Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat – 7/23/26
| 12:03 |
 Dan Szymborski: And awaaaaaaaay we go?
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| 12:03 |
: But why male models?
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| 12:03 |
Dan Szymborski: Larry! Option J?
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| 12:03 |
: Is Jim Jarvis sort of, kind of good?
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| 12:04 |
Dan Szymborski: He might be!
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| 12:04 |
Dan Szymborski: He was one of the biggest ZiPS movers earlier this season
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| 12:04 |
Dan Szymborski: And he hasn’t done anything to change that in a bad direction
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| 12:06 |
Dan Szymborski: Just checked, he’s moved up another 7 points of 2027 projected OPS+ since then
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| 12:06 |
Dan Szymborski: For those who can’t see what I’m looking at, which I think is everyone but me, he a a 68 OPS+ projection for 2027 in the preseaosn, 82 a month ago, 89 now
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| 12:06 |
: Say something nice, I am a bit under the weather
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| 12:06 |
: Do you have a shorthand rule for how good a player’s defense needs to be if their offense is weak, or how much they can suck with the glove if they hit well? Obviously position makes a big difference
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| 12:07 |
Dan Szymborski: You’ll only fail to recover from being under the weather exactly one time in your life!
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| 12:08 |
Dan Szymborski: No shorthand, but if someone isn’t somewhere around two WAR now, or has a good shot at two WAR later, then I consider them a stopgap
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| 12:08 |
Dan Szymborski: but degrees of excellence and suckulence aren’t binary
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| 12:08 |
: I have been thinking about run differential lately, mostly because I follow the Royals, and when they lose, as they often do, they have a tendency to get walloped. And frequently, when they’re well behind, they put in Tyler Tolbert to throw lollipops and lose by an even wider margin. As of this morning, they are minus-96 for the season.
As teams essentially surrender to save their bullpen, is run differential becoming less useful for predicting how many games a team “should have” won? Is Bill James’s “Pythagorean expectation” null? |
| 12:08 |
Dan Szymborski: I haven’t found a change in recent accuracy
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| 12:09 |
: Have you looked into whether different profiles of players age better/worse? Seems the common wisdom is speed profiles age worse and plate discipline profiles age better. But is that actually borne out?
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| 12:09 |
Dan Szymborski: Yes, it’s why ZiPS performs better by comparing to large cohorts of roughly similar players rather than just by age!
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| 12:09 |
Dan Szymborski: I’ve tested this extensively; I can click a box and ZiPS will simply ignore all the cohorts and go by age
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| 12:11 |
: Who’s someone that you think will be traded at the deadline that nobody is talking about right now?
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| 12:11 |
Dan Szymborski: BUT WOULDNT I BE TALKING ABOUT IT THEN
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| 12:12 |
Dan Szymborski: Shoudln’t there be more Robbie Ray talk then there’s been?
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| 12:13 |
Dan Szymborski: But let’s go weird with it. They’ve SAID they aren’t suspiciously often, so maybe Logan Webb?
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| 12:15 |
Dan Szymborski: It’s a seller’s market and Webb would draw a TON of interest I think. The Giants haven’t been better than 81-81 since that weird 2021 season, and I’m just wondering if they may be on the brink of just blowing it up
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| 12:16 |
Dan Szymborski: Because a seller’s market might be the best time to cut your losses on Devers
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| 12:16 |
Dan Szymborski: Or maybe not. But it’s INTERESTING
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| 12:16 |
: Hi Dan, in head to head points I can run Mis, Schlittler, McLean and Eury Perez in my four starter slots, or one of Davie Peterson, Sproat or Thornton on a two-step. With the deadline and so much fluidity, am I better off running with just the four starters? Also, Jackson Holliday makes me sad.
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| 12:16 |
Dan Szymborski: I’d go with the four. And me as well
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| 12:17 |
: In the comments section of the JJ Wetherholt article from last week there was a discussion on if ZiPS was too low on his HR projections. As part of that this was posted “Because of the methodology of models I have often wondered if Mike Trout ever performed below his 80th. or even 90th, percentile between 2012-2019. What is the value of a projection if there is a high probability that it is not going to reflect the outcome? Am I correct in thinking that projections have a difficult time handling outliers such as Trout?” Is this true? Specifically about Trout and in general about great players. I know that there have to be some players that consistently out play their projections, but if a certain type of player always did then couldn’t you correct for that?
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| 12:17 |
Dan Szymborski: I can give you an answer right now, while I wait
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| 12:18 |
Dan Szymborski: that sentence doesn’t make sense
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| 12:18 |
Dan Szymborski: if YOU can wait
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| 12:19 |
Dan Szymborski: I’m just going to do wRC+ percnetiles as a shorthand, since I can’t spent 20 minutes on this getting the playing time matching since people woudl murder me in their head
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| 12:20 |
Dan Szymborski: 2012: 94th percentile
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| 12:21 |
Dan Szymborski: 2013: 74th percentile wRC+
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| 12:21 |
Dan Szymborski: 2014: 61st percentile
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| 12:22 |
Dan Szymborski: 2015: 39th percentile
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| 12:25 |
Dan Szymborski: here are preseason WAR projections each year from 2012-2019
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| 12:25 |
Dan Szymborski: 2013 7.1 2014 9.5 2015 9.6 2016 9.3 2017 9.0 2018 7.9 2019 8.3
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| 12:25 |
Dan Szymborski: that’s 60.6 WAR
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| 12:25 |
Dan Szymborski: he actually did 60.1
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| 12:26 |
Dan Szymborski: ZiPS projected, combining preseason, as a 169 wRC+ from 2013-2020
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| 12:26 |
Dan Szymborski: he was 1756
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| 12:26 |
Dan Szymborski: 175
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| 12:26 |
: What would you do at the deadline if you were the Mariners?
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| 12:27 |
Dan Szymborski: I’d seriously try to go after the best DH/cOF bat that I could. They tend to do a decent job cobbling together positions, but I want a plug and play guy
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| 12:28 |
: Hi Dan – how does Zips see Esmerlyn Valdez going forward? Obviously he won’t sustain this, but as a 22 year old putting up this level of production, does he seem like a star? Or a guy who caught fire for ~125 PA?
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| 12:30 |
Dan Szymborski: ZiPS is actually pretty sold on him as a hitter
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| 12:30 |
Dan Szymborski: i mean, not where he is NOW
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| 12:30 |
Dan Szymborski: but he’s arlready projecting as an average cOF/DH/1B type going forward
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| 12:31 |
Dan Szymborski: (I know he has only been used a little at 1B, just illustrating where his offense is)
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| 12:31 |
: Paul Blackburn is good?
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| 12:31 |
Dan Szymborski: I think I’m at decent as a reliever, not at GOOD yet
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| 12:31 |
Dan Szymborski: though I coudl be wrong
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| 12:31 |
Dan Szymborski: and I am plenty!
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| 12:31 |
: You (ZIPs) were the most optimistic aboutt he brewers pre-season hypothesizing something to the effect of– ZIPs likes a lot of their players and while other orgs wouldn’t play them, Milwaukee will, so I’m factoring that into the playing time model and thus they get a bump in the projection.
100+ games in, how would you assess that decision and hypothesis? |
| 12:32 |
Dan Szymborski: Still missing low, lol
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| 12:32 |
Dan Szymborski: though I don’t know if that’s the why SPECIFICALLY in 2026 so far
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| 12:32 |
Dan Szymborski: might be worth looking at post-deadline
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| 12:32 |
: How much influence do 2026 numbers play into the ZiPS Update values? Same question but concerning ZiPS ROS numbers? ZiPS & Steamer seem to be the only two sites the truly reflect current year results.
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| 12:32 |
Dan Szymborski: Quite a bit 2026 is the most important data for a player, though fans tend to make it TOO important, because recency bias is a thing
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| 12:33 |
Dan Szymborski: ZiPS mixes in the new 2026 performance into the data every morning. Simply in the FanGraphs model (since it has to be run every morning), more robustly in the so-called full-fat model
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| 12:33 |
Dan Szymborski: This is important. It takes more than a day to update all the proejctions
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| 12:33 |
: Is Random Forest modeling useful for finding the best variables to include in a predictive models?
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| 12:33 |
Dan Szymborski: It can be, but it’s not really the approach I take, and it would require a fundamental recasting of ZiPS
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| 12:35 |
Dan Szymborski: I guess ensemble-like nearest-neighbor would be the fairest technical way to describe zips
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| 12:35 |
: When ZiPS draws comparables from across baseball history, how do you weight it translate old careers for a modern player?
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| 12:36 |
Dan Szymborski: Less so. ZiPS gives greater precedence to more recent comps
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| 12:36 |
Dan Szymborski: And deadball era players just cloud everything. Baseball was just TOO different prior to 1920
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| 12:37 |
: Why are so many folks who cover the game saying that Luis Arraez would be a good fit for Tampa Bay?
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| 12:38 |
Dan Szymborski: There’s been this weird vein that the Rays are beating modern analytics by not being obsessed with home runs that doesn’t make sense. And Arraez has long been the “analytics is bad as they typically don’t love Arraez in 2024-2025” guy
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| 12:38 |
Dan Szymborski: It’s weird
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| 12:39 |
: What is your favorite traditional stat? For example mine is RBI.
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| 12:39 |
Dan Szymborski: Triples
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| 12:39 |
Dan Szymborski: Except for the rare inside-the-park homer, triples are the best play in baseball
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| 12:39 |
Dan Szymborski: It’s the play where the outcome is most up-in-the-air for the longest period of time
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| 12:40 |
Dan Szymborski: SO it’s the longest consecutive instance of “SHIT IS HAPPENING!!!!!1111” in baseabll
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| 12:40 |
Dan Szymborski: It’s a double on Viagra
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| 12:40 |
Dan Szymborski: and I regret typing that immediately
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| 12:41 |
: The Pirates are 7 games worse than their baseruns record. How much of this do you think is their defense and how much is bad luck?
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| 12:42 |
Dan Szymborski: I’ve grown to hate the word luck in baseball, since much of what we describe as luck is simply real things that cannot be measured for amplitude or direction
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| 12:42 |
Dan Szymborski: like a coin flip isn’t luck. you can build a machine to reliably flip a coin a specific way, but most humans can’t measure the variables that determine the coin flip on the fly
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| 12:42 |
Dan Szymborski: So for *all intents and purposes* it’s luck. I don’t think defense is a good explanation
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| 12:42 |
: The ostensibly good A’s offense has the worst road OPS in baseball. Is this just noise? Some sort of Coors-hangover like effect from playing their home games at SHP?
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| 12:43 |
Dan Szymborski: Most likely noise. I actdually have an A’s piece tomorrow
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| 12:43 |
: Hey Dan, is chili better to eat on its own or on a hotdog. I think it’s better on a dog personally
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| 12:43 |
Dan Szymborski: Good chili is too individual to put on a hot dog
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| 12:43 |
Dan Szymborski: If your chili isn’t great at eating by itself, you need better chili!
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| 12:44 |
Dan Szymborski: https://www.meatchurch.com/blogs/recipes/texas-red-chili
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| 12:44 |
: Would you project Foster Griffith at around his 3.61 xFIP for 2027?
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| 12:44 |
Dan Szymborski: I would not
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| 12:45 |
: How about that Zac Thornton? Do you see him having continued success at the major league level?
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| 12:45 |
Dan Szymborski: I remain skeptical
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| 12:45 |
Dan Szymborski: though I think he’ll be at least OK
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| 12:45 |
: I think you’ve talked about ZiPS’ “shape of production” and such. How do you visualize that or think about it – I’m still trying to wrap my head around the different possible shapes, and where they blur or are clear. Does that make sense?
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| 12:45 |
Dan Szymborski: The thing is, shapes ALWAYS blur
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| 12:46 |
Dan Szymborski: You should have a fuzzy idea of production shape
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| 12:46 |
: Do you or ZiPS have any suggestions on how to increase the Red Sox home run totals?
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| 12:46 |
Dan Szymborski: hit more :-)
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| 12:47 |
Dan Szymborski: SOME of it is park
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| 12:47 |
Dan Szymborski: especially for the guys who aren’t crazy pull hitters
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| 12:48 |
Dan Szymborski: I really think the Red Sox should have gone hard after Paredes
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| 12:48 |
: Because its such a sellers market for starting pitching with so few solid choices to be had, why wouldn’t the M’s put an arm on the market, get a pretty good haul, and call up Anderson to replace said arm?
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| 12:48 |
Dan Szymborski: I think that’s a perfectly valid approach
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| 12:49 |
: Which player saw the largest drop in projected WAR for the 2027 season during the first half of the season?
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| 12:49 |
Dan Szymborski: Eduardo Tait
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| 12:49 |
: If you are the acubs
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| 12:49 |
Dan Szymborski: OH GOD AM I
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| 12:49 |
: What is Anthony Volpe’s trade value at this point?
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| 12:51 |
Dan Szymborski: Shrunk quite a bit obviously. I think to really get a decent return, you need a team that has a really good theory on how to get him to meet the potential he looked to hafve
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| 12:51 |
: In “Veeck as in Wreck”, Bill Veeck claims that he tried to buy the Phillies so he could stock it with Negro League stars for the 1943 season. He specifically says he would have signed Satchel Paige, Roy Campanella, Luke Easter and Monte Irvin.
Is ZIPs able to do translations of Negro League numbers to the AL/NL? And if so, could you please do one of your Zips “What If?” articles on how how good the 1943 Negro League Phillies All-Stars would have been? |
| 12:52 |
Dan Szymborski: I can, but we had a discussion a while back, and it felt a little awkward to translate Negro League numbers while we are explicitly considering them a major league
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| 12:52 |
Dan Szymborski: there’s a Luke Easter time machine that we never used
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| 12:52 |
: Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like you’ve mentioned something to the effect the the zips projections for this year are are more predictive for the next year. Am I misremembering that? And if that’s the case, is there a way to go back in time and see the previous year projections somewhere on fangraphs?
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| 12:53 |
Dan Szymborski: If you email me, I can give you the 2005-2026 team standing projections
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| 12:53 |
: I think Arraez to the Rays is less about fit and more about how little production they’ve been getting from second base. .240/.330/.327 with four homers (Arraez also has four!) and negative defense.
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| 12:53 |
: What does zips think went wrong with the Mets?
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| 12:53 |
Dan Szymborski: they’re th emets!
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| 12:53 |
: A viagra comment and a link to a site called “meat church”. Someone get HR on the line please?
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| 12:53 |
: Bit of a different question regarding how you handle SP in simulations.
If you’re just going on expected stats, a straight “what’s the best option I have for the next inning” would almost always end up subbing in a RP as soon as possible. Knowing baseball, we know that would be a great way to obliterate your bullpen. How do you balance the better rate stats of a RP versus the additional value of a SP soaking up another inning but being worse at it when simulating games? It’s something I’ve been struggling to find a good way to do (my current method includes an ERA adjuster, so once a SPs expected ERA is say 1 run higher than a RP, they get pulled, which feels inexact). |
| 12:53 |
Dan Szymborski: Basically, I go with a distribution of the starting pitchers and hwo they’re used
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| 12:54 |
Dan Szymborski: ZiPS doing individual games in, say, the postseason, doesn’t cheat and try to think of a better way to use relievers, but hwo they’re typically used
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| 12:54 |
: Is Curtis Mead on a hot streak or is he finally living up to his billing as a prospect?
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| 12:54 |
Dan Szymborski: a little from column A and a little from column B
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| 12:54 |
: Playing a lot of old timey fields in The Show recently. Why don’t teams make odd 500 ft corners in CF anymore? SHOULD teams make odd 500 ft corners in CF? Since you love triples, this should definitely make more.
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| 12:54 |
Dan Szymborski: I think they should
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| 12:54 |
Dan Szymborski: I like playing on weird fields
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| 12:55 |
Dan Szymborski: Polo Grounds and Griffith are fun
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| 12:55 |
Dan Szymborski: Though I tend to suck in Polo Grounds as I tend to be a power alley hitter in the game
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| 12:55 |
: why does Kyle Tucker suck
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| 12:55 |
Dan Szymborski: To this degree? I don’t know
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| 12:55 |
Dan Szymborski: but it’s worth noting that ZiPS has been really leery of Tucker the last two years
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| 12:56 |
: Wouldnt it be more advantageous to keep Moniak until next deadline in an effort to have consistent talent on the team?
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| 12:56 |
Dan Szymborski: It really depends on what the interest in Moniak is. And I’m not really sure on that one
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| 12:56 |
: same goes for goodman, etc
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| 12:56 |
Dan Szymborski: Goodman I’d be more inclined to keep and extend
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| 12:56 |
Dan Szymborski: Like I was quoted saying in a Keeler piece recently, I’d be inclined to keep Goodman, but if someone wants to offer something crazy, I’d listen
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| 12:57 |
: Read that a dude from the Pirates (can’t remember his name because, well, Pirates) trying to play all 9 positions in a year. What other silly things should more teams do when they’re not going to make the playoffs? Left handed shortstops?
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| 12:57 |
Dan Szymborski: I’d love to see some left-handed 2B/SS for science
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| 12:57 |
Dan Szymborski: and I think teams should aggressively try players at new positions in a lost season
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| 12:57 |
: Does Zips provide handedness projections? I was wondering if Jim Jarvis might make sense as the strong side of a platoon.
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| 12:57 |
Dan Szymborski: Yes, ZiPS has for quite a while!
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| 12:57 |
Dan Szymborski: hang on and I’ll get you the current 2027 slashes for Jarvis
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| 12:59 |
Dan Szymborski: 303/324 vs. LHP, 329/367 vs. RHP
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| 12:59 |
: Who do you like more: AJ Ewing or Carson Benge?
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| 1:00 |
Dan Szymborski: Ewing since he’s a 99/91 basestealer in MLB the Show 26 in the Topps Now version!
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| 1:00 |
: Dan four O’s are seriously underperforming their ZIPS (Gunnar, TON, Cowser, and Mayo), one seriously over performing (Blaze). Noise, or indicative of a coaching problem?
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| 1:00 |
Dan Szymborski: Probably noise, but it’s hard to tell
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| 1:00 |
: Every year the trade value list comes out, I’m sad when my team’s players get left off – not because I care about the ranking, but because it means I don’t get to see the 5 year ZiPS projection. Can you ease my pain? What does Tyler Soderstrom’s projection look like now that he has another good half season under his belt?
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| 1:01 |
Dan Szymborski: ZiPS up to a 118-122 wRC+ guy in ZiPS over next five years, about 6-8 points over preseason
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| 1:01 |
: Kalshi has PCA at a 25% chance at the MVP. Is this all because of uncertainty with Ohtani’s pitching? If Ohtani hits and pitches the rest of the year, what do you think PCA’s odds are?
|
| 1:01 |
Dan Szymborski: I have an award model update coming at some point!
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| 1:01 |
Dan Szymborski: probably post-deadline
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| 1:03 |
: I’m content, Dan
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| 1:03 |
: If I want to see which players have had the largest projection improvements while in-season, am I right to assume the Steamer600 Update is the place to look? And what exactly is the Zips (Update) doing? My recollection is that it’s the Actuals YTD + Remaining Original Forecast. Thanks for your help.
|
| 1:04 |
Dan Szymborski: ZIPS update is the actual YTD plus the *updated* rest of season projection
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| 1:06 |
: How historically underperforming are this year’s Giants, relative to how you projected them?
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| 1:06 |
Dan Szymborski: If they finish the season with the same winning percentage they have now, it would be a 9th percentile result
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| 1:06 |
Dan Szymborski: but the bars are wider if we’re just talking around 100 games
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| 1:06 |
Dan Szymborski: which I don’t have handy.
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| 1:07 |
Dan Szymborski: if they finish at 72-90, which is what we have (as opposed to 66.7 wins), that would be their 15th percentile outcome
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| 1:07 |
: I’ve asked this before, but does zips just not care and swing and miss? Most of the other guys on this site think this esmerlyn Valdez thing is going to come crashing down since he’s running crazy high K rates and swing and miss rates. But zips thinks he’s going to be just fine?
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| 1:08 |
Dan Szymborski: ZiPS cares, but it depends on the context
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| 1:08 |
: How can MLB change the rules in the middle of a season? The MLBPA should fight this
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| 1:08 |
Dan Szymborski: I think MLB has a bit more give with the technology they control
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| 1:08 |
Dan Szymborski: and some of the restriction is for coaching staff
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| 1:08 |
Dan Szymborski: iand I expect that MLBPA is focusing on the bigger stuff at the moment
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| 1:09 |
Dan Szymborski: on that note, it is time for me to head out
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| 1:09 |
Dan Szymborski: are people stiill having issues logging in to chat? Please let me know in the comments if you are
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Dan Szymborski is a senior writer for FanGraphs and the developer of the ZiPS projection system. He was a writer for ESPN.com from 2010-2018, a regular guest on a number of radio shows and podcasts, and a voting BBWAA member. He also maintains a terrible Twitter account at @DSzymborski.
Long term outlook for Waldschmidt and Eldridge? Part of the future or nothign speecial?
Still having issues getting into the chat, unless I go into incognito mode.
Philip Christy: How can MLB change the rules in the middle of a season? The MLBPA should fight this
The competition committee is six owners, four players, and one umpire. The owners will always have a 6-5 majority.
Unless the CBA contains some constraint around the time period it takes to implement a rule change, MLB can essentially do as it likes.
“a coin flip isn’t luck”
Yeah, if you’re using the most tedious and pedantic definition of luck imaginable!
…so the correct definition?
Re: Syzm’s comment about coin flips. When I was a kid I found bent penny that became my good luck penny for a long time. I got so I could flip it and know how many revolutions it would do in the air/which side would come up. I drove my brother nuts because he lost nearly 40 coin flips in a row to me before he quit. If he called the “wrong” side, I would simply catch the coin. If he got it right, I would catch the coin and turn it over onto my other forearm to fix the problem.
He knew that something was going on, but I never told him how I was doing it. Not sure whether he reads FG, though …
Why are the NATS scoring far more than Zips predicted. Also Foster Griffin is much better than ZIPs thinks. I have watched every pitch.
Regrets… I had a few,….