Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat – 7/24/25

Dan Szymborski: I’m here, sorry, got caught up in Hulk Hogan news!

Justin: Hi Dan, what is it about someone like Brandon Marsh that allows him to consistently have a high BABIP?

Dan Szymborski: Solidly above average speed, while he’s not a grounder machine, he hits a lot of *hard* grounders

Mitchell: Seems every article on deadline trade candidates includes Ryan McMahon. I get the guy packs a good glove, but he hits like a second division 2nd baseman, and that’s playing half his games in Denver. Why do we think he’s a desirable asset for a team trying to win?

Dan Szymborski: Theres’ the hope he got his crap together after an AWFUL April. He’s actually been solid since

Ryan: What lower level prospects are you intrigued by who no one is talking about?

Dan Szymborski: I’m not sure you can really call him a prospect, but I’m kind of surprised the Royals showed so little interest in Cam Devanney, who basically has had the same career arc as Whit Merrifield did.

Dan Szymborski: and to not even look at him significant before trading him for *Adam Frazier*?

bringbackpologrounds: If (when) Eugenio Suarez joins the 400 HR club, where would he rank out of the roughly 60 members? He’s had a wonderful career, hopefully he keeps up the mashing.

Dan Szymborski: He’d definitely be pretty low. 46 of the 59 400-HR guys have 50 WAR and he would have hard time getting there

Lowe Distribution System: In your prospect review article, it looks like a strong majority  had their projections get worse since the start of the season.  Is that just because we’re looking at the prospects who started with the best projections so of course it’s easier for them to decline than improve?

Dan Szymborski: The biggest part of it is that the top 100 of the ZiPS prospect list has just had a particularly bad year!

Dan Szymborski: There were significantly more improvers than decliners in the 101-200 tranche

And I look to find a reason to believe: Who are your 1-3 White Sox players who have improved their future fWAR ZIPS projections since preseason, and do you have any increased optimism for improvement based on 2025 progress over hopefully reaching the absolute bottom of the barrel in. 2024.

Dan Szymborski: Well, Shane Smith for one

Dan Szymborski: He’s probably my biggest one

ransofast: have you tried the innovative new versions of Skyline chili? Notably the Skyline dip or breakfast chilitos?

Dan Szymborski: There are innovative new ways to get hit in the groin with a ball, but that doesn’t mean I want to try those either

Mi Nombre: The Brewers have won at least 86 games (.531 W%) every full season since 2017 for a cumulative .557 W% over 1,195 games from 2017-24. So far this year they have an MLB best .598 W%. Playoff Odds sees them as a .513 W% team rest of season. Does ZiPS have a rosier outlook? Where would your human brain computer estimate their rest of season W%?

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS is rosier, but has still missed low last several years. The weird thing is that the individual player projections aren’t actually undershooting the Brewers as a group. It *my* brain that’s screwing up; they simply do a better job getting their best performers on the field than I expec tthem to

Tampa Fred: As I understand it the difference between bWAR and fWAR for P is that the former uses ERA and the later uses FIP. Could you list one positive and one negative for each calculation? Has there ever been any attempt to get the two organizations to agree upon its calculation?

Dan Szymborski: Well, they’re both good measures, but they both have similar misses, made in the interest of interpretability.

Dan Szymborski: bwar *over*describes pitcher contributions as for simplicity, it has a very naive application of team defensive performance to individual pitchers

Dan Szymborski: while fwar *under*describes by eliminating BIP, which while very small, still has *some* value

Dan Szymborski: and these tradeoffs aren’t made without reason, but to keep what WAR measures are saying easier to understand

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think you’ll see a compromise

Jeff: Which, if any, of the Statcast era stats have changed how you do your projections?

Dan Szymborski: There’s a lot of statcast data in ZiPS, and there has been for aquite a while!

Dan Szymborski: Though I’m slow to integrate new things until I *know* how their use improves a model

Dan Szymborski: and I’m a stickler for getting new, real data tested, not just relying on stuff like cross-validation

James: Is the Astros current injured list a better roster than Colorado?

Dan Szymborski: The top-end talent sure, but the back of the injured roster would be very shallow if you played a very weird theoretical season

Mi Nombre: NL rookies as a whole have produced 5.3 WAR (position players) and 3.9 rWAR (pitchers).

Dan Szymborski: Nice catch, I haven’t checked on that at ALL

Dan Szymborski: League-wide, the difference is significant

Dan Szymborski: MLB hitter rookie WAR 2023: 67.6. 2024: 49.0

Dan Szymborski: This year: 16!

Dan Szymborski: Pitcher rookie WAR 2023: 46.4

Dan Szymborski: pitcher rookie WAR 2024: 60.8

Dan Szymborski: pitcher rookie WAR 2025: 13.3

Lowe Distribution System: How does ZiPS project W/L for pitchers?  Tons of things outside the pitcher’s performance make substantial differences.  Does it know about run support?  Bullpen quality?  Whether the pitcher goes deep into games?

Dan Szymborski: Does knwo all these things!

SeanP: If you were Mike Elias, would you sell high on Trevor Rogers? Or keep him in the hopes of re-tooling for next season?

Dan Szymborski: IF the package is high enough

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think I’d trade him though. I think the O’s need any pitching they can get, and I can’t imagine someone would give them someone *better* for 2026 than Rogers woudl be

Guest: Two more home runs for Spencer Jones today. I had written him off last year because of the strikeouts. What does ZiPS think now?

Dan Szymborski: Check out the ZiPS prospect update article!

HiDan: is the software development life cycle for  ZIPS a formalized process or are you flying mostly by the seat of your pants? I imagine since you’ve been doing it for so long you have a very good idea of how long certain steps of developing/testing/deploying ZIPS takes, but I’m curious if you have some layer of project management over it

Dan Szymborski: Oh, we’re full chaotic

Dan Szymborski: I don’t have competent management over “any” aspect of my life

Dan Szymborski: As I must remind you all, there’s a line in my hallway near the kitchen were I was going to finish painting…17 years ago

Dan Szymborski: My large basement office has a very “Leslie Knope’s house” feel

Lowe Distribution System: Will anyone the Orioles acquire when they sell at the deadline contribute 0.5 WAR for them in 2026?  2027?  In other words, can they acquire anyone who will help them win in the Gunnar/Adley era?

Dan Szymborski: I think it’s very possible

Bruce Boisclair, Jr.: The new rules have brought back base stealing, but the pitchout hasn’t returned. Why is that?

Dan Szymborski: The problem is that the math still doesn’t work great

Dan Szymborski: Unless you are AMAZING at predicting when guys actually run

Dan Szymborski: Last I checked, MLB, was around 20% in pitchouts actually having an attempted stolen bae

Dan Szymborski: So 80% of the time, unless Jeff Francoeur is batting, you’re adding a ball to a count

Dan Szymborski: Which is actually a pretty big deal

Dan Szymborski: https://tht.fangraphs.com/dynamic-run-value-of-throwing-a-strike-inste…

Dan Szymborski: turning a base stolen *into* a caught stealing is about 0.6 runs

Dan Szymborski: And the pitchout CS is closer to 50% generally, not 100%

HiDan: which cat has the best chance of carrying the ZIPS torch forward if you were hit by a bus?

Dan Szymborski: Justinian since he’s the most familiar with my PC

Sharp: Is Ozzie Albies cooked? He makes terrible swing decisions. I don’t know what the Braves should do about him.

Dan Szymborski: I wouldn’t say cooked, but he’s looking par-boiled

Idiotic Failson: Who could hit a baseball further, Hulk or the Ultimate Warrior?

Dan Szymborski: Ultimate Warrior

Dan Szymborski: but he’d get winded by the time he got to first

The Oriole Bird: How optimistic are you (or ZiPS) about Rutschman post-IL stint?

Dan Szymborski: decently so

Bob Myick: ZIPs made a pretty good call on Brett Baty’s value this season. What do you think he is going forward? A useful guy on a good team/starter on a bad team? Can he be more than that?

Dan Szymborski: I think he is what he is. A decent starter for a while, but not someone who is foundational to the team, and you wouldn’t mind moving him if something better comes along

War2d2: On the national broadcast last week Adam Wainwright was extolling the virtues of Mitch Keller, calling him an ace and saying that anyone that gets him at the trade deadline would be getting a top of the rotation starter. My question: has Wainwright had an aneurism, and should his family intervene?

Dan Szymborski: I mean, it’s not QUITE as crazy as it seems

Dan Szymborski: Chris Jaffe found some years ago that historically, the typical ace had an ERA+ of about 125, IIRC.

Dan Szymborski: and Keller’s at 121 right now!

Dan Szymborski: Now, he doesn’t have a 125 ERA+ *projection* going forward

Dan Szymborski: but it’s not like he called Andre Pallante an ace or something

Devil Ray Jay Johnson: What would the Rays’ best deadline move be?

Dan Szymborski: New owner Patrick Zalupski is approved by owners and then he rips off his face mask and it’s Mark Cuban and he announces that HE’S here to spend money and chew gum and he’s all out of gum

Lowe Distribution System: Anyone gonna trade for Chris Sale?  Should be back in time for playoffs, potential playoff difference-maker

Dan Szymborski: I suspect no

L: I’ve been thinking this for a few years, but Sasaki falling flat on his face confirmed it for me: Dodgers pitching development is incredibly overrated right now. Most of their best pitchers at this point were wholly developed by other teams. Their supposed specialty, fixing up random cheap scrubs? Every competent team is doing that now. Some teams, like the Padres and the Mets, are even successfully turning them into front-line starters. Meanwhile, the Dodgers have been doing the literal opposite, taking expensive dudes like Scott or Yates and breaking them. They’ve been having trouble fixing their own developed pitchers too (Miller, May, Gonsolin), which is actually a pretty big problem, since none of them have had sustained success. The most frustrating part is that the Dodgers are fully aware that they’ve fallen behind. Why else would they spend so much on pitching?

Dan Szymborski: I dunno if *Sasaki* confirms it. They didn’t really *develop* him after all, and he’s injured too

bam bam: Sebastian Walcott more than doubled his 5-year WAR projection in the new top-100 update. Have his new K-BB% numbers changed how ZiPS views his profile as a hitter, or does it seem more like it’s just another years worth of above average production at AA putting weight on the scale?

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS gets a lot less scared once guys cross the A-AA barrier, which historically seems to be the biggest hurdle

Cat Latos: How do my cat friends do?

Cat Latos: (I saw you missed me the other week)

Dan Szymborski: Last I was upstairs grabbing something to drink (about 11:15), Cassiopeia was sleeping in the high perch of the cat tree, Constantine was sleeping on a blanket that was left out on the couch, and Mercutio was staring at the empty dry food bowl in the kitchen in meatloaf mode, unable to comprehend why he didn’t see the thing he wanted.

Dan Szymborski: Justinian’s on my lap at the moment

Dan Szymborski: or more precisely, half on my left desk and half on my left leg while my keyboard is balanced across my right leg and my right desk

Dan Szymborski: (I sit in a recliner parallel to two desks)

Look At This Sotograph: Does ZIPS take into account things like pulled fly balls, that we know can make xwOBA underrate a hitter?

Dan Szymborski: yes. pull/spray tendencies are in there in ZiPS

Dan Szymborski: and I even have dynamic park factors based on pull/spray tendencies, which is why Isaac Paredes always gets a much better projection than his peripherals think about him

I am the Apple: How do you see the relationship between public-facing analytics (like at FanGraphs) and the proprietary work being done inside MLB front offices? Is the public catching up, or is the information gap widening?

Dan Szymborski: It’s…complicated

Dan Szymborski: I think the public gets a lot of things wrong about how teams use data

Dan Szymborski: the public seems to think that teams spend a lot of time doing stuff like their “own” WAR or other normal performance metrics

Dan Szymborski: The edge that individual teams have is that they have special access to their own players, and lots of *micro*level ways to evaluate the talent

Dan Szymborski: Any kind of data that the whole league can use, everybody is going to knwo about and everybody is going to get to use, sooner or later

Jeremy: For how long, and by how much, would the Brewers have to consistently beat their projections before you’d consider it a systemic error on the part of the projection system? Evidence that the Brewers have some secret sauce that the projections don’t account for? After all, if you were to replay (say) 7 consecutive seasons a million times, I’m guessing that in some decent fraction of those million replays there’d be a team that beats its projected win total 7 consecutive times.

Dan Szymborski: As I noted above, I think the problem with the ZiPS projections has been the Dan part where I have to determine who plays rather than the ZiPS part

Dan Szymborski: which isn’t super suprising because ZiPS is pretty good and Dan is pretty dumb

I am the Apple: Which player in history do you most wish you could see their Statcast outputs?

Dan Szymborski: I want to see those Babe Ruth exit velocities

Dan Szymborski: or get some pitch data on a spitballer

Dan Szymborski: maybe Burleigh Grimes is the answer

Bob Myrick: Do you know specifically how the Mets have caused the pitching velocity in the minors to spike so much this year? Are these methods known to everybody and some orgs are just better at teaching them?

Dan Szymborski: *That* is something I do *not* know

Bob Myrick: How much would you offer to the Padres for Cease if you were a team with a realistic chance at a World Series this year? Should the Mets be giving up 4.5 years of Mark Vientos for him?

Dan Szymborski: That would be tough for me as a rental

Look At This Sotograph: The Orioles’ front office hates trading it’s young guys, yet also hates locking them up in deals. What’s going on here?

Dan Szymborski: Conservatism

Jeremy: Re: not just relying on cross-validation, why not? I think I know the answer, but I’m not 100% sure.

Dan Szymborski: A few reasons. One is just my excessive conservatism.

Dan Szymborski: And maybe not excessive – the gain from a marginal improvement of ZiPS is much smaller than the consequences of breaking ZiPS

Dan Szymborski: But also, cross-validation of an older model assumes that things that *are* true over a certain time period may remain so

Dan Szymborski: such as baseball construction

Dan Szymborski: The only exception really is 2021 projections, where I basically HAD to guess the consequences of 2020,

Ross: Nate Dohm, Yoniel Curet, Joe Mack

Dan Szymborski: Gonna say mac, Curet, dohm

Michael Jones: What is it about the projections systems I’m seeing that don’t just have the Braves as what they are currently, a completely washed team that stinks for the rest of this season.  Obviously no system has them making the playoffs, but basically all I see have them playing at or above .500 baseball the rest of this season and this team is horrific with completely broken players and a pitching staff that’s all hurt.  What am I missing?

Dan Szymborski: That nothing is as bad as it looks when things are going bad or vice versa

Dan Szymborski: We always have things like this

Dan Szymborski: After 2024, when projections thought the Blue Jays woudl bounce back, the question was why didn’t projection systems know the Jays were broken

Dan Szymborski: Coming into 2024 it was why didn’t projection systems know the Yankees and Mets and Cardinals were broken

Dan Szymborski: The thing is, recentism is VERY hard for people to avoid, even serious fans

War2d2: What does ZIPS think of Matt Shaw for the rest of the season? He was so bad for a while there, but is on a heater right now. If you were in Jed’s shoes would you trust that enough to give up on trying for Suarez and instead put all your prospect eggs in a Joe Ryan-shaped basket?

Dan Szymborski: A bit of a bounceback, but I wouldn’t have trouble trading for Suarez and having less Shaw this year

Michael Jones: Is Michael Harris cooked long term?

Dan Szymborski: That’s a pretty quick diagnosis for a *24* year old who has had three very good seasons in the majros before now

Key Flaw: You are given supreme power and can change the name of one team in the AL and one in the NL to anything you want. Do you go silly, historical, better, trollish? Which ones do you change and to what?

Dan Szymborski: You guys should know me, I go trollish

Dan Szymborski: I don’t know WHICH trollishness I’d do though

Dan Szymborski: Now non trollishness, I’d really want to change the Rays

Dan Szymborski: I think they made so many poor choices. When you have the choice between the DEVILS part of your name and the RAYS OF SUNSHINE part of your name, the former has way more fun potential than the other

Dan Szymborski: but here’s the thing, when you go with the sun as your name

Dan Szymborski: go for the RED GIANT version of the sun, that’s going to boil off the planet’s oceans and eventually kill everything remaining

Dan Szymborski: not the laidback sunglasses and mojito sun

Dan Szymborski: the Phoenix Suns have a FAR more threatening sun than the Rays do. The Rays just have that little twinkles

Gilberto: In the 400 HR club, Eugenio Suarezz would at least rate higher than Dave Kingman.

Dan Szymborski: the 400 HR club guys under 50 WAR are Jason Giambi, Ruy Teixeira, Carlos Delgado, Giancarlo Stanton, Jose Canseco, Nelson Cruz, Alfonso Soriano, Juan Gonzalez, Edwin Encarnacion who I totally forgot was in the club, Adam Dunn, Paul Konerko, and Dave Kingman

Dan Szymborski: errr MARK Teixeira

Dan Szymborski:

Key Flaw: Maryland convenience store questions: Growing up in MD I always had Highs and 7-11 and occasionally Wawa, but Royal Farms was really something near me. So my questions for you are: 1)What convenience stores did you have growing up?, 2) What is your go-to MD convenience store, and 3) Can Royal Farms please stop their attempts at making RoFo happen? It would be RoFa anyway, but no one says it and it clearly is a marketing gimmick dreamed up by executives trying to be hip.

Dan Szymborski: I lived off Kenilworth drive near the mall there, so the closest convenience stores to me were the 7-11 at Bellona and York next to Ocean Pride and Kim’s Karate and the Royal Farms on Thornton Road (near Stoneleigh Elementary). So those are the two I went to the most

Dan Szymborski: And when I’m in Baltimore, I’m at Royal Farms more often than not

Dan Szymborski: I did not know that RoFo was a thing and I wish I hadn’t

Dan Szymborski: I have very little High’s experience

Dan Szymborski: there used to be one in the same shopping center as China Moon on Ridgely but that one I don’t think has been there for 30 years

Dan Szymborski: I still get food from China Moon every time I’m in town. Best fried rice anywhere.

Dan Szymborski: This is a lot of very specific north suburb Baltimore talk, so I hope SOMEONE here is from or in Baltimore

kwabbit: Speaking of Mitch Keller, his best season by xERA was 2019 (3.51), in which he realized a 7.13 ERA and a .475 BABIP against over 11 starts. Has to be one of the unluckiest stretches in recent history.

Dan Szymborski: Yeah, it’s weird to still have to note to people sometimes “Hey, you know, a .475 BABIP isn’t a thing for a pitcher”

Guest: could you do very crude pre-statcast ev estimates from grainy video, or would they be too crude to say anything (Joe Carter hit that ball anywhere from 91 to 121 mph!)

Dan Szymborski: It wuld be pretty bad

Key Flaw: In honor of Hulk Hogan, when I was a kid I loved Randy Savage and could do a crappy impression of him (I could never get a Hulk Hogan impression down). If you were give the ability to do a spot on impression of any pro wrestler, who would it be?

Dan Szymborski: Oh, I’m sure I could do the whole Bret Hart routine. I even can do the mechanics of the Sharpshooter

wheelhouse: A third spencer jones home run has hit the building

Oddball Herrera: Sheesh, now Jones is at three home runs.  Is he really that much different from an OF version of Elly De La Cruz?

Bob Loblaw: Did you ever do a time warp for Babe Ruth if the league was integrated?

Dan Szymborski: I haven’t. To do something like this, I’d have to calculate a whole lot of things that are a bit awkward

Dan Szymborski: True story, which I think I can say since none of the people are there anymore, but while I was at ESPN, we had a group idea pitched to me to guess the effect on records if the league were integrated

Dan Szymborski: and I looked into it and had the awful realization and came back and said

Dan Szymborski: (and the effect on records if the leagues were *never* integrated)

Dan Szymborski: I pointed out that there were some real problems that even if well meaning to illustrate how much better the league is with everyone getting to play

Dan Szymborski: including, but definitely not limited to figuring out which latino players today would have “passed” in the color line era. We all agreed that even if the idea was interesting, it was too hard to do with anything approaching proper sensitivity

Guest: reds vs giants during the red giant phase

Insert Witty Name Here: Give us the weirdest story you’ve heard about the industry, whether or not you believe it to be true or not. Redact names if necessary

Dan Szymborski: oh lord, I’m really going to have to neutralize this one

Dan Szymborski: Let’s just say I was at a dinner with a bunch of people including a former executive and said former executive got *really* drunk and told a story that their team had a guy in Cuba who was trying to help get players out of Cuba and was caught and in jail in Cuba for a year and nobody in media ever figured out that happened

War2d2: Also about the Rays: my feeling on baseball logos is that if a baseball-obsessed 9 year old can’t draw your logo from memory, you need a new logo.

Dan Szymborski: I’m not really a fan of the Guardians 3D ish logo

Dan Szymborski: because as I said before, it looks like an enemy in Marble Madness

Guest: you wanted the depressing/angry version of the sun for TB, unfortunately Gemini is refusing to generate an image of what the mascot for the Tampa Bay Melanomas would look like

Guest: Wawa is invading Maryland, care to comment?

Dan Szymborski: I’m not *that* upset becuase there were always *some* Wawas

Dan Szymborski: I’m pretty sure it’s there any more, but even in the 90s, there was a Wawa on Falls Road near Lake Avenue

Dan Szymborski: and Royal Farms isn’t really a *sub* place

Dan Szymborski: it’s more a Wawa vs. Sheetz battle.

Dan Szymborski: I usually got subs from Bubba’s Breakaway, on York road just about across from Carver

Dan Szymborski: Thats’ gone now though

André René Roussimoff,: The thing to remember about Sasaki and all exciting young Japanese pitchers is that their arms get absolutely brutalized in youth baseball. He threw 425 pitches in one eight-day stretch as a kid. Until that culture changes, I think lots of the guys who make the jump will be disappointing and/or injured.

War2d2: Speaking of time warp: I have long had a theory that any true star could be moved to any era and still be a star. Eg, if you took 16yo Rickey Henderson and brought him to 2015 and put him through travel ball and whatnot he’d still be a 9 WAR player in 2025. Not sure that’s relevant, but curious if you’d agree. Like would Jinmy Foxx still be a beast? Babe Ruth? Where’s the cutoff for when a star wouldn’t be a star because of physical limitations?

Dan Szymborski: I’ve actually been kinda saving some of the Time Warp ideas for the 2026-2027 offseason…

Bob Loblaw: Without looking it up, who led the MLB in homers for the 2010s?

Dan Szymborski: Now THAT I know is Nelson Cruz, since I’ve looked that up before

Dan Szymborski: (and now of course, someone will find that to be incorrect, because that’s how life rolls sometimes)

Key Flaw: Again on names/logos, but I think it is pretty clear that some names like the Red Sox, White Sox, Reds, Phillies, are just really crappy names that we accept as normal because tradition. Same with the Mets. Some names are just bog standard like the Tigers, Cardinals. They are still better than the contrived minor league names or the NBA and WNBA attempts at concept names. We know you aren’t a fan of the Rays name, but which name that most people like do you think is crappy? Hot taek!

Dan Szymborski: People complain about the Utah Jazz name

Dan Szymborski: but I friggin love it because it’s absolutely AMAZING that they moved to Utah and kept the name

Dan Szymborski: I wish college teams would relocate and not change their names. The North Dakota Hoosiers! The Wyoming Gators! The Boston College Ragin’ Cajuns!

SeanP: Ex-Baltimoron here, enjoying your specific suburb ramblings.

Phil: “Mets” is a good name, because it nods toward the museum and the opera. As a Red Sox fan, I agree that “Red Sox” is dumb, and I hate when people use it as singular (“He’s a Red Sox”).

Phil: Dodgers are good in that regard also. No trolleys in LA!

Dan Szymborski: On that note, time for me to hit the ol’ dusty trail

Dan Szymborski: Thanks for coming all! Not sure if there will be a chat next week given there will be a lot of chaos and I’ll probably be writing other stuff

Dan Szymborski: But let’s be honest, nobody should be stuck listening to me EVERY week