Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat – 6/29/23

Dan Szymborski: Let’s slowly get this party started!

Dan Szymborski: Very slowly – I was late to set up the chat

Dan Szymborski: because I was over at mom’s because she incompetently broke her outside faucet and I had to go over there and fix it

Dan Szymborski: and it was *really* incompetent. She literally turned one of the handles until it fell off and then basically took the whole thing apart

Guest: If you could build a pitcher in a lab what’s their handedness, arm slot, and 3 pitch mix (spinrates or break measurement optional)? Fastball sits 93-95.

Dan Szymborski: Is this for aesthetics or optimization?

Dan Szymborski: I’m going for aesthetics because it’s more fun

Dan Szymborski: sidearmer (not quite submariner) with a fastball, a sweeper, and figuring out how to get a knuckle-curve to work sidearm

German: Was it you who, years ago, wrote the “Domingo German appears to be very talented” article?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t recall having written that

Dan Szymborski: Found it

Dan Szymborski: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/domingo-german-seems-incredibly-talented/

Dan Szymborski: Written a day after we came to an agreement on me joining FanGraphs

Dan Szymborski: (though I didn’t write the piece

Dan Szymborski: I almost drowned myself with a life jacket. *And* it was my 40th birthday. Interesting times

James: Jose Abreu has a .822 OPS for June. Odds that he can maintain this and at least be league average from here?

Dan Szymborski: I’m not sure about league average, but it was encouraging to see signs of life from him

Dan Szymborski: Because he was headed towards being out of the league at the rate he was going

Dan Szymborski: And his hard-hit rate was up where it’s supposed to be

Travis: Still think Acuna doesn’t reach a combined 100 HR/SB?

Dan Szymborski: It’s going to be close, but I’m still on the no side

Dan Szymborski: He’s ahead of the pace now, but he’s also playing at probably the peak of his form

Guest: When you have a rookie season like J-Rod ’22 or Carroll ’23, is it fair to say the trajectory is already about sustaining instead of improving?

Dan Szymborski: Pretty much

Dan Szymborski: people make this error in which they see a young guy who is a superstar at 21 and then extrapolate a normal growth curve from there

Dan Szymborski: Which is a mistake – the better you are as a young player, the less likely you are to improve. Now some improvement is possible of course, but some of the young play is *time shifted*

Dan Szymborski: Trout’s two best seasons were 20 and 21 remember

Whappen?: Winker, Tellez and Adames are underperforming their OPS+ projections by like 30-60 percent. Wha happen?

Dan Szymborski: (Can’t really do percentage this way since OPS+ is a weird stat – differences shrink as the scale moves from 100)

Dan Szymborski: Well, they’re underperforming. The reasons are going to be have to be dug into for each of them individually

Dan Szymborski: It’s not super unusual to be underperforming or overperforming. Error bars for a season are massive

Dan Szymborski: and then this is a half season

Dan Szymborski: Like for a season, Adames’ ZiPS had him with an 8% chance of an 80 or worse

Dan Szymborski: But over just half a season, that’s 14%

Dan Szymborski: Adames has more of a valid BABIP objection than the other two

Blair: Not sure if my question went through… If you could build a pitcher in a lab what’s their ideal handedness, arm slot and 3 pitch mix? Fastball capped at 96 sitting 93-95. You can also provide pitch shapes or spin rates. And a name

Dan Szymborski: Wait, I can name pitches?

Dan Szymborski: So I can have a 89 MPH screwball?

Dan Szymborski: I’ll definitely have one of those!

Dan Szymborski: let’s make the REVERSO SWEEPER a thing even better than a two seamer

Dan Szymborski: wait, what’s the reverse of sweeping?

Dan Szymborski: vaccuuming?

Dan Szymborski: or dropping something?

Ben: Is Fallout 4 worth playing?  It’s on sale for $7 on steam.

Dan Szymborski: It as fine, a bit buggy

TKDC: How necessary is it to poo-poo a perfect game just because the opponent is trying to be awful?

Dan Szymborski: It’s not really

Dan Szymborski: perfect games are always hard

James: Is Shohei having the greatest season of all time?

Dan Szymborski: Of all time? Probably not because he’s going against weird early baseball

Dan Szymborski: but I think you could call it the SPECIALIST

Dan Szymborski: depends if you’re talking value or awesomeness, which correlate, but the r^2 is not 1

Bob: should we just accept that even with the shift banned, Max Muncy is just. .200/30-35 HR guy?

Dan Szymborski: I think he’s probably closer to 210/220 or so, but I think that’s the gist

Dan Szymborski: People overrated just how many grounders some of these guys hit

Dan Szymborski: Here

Dan Szymborski:

Dan Szymborski: Lefty pull grounder BABIP by year

Dan Szymborski: shifts exploded over this time frame

Dan Szymborski: but the BABIP wasn’t huge before shifts became hot

Dan Szymborski: and htey didn’t go to 0 after it

Dan Szymborski: At best, it was going to be maybe one extra hit per 20-25 pulled grounders

Dan Szymborski: and when you hit like 70 a year, that’s not going to save you

RTJ: It’s basically July and the Diamondbacks are leading their division. Is Corbin Carroll the MVP of the first half of the season?

Dan Szymborski: It’s Acuña

Birds: Assuming the O’s will be trading from no higher than the Norby / Ortiz / Stowers tier of prospects, what SP could they reasonably target?

Dan Szymborski: Not that many. May depend if the Cards throw in the towel

Dan Szymborski: There really aren’t a lot of sellers yet with interesting pitching

Dan Szymborski: You’ve got E-Rod if he’s healthy

Dan Szymborski: Now, what would be interesting is if the METS become seller

Volpe: Hey, he’s hitting well for the last weeks. They say it’s because he stopped listening to the hitting coach. Do you buy that sort of thing?

Dan Szymborski: That’s a bit out of my jurisdiction

Trea Leaves: bop, bop, bippity bop….bop

Eric: Loved your Cardinals article. Do you see Goldy agreeing to a trade to a contender? He seems the most likely due to age, team control, and still puts up a near MVP line. Arenado gave up a ton of money by opting in, so I would imagine that Goldy wants to stick with him too.

Dan Szymborski: I suspect they’re not traded

Dan Szymborski: So kind of a moot point

Dan Szymborski: I think in the end, it depends on what the other team offers

Dan Szymborski: Because in the end, everything’s negotiable

Travis: Speaking of Acuna, is his strikeout rate for real? How has he cut his K rate basically in half?

Dan Szymborski: Not to THIS extent, but it should be improved; his contact rate is up across the board

Sean: Dane Dunning was one out away from a CGSO last night. He also pitched enough to qualify and is 4th in the AL in ERA.
My question: How is he doing this and is it sustainable.

Dan Szymborski: I AM disappointed that Bill Krueger isn’t the Ranger pitching coach so that we can make Dunning-Krueger Effect jokes

Dan Szymborski: Color me very skeptical

Dan Szymborski: I don’t see in his periphs things that will be easy to sustain

@RationalMLBFan: While unlikely that the Tigers as a team do anything of note this year, they are only 5 games out in the very weak AL Central. When should they bench or release Miguel Cabrera to give their fans and their own players a shot at the postseason? (The obvious answer is “several years ago,” but unlike this year, they hadn’t had much of a chance at doing anything.)

Dan Szymborski: A month ago I would have suggested immediately, but they’ve faded enough away in June that it’s probably a “don’t bother, let’s just have the farewell” scenario

CFH: I went to a Mexican restaurant and under ‘tradicionales’ they had chili, which was described as ‘chunks of pork with chilis, peppers, and onions’. Are you a stickler about the no beans thing because that’s actually correct?

Dan Szymborski: I like to think I’m a stickler about most things because its correct

Guest: 89 mph screwball? isn’t that just Strasburg’s change circa 2010?

Resolution: What does Zips see for Christian Encarnacion-Strand going forward?

Dan Szymborski: A lot of power, OKish everywhere else, meh-minus defense

KM: The reverse of sweeping is just spilling all the cheetos back into the bag

Bob Welch: What kind of Bizzaro World am I seeing? The Snakes in first place and my Dodgers 3rd? The Orioles with the 3rd best record in the AL?

Dan Szymborski: OK, I didn’t predict the latter, but I *did* spend the winter hyping the diamondbacks!

Marlins Man: Could Jazz still have a 25/30 season?

Dan Szymborski: If he stays healthy, it’s possible, but I’d guess it’s more a 30% thing than a more likely than not

Domingo: Thoughts on mlb the show’s strategy of locking almost all the good 99s behind packs this year

Dan Szymborski: Getting packs and stubs is really easy though

Dan Szymborski: I’ve almost completed the live set and I haven’t spent a dime on the game (outside of buying the game and…err…the PS5)

Appa Yip Yip: You’re better off grabbing fallout New Vegas if you haven’t played it tho tbh even if it’s not on sale

Alex: How good of an indicator of talent is baseruns record? Is it at all predictive? As a Cubs fan, can I gather any hope in that the baseruns record is six games better than their actual record?

Dan Szymborski: I’ve never personally tinkered with it, so I don’t want to attest to anything

Sean: Last night, Dane Dunning was one out away from a CGSO and he reached enough innings pitched to qualify for the AL ERA title, where he sits in 4th place with a 2.69. Can he sustain this?

Dan Szymborski: Uh…that’s the Q I was answering earlier

Dan Szymborski: I didn’t just randomly start talking about Dane Dunning for no reason

Kyle Lewis: Has been hitting a ton in AAA of late, thinks he could be a difference maker this year now that he’s seemingly healthy?

Dan Szymborski: I’m not sure *difference maker* but it’s not preposterous that he may be an offensive plus. And Arizona’s not overloaded on plus offensive guys

Big Fan: If he keeps it up, Bryce Elder will have a 3.0-3.5 WAR season.  Is that in line with a #2, #3 or #4 starter?

Dan Szymborski: #2 really

Dan Szymborski: Chris Jaffe had the average ERA+ for starter positions

Dan Szymborski: in his book

Dan Szymborski: let me find it

Dan Szymborski: The Fun Stuff: Results
First thing to look at – what exactly is the overall average performance of starters?
I’ll give you the ERA+s for each of the four leagues I used. In order, it’s the 2006 AL,
2006 NL, 2005 AL, and 2005 NL. All subsequent lists will be in that order. Total starter
ERA+s were: 96, 96, 96, and 100. No idea what went on in the 2005 NL, but it
looks like an outlier. Even then the starters’ ERA was actually below league-average
(4.23 to 4.22). An average starter should have an ERA+ of 96-97. OK, but that’s not
what I’m here to look at. The real question is how did all five slots come out. Well . .

#1 slot: 118, 123, 118, 128
#2 slot: 103, 107, 104, 108

#3 slot: 98, 96, 97, 101

#4 slot: 89, 86, 90, 88

#5 slot: 79, 77, 78, 80

Prospect Ave.: Why does Crews have a 50 hit tool when his pitch selection and bat control are both 55?

Dan Szymborski: You should ask Eric!

Todd Bonzalez: Is Ian Gibaut the greatest middle reliever of all time? 8 wins baby!!! /s

Dan Szymborski: It’s also fun to say his name with an over-the-top French accent, which adds points

Greg: The reverse of the Sweeper is called the Litterball. Sorry cats, litter is something that we do too!

Prospect Ave.: Over his career, Tom Glavine had a 5.32 K/9 and a 3.06 BB/9 equaling 3.95 FIP. How the hell did the game work back then?

Dan Szymborski: People hit more balls into play

Dan Szymborski: It was a priority

Dan Szymborski: The funny thing is that the hits today are better productive outs hit anyway

Dan Szymborski: Leaving out bunt attempts since those are purposeful

Dan Szymborski: The average hitter had 13.6 non-bunt productive outs in 1982 per 600 PA

Dan Szymborski: But despite the strikeout rate being much higher, it only decline do 12.9 non-bunt productive outs in 2022

Dan Szymborski: decline do?

Dan Szymborski: They put a ton more balls into play

Dan Szymborski: but contrary to conventional wisdom, it wasn’t this super clinic on pure baseball fundamentals like some claim

Dan Szymborski: they just put a LOT of really weak crap into play

v2micca: From a purely person aesthetic, which do you enjoy more.  Watching a young player making the next step on his road to super-stardom, or watching a superstar perform at the apex of their abilities?

Dan Szymborski: Generally young players

Dan Szymborski: Generally speaking, since I watch an absurd amount of baseball, due to interest and my job enabling that interest, by the time stars peak, i have seen them a LOT

Dan Szymborski: And I like what’s new

Dan Szymborski: At this point, I don’t ever want to hear another middle-of-the-road Beethoven 5th until the day I die

Dan Szymborski: give me something NEW and SPIKY and EXTREME SOMEWHERE

Braves: The Braves have a 23% win World Series on Fangraphs.  At a high level, how are those odds calculated?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t run those however

Dan Szymborski: the postseason is simulated using the team roster strengths

Dan Szymborski: which is why you see teams with good ROS% but relatively low playoff percentage have surprisingly high WS odds

GuardianKnot: Do you ever run ZiPS projections for ridiculous video game type players? Like a batter who hits .500, ect.

Dan Szymborski: I have not

Cole n Everett: You ain’t got no jurdichen

Guest: In your recent article predicting Mitch Keller’s contract extension, why did you predict a 6 year term?

Dan Szymborski: Because ZiPS did and I didn’t feel a need to tell it

Coney: OK, so now D. German is equal to Phil Humber. I did mine with one less pitch.

Dan Szymborski: German’s a better pitcher than Humber was

Dan Szymborski: (though a better dude)

Dan Szymborski: errr Humber a better dude that is

Nick: the Tigers just called up Colt Keith to AAA and all he did was go 3-4 with a homer and 2 walks. I can’t take much more of Schoop and Nevin. What does ZiPS think Colt could do if he got called up to the show after the All Star Break?

Dan Szymborski: 247/305/409

CLE Fan: The Guardians offense has a 112 wRC+ in June – can they sustain it or is their real talent level somewhere between that and their rough start?

Dan Szymborski: Somewhere in between, which is usually the case in life

Dan Szymborski: They coudl still use some help offensively

John: With the season Ivan Herrera is having down in AAA, do you he has enough value with the Marlins, that they could move Tink + Herrera + an OFer in a move for an Edward Cabrera type?

Dan Szymborski: Yes

Dan Szymborski: Or better

Predict the Ladder: Any chance the Cubs climb to the top of the NL Central

Dan Szymborski: Every team has some chance

Dan Szymborski: There’s no really good team in the divsiion

Guest: The Reds-Orioles series was really great. Am I thinking clearly if I expect to see a World Series between them before 2027.                                                                                                                                                         i                t                                                                                                                                                  ,

Dan Szymborski: It’s not outrageous

Nate: What % of your job involves running scenarios for other writers?

Dan Szymborski: Not a lot

Dan Szymborski: Other writers seem to feel needlessly guilting about asking me to project stuff out

Dan Szymborski: and I assure them that it’s my job and I’m not just being polite

Dan Szymborski: (though I’d probably help if it wasn’t my job)

Guest: “You should ask Eric!” You’re setting him up pretty good there for a criticism – one I won’t make because I know how tough the prospecting world is with a small team trying to get the last few team reports out

Dan Szymborski: I don’t mean ANNOY Eric about it or anything!

Dan Szymborski: Only I don’t set the final numbers or even as part of the discussion!

Dan Szymborski: So I don’t have any insight into the exact reasoning used. And I’m not going to speculate on a colleague’s reasoning out of thing air!

Dan Szymborski: I mean, you wouldn’t go ask Eric why ZiPS thinks a certain way, would you?

Dan Szymborski: I’m sure he’d direct you to me

Dan Szymborski: and I’d probably try an dd answer!

Arraez Sir Loin of Beef: You think he can make it.  Reminds me of George Brett’s run in the 80’s

Dan Szymborski: It’s a long shot, but again, there’s a CHANCE

MilwaukeeBeerJays: Also one of the great things they did in Fallout 4 is you actually use all the random crap that you pick up. In the previous ones you’re like what do I do with 74 rolls of duct tape Wonder glue and a desk fan? In this one you build and protect bases so you use that stuff.

Dan Szymborski: I kinda like that whole aesthetic

Dan Szymborski: I always use those refine everything mods in skyrim games

Dan Szymborski: and melt down basically everything I grab that’s not tied down

RobertoBeers: A man, a dan, a chat, this joke is tired, eritsiekojsihttahcanadanama

Pete Rose: The NFL suspended 3 players for gambling (wish I had DraftKings back in the day!). I mean what’s it gonna take for me, the all-time hits leader, to get into that blasted Hall??

Dan Szymborski: a shred of self-awareness, at a minimum?

Yuniesky Betancourt: Which side of a Nolan Jones for Gavin Stone trade do you like in a dynasty league?

Dan Szymborski: Jones easily. I know leagues that use HR, not park-adjusted HR!

Dan Szymborski: Plus, there’s always at least a chance he snags a 3B qualification

Steve O: If you put the Diamondbacks into the AL East they are in ___ place? Marlins?

Dan Szymborski: fourthish?

Prospect Ave.: I have a “save” fetish. I’ve been into analytics for a long time but I just can’t help myself. I love a closer locking it down and getting credit for a save.

Dan Szymborski: It’s OK to like things that aren’t connected to value

Dan Szymborski: People should use WAR for how good players are at winning games and stuff

Dan Szymborski: Not how meaningful an experience is

downbaddav: if you’re the o’s, what do you give up for a giolito rental?

Dan Szymborski: I’d give some players in the meh tier, but he’s not enough of a changer that I want to trade a possible changer for him

BenZobrist4MVP: It seems like the majority of star players (Trout, Arenado, Machado, Correa, Lindor, Bregman, Bogaerts, Devers, Tucker, Guerrero, Riley, Gimenez, Harris, Kirk, etc.) have performed somewhere under their projections so far this year. (Obviously some like Ohtani and Acuna are not in this camp.) But is this just my imagination, a coincidence, or possibly related to the rule changes?

Dan Szymborski: I haven’t really tracked if it’s more than normal

Jon: Is the joke itself tired or are we tired of hearing it? Is the joke tiring?

john: You’re scaring me with the Jordan Walker projection.  Is that his horrid defense or is that telling us he isn’t going to be the next big offensive piece ?

Dan Szymborski: It’s moved in a positive direction since season start for 2024

Dan Szymborski: I get a translation for his 29 games in Memphis this year as .204/.292/.321

Dan Szymborski: Which takes a lot of the shine of his MLB performance

Appa Yip Yip: The answer is make weapon repair kits. So many weapon repair kits. Until you get the jury rigging perk and then you never pick wonderglue up again.

Stolan Nones: Please don’t forget to do your Futures Game player projections piece!!!

Dan Szymborski: Oh yeah, some years I forget about it lol

Stolan Nones: I have a big offensive piece for you right here…

Nick: My favorite pre-exit-velo-revolution pitching season is 2003 Nate Cornejo: 194.2 IP, 2.68 B/99, 2.13 K/9 (!!!), middle of the road FIP, 1.6 WAR. You could throw a lot more slop knowing that most hitters weren’t trying to hit it out of the park

Dan Szymborski: Learning what happened to Jeff Ballard was another big push towards young me to getting more involved in learning the inner workings of sabermetrics

Dan Szymborski: 3.43 ERA, 18 Wins, 6th in the AL in Cy Young voting. 2.6 K/9

Genuinely curious: Great to see a perfect game occur again (finally) after a decade, but I see a lot of people conflicted about the person who pitched it, given the unsavory history of Domingo German. Curious on your thoughts on this, should we separate the accomplishment from the personal character or let that stain the perfect game?

Dan Szymborski: I think this is a personal thing for each person

Dan Szymborski: There’s no objectively proper way to balance what you think of a person and what you think of a person’s accomplishments

Dan Szymborski: There are a *lot* of composers who were really shitty people. But I don’t listen exclusively to Mendelssohn and Haydn.

Dan Szymborski: And if someone hears Handel’s music and hears not the music but thinks of things he did, then who am I to tell them they’re wrong?

Dan Szymborski: From enjoying German’s perfect game to wishing him out of your mind forever, it’s not my place to judge how people react

Brock: What is your most recent tweak to the methodology for Zips?

Dan Szymborski: I added BSR into the readout for a client that really wanted it in their package

Cat Latos: how do my cat friends do?

Dan Szymborski: Justinian is asleep on top of the PC. Constantine was meowing about something in the living room. Cassiopeia is asleep in the cat tree and Mercutio is asleep on the living room couch

Appa Yip Yip: I think the difference is that Mendelssohn has been dead for a long time. German abused his partner like a year ago.

MilwaukeeBeerJays: The domingo-germain thing:  it’s separating the art from the artist. Plenty of examples of that especially recently

Dan Szymborski: Again, you guys should judge for yourselves!

Dan Szymborski: I’m not a judgey person.

Nate: Does Zips have a way of concluding that a player was hurt over a period of time in a way that significantly affected performance and not factor it into future projections?  (Acuna’s 2022 is what I’m thinking of as an example).

Dan Szymborski: Yes, ZiPS reacts to injuries in a general way

Captain ACAB: What is the best projected season ever according to Szyps? Babe Ruth after 1927? Barry Bonds after his late career surge? Rey Ordoñez every year?

Dan Szymborski: I’ve never actually gone back and done everyone in history!

Dan Szymborski: I did do a Time Warp for Ted Williams, so I imagine that he had the best projection

Dan Szymborski: or maybe A-Rod in one of the early years of ZiPS

Bird Crap: The Zips MLEs for westburg were…very optimistic. Does your gut feeling align with that?

Dan Szymborski: Remember, it’s a translation, not a prediction

Dan Szymborski: Mickey Moniak isn’t a 1.000 OPS hitter either

Dan Szymborski: but the performance *did* happen!

Dan Szymborski: It’s just not a prediction

Phil: Are you ever tempted to blame Zips’s odder projections on cat hair getting into the motherboard?

Dan Szymborski: No, because I keep the inside of my PC immaculate and use my datavac once a month

Dan Szymborski: and with a side intake through a radiator, dust mostly gets on the radiator, which is easy to clean, and I don’t really get much that turns around the corner and gets on the motherboard

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

Dan Szymborski: Thanks for coming everyone!