraft close to the ZIPS improvers list? Situation where ZIPS already was in on him?

Dan Szymborski: Yeah, ZiPS was already at 118 with him and up to 124

Jeremy Fox: Re: streakiness, could you use ZiPS to project, say, month-to-month variance in player or team performance? And do you think it would tell you anything interesting that you couldn’t learn from just projecting the distribution of season-long performance?

Dan Szymborski: I just haven’t found a whole lot of value in month-to-month projections of this type, either in variance, or shifting weights within a season

Philip Christy: When the owners put out their incredibly crappy CBA proposals, do you actually believe a single word they say?

Dan Szymborski: No, but I don’t believe anything anyone in baseball, team or player tells me if it’s not off the record.

Dan Szymborski: I’m naturally very cynical — I was a cynical, sarcastic child even — and that’s the strong influence of my lawyer grandfather, who I was very close to

Dan Szymborski: Not a lot of people tell little kids “Don’t ask a question you don’t already know the answer to” or “If you don’t want to answer a question, answer the question you’d prefer to answer instead”

Dan Szymborski: or “A lie of omission is not a lie”

Dan Szymborski: My mom agreed with him on the first two, but they used to fight about the last one

MorboTheAnnihilator: “Sorry, for some reason, twitter text posts poorly into jotcast” gotta paste as plain text

Dan Szymborski: I solved it by pasting into a notepad file first and then into here

mlommler: Mason Miller’s ERA underperforming his FIP is so incredibly funny.

Dan Szymborski: yeah, that tickles my fancy

Dan Szymborski: Who the hell has an ERA under 1 and been UNLUCKY to get there

InsertWittyNameHere: If you ever listened to Larry Andersen on the radio, I’d gladly trade Bagwell for him again.

MorboTheAnnihilator: How much bat tracking data have you incorporated into ZiPS now that we have a few years of data available?

Dan Szymborski: I’ve found that *changes* in the swing data are more useful vis-a-vis zips than the raw data itself

Dan Szymborski: Since a lot of the stuff in the swing data were already captured otherwise

scottsjunk1981: How close did Andrew Alvarez come to making the list of biggest Zips improvers?

Dan Szymborski: Not very. The improvement is only a few points of ERA+

tigersfan1: zips zips zips zips zips zips zips zips zips

Charles Bengal Tiger: Will Tatis Jr. make it to 20 home runs this season?

Dan Szymborski: no

Jeremy Fox: Did ZiPS expect any teams to commit 6 errors in one game this season? I’m just going to go ahead and assume the answer is “Yes, it projected the Mets to do that.”

Dan Szymborski: I mean, you should project the Mets to have tragedy

Dan Szymborski: A Mets season is like an It’s Always Sunny episode. You may not know how the gang’s plan will unravel, but you know it WILL, specatcularly

mlommler: You know, I find a lot of AI stuff (even for coding) fairly annoying but my understanding is that figuring out where to *start* with converting the various ZiPS modules to python is probably one of AI’s better use-cases.

formerly matt w: I now Len Koenecke’s story but I always think it was Ed Delahanty! And more grimly, I think Ed Delahanty was Marty Bergen.

Talfred: Does Marcelo Mayer have a low ceiling at this point?

Dan Szymborski: I wouldn’t say LOW, but I’d say the last 18 months have certainly LWOERED it

InsertWittyNameHere: I got my first synth the other day (Moog Grandmother).  Do you use any of that or are you just a classical piano kind of guy?  Also, which cat is the best pianist when they walk on the keys?

Dan Szymborski: no synths, I have a real piano and a very good digital piano

Dan Szymborski: I’ve been on a constant lookout for a decent quality used bosendorfer grand within driving distance since you can sometimes find them for 15-25

Dan Szymborski: Now, someday I’ll throw in the towel and get a yamaha grand for 12-15 which are certainly good used pianos to get

Dan Szymborski: but if I pull the trigger on that, I’m not ALSO going to get a bosendorfer, as I do not have room for two grand pianos

Dan Szymborski: so I’d be basically ptuting the “never” on the bosendorfer

Dan Szymborski: and I love how those sound

InsertWittyNameHere: Why have I been seeing so many people talking about their bingo cards?  I guess today’s senior citizens are more technologically literate these days…

Dan Szymborski: Hey, even Simpsons references are getting pretty old at this point

mookie28: How did this Mets season get so bad?  Every part of the team is terrible.  How would you start the fix

Dan Szymborski: exorcism

MorboTheAnnihilator: My absolute favorite baseball statistic of all time is that Bartolo Colon has 1 career walk and 1 career homer and they both happened in the same season, 2016.

tigersfan1: What is going on with the All Star voting? Do you think this biased fan voting will continue in the future, or is this year an outlier?

Dan Szymborski: All Star voting updates are generally pretty meaningless

Dan Szymborski: because team’s report them in chunks and at inconsistent times

Dan Szymborski: teams

Charles Bengal Tiger: How close was CJ Abrams to making the improved hitters list?

Dan Szymborski: nto super close: 111-118

Resolution: A Moog Grandmother is a helluva starting point for a first synth

MorboTheAnnihilator: Kwan’s already slow bat speed has dropped from 63.7 to 62.8 this year an has resulted in a 3 mph drop in his exit velocity. I wonder if we’re seeing a minimum viable bat speed(Louis Arraez at 63.1 would argue against this) or if its the fact that Kwan is standing 7 inches further back in the box this year than previously and this is allowing off speed and breaking balls to move more resulting in worse quality of contact(is BA on fastballs vs offspeed/breaking pitches would support this theory).

asdfghjkl: Isn’t the explanation for Kwan that the team tried making him a CF in the offseason and he was already a pretty small dude. Sometimes guys have profile collapses changing their body to move up the defensive spectrum. Obviously more of a soft-stuff explanation, but one that fits the results

Dan Szymborski: There are simply a lot of moving parts, so it’s hard to get The answer, really

asdfghjkl: Would there ever be a point at which you, Dan, assume some organizational influence on bad defense at a single position? Pete Alonso leaving and immediately registering as a plus defender while Vientos replaces him as the worst in baseball, hmm. I mean look, neither guy is Andrelton Simmons, but considering how much attention was placed on K. Hernandez working with Mets 1B over the years, I wonder if there’s an issue that goes beyond managers/coaches. Reminds me of the old Yankee dysfunction.

Dan Szymborski: Make me *suspect* sure, but I’ll rarely have enough direct information to know for sure

InsertWittyNameHere: Speaking of Simpsons, if there was a baseball version of “That’s a rare photo of Sean Connerey signed by Roger Moore.”, which would be the funniest?

Dan Szymborski: Game used rougned odor bat signed by jose bautista?

Dan Szymborski: I actually have a friend who collects “wrong” memorabilia

Dan Szymborski: He has a baseball signed by Brett Favre for example

Dan Szymborski: and he always sniffs out losing team merchandise from championship. He was so pissed when I beat him to an Atlanta Falcon Super Bowl LI champs tshirt

asdfghjkl: Does he have a basketball signed by Ben Simmons?

beanbong: I know that minor league conversions exist in zips, but is there a conversion for indy ball? If a team signed a pitcher off an indy team and called them up to the big league squad the next day, would he have a zips projection?

Dan Szymborski: he could have one, but indy ball is a HUGE hit

MorboTheAnnihilator: “Speaking of Simpsons, if there was a baseball version of “That’s a rare photo of Sean Connerey signed by Roger Moore.”, which would be the funniest?”

Jose Ramirez batting gloves signed by Tim Anderson.

Dan Szymborski: This remains one of my favorite stupid things I’ve made

Dan Szymborski: https://pro.x.com/DSzymborski/status/1922653055578775625/video/1

Jeremy Fox: Re: All-Star voting, I still like Bill James’ old idea to make each team’s fans into a precinct. Each precinct you win gets you 15 points, second place in a precinct gets you 14 points, and so on. But I guess that would be hard to implement now the the voting is mostly online.

Dan Szymborski: That was in poltiics of glory, no?

Dan Szymborski: About the Reds all star voting that year?

MorboTheAnnihilator: Gotta delete the pro. out of the twitter link for it to work for us plebs with out a checkmark

Dan Szymborski: oh

Dan Szymborski: https://x.com/DSzymborski/status/1922653055578775625/video/1

Dan Szymborski: that work?

Charles Bengal Tiger: Does ZIPS have any insight or data on who the top players coming over from Asia this winter will be?

Dan Szymborski: yeah, but i’m going to save THAT for an article

Dan Szymborski: especially since it’s going to be slow winter

Dan Szymborski: hope you guys like ZiPS Time Warps! lol

Jeremy Fox: No, because I never read Politics of Glory. It was in one of the Baseball Abstracts, or else the first edition of the Historical Baseball Abstract.

Dan Szymborski: I think historical baseball abstract

Dan Szymborski: that sounds right

Dan Szymborski: I have all of those, so they run together

Dan Szymborski: I still childishly laugh at the somewhat inappropriate Bermanisms he had in the Baseball Book

Dan Szymborski: Jose “Jack” Offerman and Scott “Would Your Sister Come and” Leius

Dan Szymborski: ok, just inappropriate

jpucklvr: Why is PCA the fWAR leader and 14th in Allstar voting?

Dan Szymborski: Fans still don’t largely care about WAR

Dan Szymborski: Very internet baseball fans care about WAR, the same way that very internet political people care about things that have zero traction in general voting

jpucklvr: But surely they know he’s a top 5 defender?

Dan Szymborski: You can never underestimate what people know

Dan Szymborski: If you asked people “Is Pete Crow-Armstrong a baseball player or a member of Mumford & Sons” and you’ll likely get a fairly even split

MorboTheAnnihilator: To quote George Carlin, “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

asdfghjkl: For as great as PCA is defensively, he has a fair amount of defensive lowlights. I kind of group him with Jazz Chisholm as guys where the noise makes people underrate the guy instead of overrate

Dan Szymborski: On tha tnote, it’s time for me to head out for another week!

Dan Szymborski: thanks for coming everyone

Dan Szymborski: y’all have a good week

Dan Szymborski: (no, I have absolutely zero southern cred)