Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat – 8/14/25

Dan Szymborski: It is noon!

STiVo: There are some prospects demolishing the minors (e.g., Wetherholt, Jones, Griffin).  How high do you think ZiPS will be on those kinds of guys going into 2026?

Dan Szymborski: CHEATING!

Dan Szymborski: trying to get some early projections! tsk tsk

Dan Szymborski: sorry

Dan Szymborski: Wetherhold ought to have a big number

Dan Szymborski: Griffin’s should be decent, but it’s a lower level, so the awesomeness may not be *2026*

Lars: How many runs do you think a team would score if instead of nine innings of three outs it was one inning of 27 outs?

Dan Szymborski: I dont’ want to venture a guess, but generally speaking a LOT more

Dan Szymborski: teams will simply come up with runners on base a ton of the time

Dan Szymborski: and I think you’d grind down the opposing pitchers fairly quickly

Dan Szymborski: Pitchers don’t throw 120 pitch games anymore, but a 90-pitch inning, which is what this woudl be, would be a trianwreck

Dan Szymborski: You’d actually stop using a rotation and go with all long relievers, I think

The Oriole Bird: In 172 games, Jackson Holliday has a wRC+ of 83 (93 in ’25).  How optimistic does ZiPS remain in his future performance?

Dan Szymborski: Still fairly bullish

Dan Szymborski: put it this way, imagine if he was a 21 year-old middle ifjnielder with a 115 wRC+ this year in Triple-A. Everyone would be excited about that performance

Garrett: I’m a Nationals fan and need to hear something positive about the team even though it’s been a flawed, and still pending, rebuild. Can you cheer me up?

Dan Szymborski: I’m still hopeful that the young offensive core will come around. A team that’s good at something and horrible elsewhere is easier to build than a team that’s mediocre all around

Todd Bonzalez: With Hayes at third and Steer at first, is it possible that the Reds might suddenly have the best defensive infield in the majors? Understanding that we might not yet know enough about Steer’s ability to play 1B (though he’s looked good). Or is Elly going to be too much of a negative in that regard moving forward for that to be possible?

Dan Szymborski: It’s POSSIBLE simply because Hayes is so good, but I’m not sure that the rest is all that exciting. It’s basically just saying Hayes is really good

Oaktown Blues: When a guy races through the minor leagues, does ZiPS see more possibility of improvement from their initial MLB performance compared to guys with lots of minor league data?

Dan Szymborski: Not *specifically*

MLB Exec Burner: Using gut feel & not any models, world series matchup & winner?

Dan Szymborski: My gut is less on Tigers than before. Phillies over Mariners

Dan Szymborski: The JP Crawford Bowl

Guest: Is there that much of a defference between Dustin May and Mellil Kerry?

Dan Szymborski: honeslty, I don’t think so, but Kelly is healtheir

Big Buckston: ZiPS has always seemed very high on Kyle Manzardo as compared to other projection systems and public scouting grades. What do you make of that? Is there a reason ZiPS saw something there?

I ask because he’s been on a tear recently.

Dan Szymborski: That’s kinda hard to say, because I can’t dig into the other projection systems and see why they like him LESS

Dan Szymborski: Dude raked in the minors, without hitting at any crazy hitter palaces, and there’s no particular bright red flag in his profile

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS was also much higher on Pete Alonso than most, but I’m not sure WHY

Dan Szymborski: in any case, as philosopher Nicholas Plouffe once said “comparisons are the thief of joy.”

Dan Szymborski: Oh, on the question about the 27 innin ggame

Dan Szymborski: you can actually get some experience on this playing a Showdown on MLB the Show

Hoplarsko: How often does a batted ball actually hit a base? I’ve gone seasons without seeing it happen and I just saw it happen twice in the just-completed Padres-Giants 3-game series.

Dan Szymborski: I don’t have data on that, sadly, though I’ve seen it happen. I’d call it occasionally rather than RARE

Murph: Pocket Pancake or George Webb Burger?

Dan Szymborski: I haven’t had either! I just haven’t spent a ton of time in milwaukee

MySpace Influencer: Ballpark the odds the O’s make it to .500 this year?  (They’d need to go 27-15 or better.)

Dan Szymborski: 3%?

Well-Beered Englishman: What’s your hottest or weirdest Mahler take? I love the Seventh but don’t get the Fifth, which I’m told is reverse of normal. (But 7’s finale is like Mahler Looney Tunes!)

Dan Szymborski: I think Mahler 2 needs an editor. I’ve always found it overbloated, and think you could shave off at least a third of it without fundamentally changing the work

Alby: In a general sense, how much of a gap does ZIPS see between AA and AAA?

Dan Szymborski: On a pure wRC fashion, about 18-20%

21127: Were you surprised to see an additional 11 projected innings from Greene bump the Reds’ playoff odds by 7 percentage points? It seems high to me even for an ace on a playoff bubble team.

Dan Szymborski: It did, which is one of the reasons I wrote about it! Cincy is in high-leverage city, and pitchers are naturally volatile

Guest: Kyle Tucker has been trbl for going on six weeks now. Has that meaningfully affected his expected payout this offseason, or does ZiPS still see him get something in the neighborhood of 10/$380m? What are the chances he winds up with a Bregman-esque high-AAV/low-years-with-opt-outs deal?

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS was always kind the low one on him, so it hasn’t really changed much

Dan Szymborski: I think he’ll do better than Bregman though

Sox: Roman Anthony looking terrific lately (plate discipline, hard contact) – Is a MVP in the range of outcomes?

Dan Szymborski: It’s certainly possible. There are some 2026 percentile in the piece I wrote last week!

Kwanbelievable: I have been unable to make this chat for several weeks, but I am extremely bummed I missed the bit on port-dan-teaus with my name

Dan Szymborski: It’s been a few weeks since we had one! Was swamped with deadline work two weeks ago and had a piece to finish that had to get done last week

Guest: Cubs fans are going nuts stanning for Caissie, but I have a hard time believing he’ll be more than “Gallo without the glove.” I known you’re high on him. Can you give me reason to believe he won’t just run out a 40% K rate and play his way into the Pioneer League?

Dan Szymborski: OK, he’s not the prospect that Kris Bryant was, of course, but I have something I call the Kris Bryant rule.

Dan Szymborski: “Strikeouts for a guy who is crushing the ball in the minors aren’t that concerning”

Dan Szymborski: He’s not going to be a contact htiter, but when you have a guy with a 140 wRC+ at a level and slugging near .600, they’re *incentivized* to be aggressive at the plate. I literally had this same argument in these chats a decade ago with Kris Bryant.

Dan Szymborski: and AGAIN, Bryant was a better prospect

Dan Szymborski: He doesn’t have a terrible track record for swinging at bad pitches

Dan Szymborski: But he can destroy those not-so-good pitches thrown by a minor league pitcher, so he’s GOING to go and destroy thoe

Dan Szymborski: For a guy killing the ball, I’m far more concerned with passivity

Dan Szymborski: If I have the Kris Bryant rule, I also have the Ben Grieve trap.

Alby: A 27-out inning? You’d lose an audience, too.

Dan Szymborski: Piss off some advertisers too

Dan Szymborski: “And that ends the top of the game. Come back after 90 minutes of commercials for the bottom of this game.”

PinstripedProblems: How much has Judge’s hurt the rest of the year projections. Is he still an MVP lock? Over under on 8.5 WAR

Dan Szymborski: Not too much. I wouldn’t say lock because Raleigh, but he’s the favorite

Dan Szymborski: over 8.5

Look At This Sotograph: What’s the biggest ZiPS miss of all time? I.e. biggest difference between projection and real-life stats, in a negative way

Dan Szymborski: I don’t actually know offhand (more so with teams)

Dan Szymborski: but as blunders go, Lastings Milledge was a particularly bad one!

Hoplarsko: Did you see the rumors about Andrew Friedman leaving the Dodgers to take an executive role with the Lakers?

Dan Szymborski: I’ve seen some of the rumors, but I don’t really have anything to add of value. I don’t know Friedman personally, and if I did, I’d probably have learned anything about this being a possibility — if one existed — off the record

Dan Szymborski: my specialty is ruining the joy of baseball with math homework

Matt: How good is Colson Montgomery actually?

Dan Szymborski: TBD

Roman Empire: Who would be your Roman Anthony’s comp?

Dan Szymborski: Greek Alcibiades

Guest: Do the Yankees make the playoffs

Dan Szymborski: yes

Sleve McDichael: ZiPS’s favorite minor leaguer ever?

Dan Szymborski: Nick the Stick

Dan Szymborski: (Johnson)

Guest: When the Brewers reach into their 80th or 90th percentile every year how do you reconcile that with the fact there appears to be no reversion towards the mean?

Dan Szymborski: black magic

Dan Szymborski: I’d love to capture it with data, but so far have been unsuccessful

Dan Szymborski: they’re like one of those youtubers who buys a broken luxury car for $2K and then fixes one thing cheaply and suddenly it runs perfectly

Oaktown Blues: Do you think Jacob Lopez is for real? Can a guy with a 91 MPH fastball continue to rack up the Ks like this?

Dan Szymborski: I wouldn’t say BULLISH, but he’s actually good a good contact rate. But any dropoff in his command and it could go bad quicly

21127: *in the middle of thr inning in a game with one inning of 27 outs* They’re only up by 22. We GOT this!

Noah: Do you think the rangers make the playoffs this year?

Dan Szymborski: no

James: Has Correa’s future zips changed at all from his small sample success back in Houston? I feel like he still has a couple more all-star seasons in there

Dan Szymborski: Not really. Still a possibility of course

Todd Bonzalez: Are you sure it wasn’t Trevor Plouffe who once said that /s

NT: Do you think Devin Williams’ 1st percentile was around a  5.48 ERA? This has to be one of the most shocking reliever seasons in a while

Dan Szymborski: What’s weird about his season is that between the garbage bookends, there was a long period where he was really solid

Dan Szymborski: It was 7th percentile by the way

Dan Szymborski: Relievers are REALLY volatile

Dan Szymborski: Percentile ERA+ ERA WAR   95% 374 1.10 2.7   90% 277 1.49 2.3   80% 213 1.94 1.9   70% 186 2.22 1.7   60% 168 2.46 1.5   50% 155 2.66 1.3   40% 135 3.05 1.1   30% 119 3.46 0.8   20% 104 3.96 0.5   10% 87 4.76 0.1   5% 72 5.70 -0.3

Ghost of Bobby Thigpen: George Wolkow’s line batting one-handed
1.000/1.000/1.000

Should he convert to this approach full-time?

Dan Szymborski: I dunno, it wasn’t *great* for Pete Gray and he had a ton of experience

Captainjameshook: Pohlads now not selling majority after teardown has to be brutal for fans. Who lands Ryan this off-season?

Dan Szymborski: Orioles I hoep! lol

Dan Szymborski: It is brutal

Dan Szymborski: funny how baseball teams are awful businesses and all these owners supposedly losing money keep backing down from making huge profits

STiVo: Does your lack of concern for minor-league Ks work for Spencer Jones?

Dan Szymborski: yes

Kip: How does ZIPs project Michael Harris next season? His second half production is so wildly different and I can’t imagine how that forecast would work.

Dan Szymborski: There’s a peice coming!

Dan Szymborski: piece

Chicks Dig the Fundamentals: Mets and Yankees are in basically a dead heat with each other after the recent skids. Playoff odds has the Mets as slightly more likely to miss the playoffs. Which team do you personally think has a better chance of actually missing the playoffs and bringing shame to the island of Manhattan?

Dan Szymborski: That’s tough. I think the Yankees are more front-end reliant, which makes their downside bigger

Dan Szymborski: BUT, if comedy = tragedy plus time, the Mets are comedy – time.

War2D2: I’m the guy that asked the Caissie question (my browser logged me out and I didn’t notice). I wasn’t arguing, I want to believe! I’ve just been hurt so many times.

Seattlite: How does a season like Cal Raleigh is putting up affect ZIPS? Even people in Seattle recognize that Cal isn’t gonna smash 50 HRs a year going forward, but how does an outlier season like this one affect future projections?

Dan Szymborski: accurately I hoep! lol

Dan Szymborski: actually, I’ve looked at projection results based on recent year departure from previous projections, and surprisingly, there’s no significant change in accuracy

Dan Szymborski: though a change in volatility – the misses both good and bad are bigger

Dan Szymborski: I *hope* this means that I’m weighting performance relatively optimally

Big Buckston: Favorite pitch type from an aesthetic standpoint? I’m personally partial to an old-school, sharp, over-the-top 12-6 curveball

Dan Szymborski: I’m still a sucker for a good 1980s forkball

Dan Szymborski: I use Senga a ton in MLB the Show

Bosoxforlife: Cricket often has “innings” that last for several hours or even days in which only one team hits while the other team stands on the field.

Kevin: If the Rockies brought in someone good from outside to run the baseball operation without interference from the owner and had a league-average budget to work with, how long do you think it would take to become a playoff contender?

Dan Szymborski: Their baseball ops department itself has really tried hard to modernize as quickly as they can. I have no idea who was the impetus, but it’s a good sign that the team was allowed to actually make trades this deadline

Dan Szymborski: I think the hard part is that they start out well behind everyone else and I’m not sure ownership will ever be truly all-in on it

Coolidge: $37 trillion debt. what a time to be alive.

Dan Szymborski: ack, I clicked on the politics thing!

Dan Szymborski: I’ll just say that there’s going to be a lot of pain that nobody in politics takes seriously because most citizens only take it seriously to so long as the solutions don’t affect them in any way

Dan Szymborski: and that’s the end of THAT topic

Ghost of Bobby Thigpen: Counter argument
Pete Gray wasn’t the size of an NBA Power Forward…

Dan Szymborski: but nobody was then!

Cloud Sales Guy: So I notice you run zips on your own custom built machine have you ever run it on multiple cloud virtual computers to save time or is that cost prohibitive.

Dan Szymborski: I’m uncomfortable having ZiPS out of my exclusive possession

Dan Szymborski: well, near exclusive possession

Dan Szymborski: I keep a couple sticks at my mom’s, in a safe deposit box, and an encrypted version hidden in a state park, but my mom isn’t going to start selling her own projections

Roman Empire: the Kris Bryant rule applies with MiLB players with bad chace rates? MLB pitchers would throw more bad pitches right?

Dan Szymborski: Caissie’s at 25.8% out of zone

Guest: if showdown is a good barometer of an MLB 27 inning game, from my experience everyone will immediately line into a double play 🙁

Dan Szymborski: lol, i know

Dan Szymborski: There’s nothing more depressing in Showdowns than needing one more run and then a Perfect right to the shortstop

Dan Szymborski: Until I have a full bench, I will prioritize high steal players

Dan Szymborski: and no matter how good they are offensively, stick them on the bench until I have a slower dude on first

The Oriole Bird: I miss Mike Mussina’s kuckle-curve

Guest: how do MLB teams get GMs? They don’t apply or anything, so does the ownership group just kinda ask around to other owners who might be available? Or do other FO employees call the org directly and let them know they’d be interested?

Dan Szymborski: Baseball is a relatively small world, so personal connections are huge

Dan Szymborski: Hell, while nobody has asked me about a GM hiring, I get asked about analysts who are around all the time

Dan Szymborski: and baseball writing isn’t that different

Dan Szymborski: now, there are more open processes – we’ve had several rounds of open calls for applicants, something useful so that writers who *weren’t* in the saber clique in 2012 get a chance

Dan Szymborski: but networking is still really important

Dan Szymborski: I got hired by ESPN from a random email sent to me while I was waiting for a flight in 2009. In 2018, I saw the writing on the wall when Dan Kaufman went to the Athletic and called him and David. So that’s the value of making professional connections with people.

Dan Szymborski: I must have told the story before, but I got the official offer from David liek 15 minutes after nearly drowning myself kayaking

Dan Szymborski: I wasn’t wearing a life jacket and went through a bit of a rough patch in the river and flipped over.

Dan Szymborski: I coudl swim just fine, it wasn’t rough, but my leg got tangled in the life jacket itself, which I had tied to the kayak and was sitting loosely inside

Dan Szymborski: Without the life jacket there, I would have been just fine. In fact, my very pleasant companion went off to fetch my beer floating down the river as she thought nothing of me flipping over

Dan Szymborski: since I do it constantly

Dan Szymborski: I was thrashing around trying to wade with one leg and was about to abandon my shoe but there were some guys nearby that pulled me to the side so I could get resituated

Guest: encrypted version hidden in a state park? are you ron swanson

Dan Szymborski: A lot of things in life I do to amuse myself

Dan Szymborski: There’s some Pyramid of Greatness overlap, but I don’t like haircuts, am not physically fit, and I’m far too silly to compare

Dan Szymborski: though we probably both land on chaotic neutral

Kip: Why do teams try to hide or obscure how many people work in their analytics departments?

Dan Szymborski: Because there’s no real benefit to talk about it

Joeg: What is the best way to make it into the world of an MLB front office? I’m pretty garbage at playing the game, but think a job would be intresting interesting in the field

Dan Szymborski: There’s no best way. Just do something that solves a problem for a team

Guest: will the guts of zips ever be made open source?

Dan Szymborski: PROBABLY not. I talk a lot about *how* it works, but I don’t give out every last secret

Dan Szymborski: Someone very smart could probably reverse engineer ZiPS from what I’ve said

Dan Szymborski: and someone has done at least part of it pretty well https://brandon.nguyen.vc/2021/06/finding-player-comps-with-mahalnobis…

Dan Szymborski: but ZiPS isn’t a product of genius, but of time

Dan Szymborski: and it does a lot of little things that other projection systems haven’t, because I have the ability to spend a lot of time working on the models

Dan Szymborski: like there’s a generalized model for players approaching HR/hit milestones that keeps PAs from dropping as fast

Dan Szymborski: and so on

Guest: at ESPN, you’re in the cafeteria and stephen a smith comes and sits down at your table. How do you introduce yourself, and what do you think Stephen A’s grasp would be of what “zips” is

Dan Szymborski: The cafeteria at ESPN is mostly the young people!

Dan Szymborski: at least when I’ve been there

Dan Szymborski: tis’ a really good cafeteria there

Dan Szymborski: One time I was there it was custom wood fired pizza day

Dan Szymborski: But I don’t really talk too much about what I do unless someone asks

Dan Szymborski: I mostly just introduce myself as dan and at most I say I write stat stuff about baseball

Alby: How is it shame to the island of Manhattan? Neither team plays there.

Dan Szymborski: Did I say taht? I mean, the people of Manhattan are still mostly ROOTING for one of them

Karl Hungus: How close have you come in selling zips?

Dan Szymborski: I’ve had some inquiries, but I’m really uninterested

Dan Szymborski: I’d have to be offered enough money that I can just go full retirement *without* a change in lifestyle

Dan Szymborski: and that would be a stupid amount of money to give me, I think

Just Fowl: Except for playing time ZiPS has nailed Trevor Story’s 50th percentile season pretty well. Let ‘em eat an old floppy as a treat.

Dan Szymborski: Sadly, ZiPS isn’t on the PC that still has a floppy drive,.

Dan Szymborski: my stereo system is still driven by a Pentium 4 stuffed in an HTPC, but I don’t have a current ZiPS on there

mattybobo: Your story about almost being drowned by a life jacket reminds me of a George Carlin bit about irony and how often it’s misunderstood. Basically, if you have diabetes and are walking to the doctor’s office, and you get hit by a truck and die, it’s not ironic. If you get hit by a sugar truck and die, that’s not quite ironic. If you get hit by an insulin truck and die, THAT’S ironic.

dusty: Firing up the old simulation machine, based on MLB average hitters in each of the 9 lineup spots:
1 inning, 27 outs: 8.6 runs/game
3 innings, 9 outs: 6.9 runs/game
9 innings, 3 outs: 4.9 runs/game
27 innings, 1 out: 3.7 runs/game
Less spread than I would have guessed!

Oaktown Blues: Where’s the guy who does the silly Panama palindromes? I want him to do one for the kayak story

Billy: Zips ROS unimpressed w/ Ben Rice’s exit velos, lack of chase and whiff, crazy barrel rate, etc?

Dan Szymborski: Mostly that ZiPS ROS is simplified

Joeg: Working on a project for school trying to sim baseball games using Markov chains. Do you think a model like this would be possible?

Dan Szymborski: That approach has certainly been done

Pedantic Proofreader: Currently perusing Eric’s article on the 1st-place Padres’ and 2nd-place Dodgers’ pitching prospects. There’s an “it’s”/”its” error. Given that Meg participates in pedantry in Effectively Wild: A Fangraphs Baseball Podcast Presented by Patreon Supporters, should I email her to pick such a nit, or pass?

Dan Szymborski: O

Dan Szymborski: I’m just glad I didn’t make one myself! lol

Dan Szymborski: But don’t bug her with that. She has a lot to do and Matt is off tomorrow

Dan Szymborski: She has to turn my tangential asides into soemthing readable after all, so have mercy

Alby: No, you didn’t say that about Manhattan, the questioner did.

Dan Szymborski: Good, I’m not from New York, but my grandfather, an old Bronx lawyer, would be rolling around in his grave if I thought either were in Manhattan

Just Fowl: I imagine ZiPs running on a machine resembling this

Dan Szymborski: poorly

Alby: I imagine it’s quite a bit harder to be the shame of Queens.

Dan Szymborski: The slowest machine I have run ZiPS of the last few years in has been my mom’s i7-3770K (which did run ZiPS in the early 2010s between the Phenom II 965 Black and the i7-8700K)

Guest: not to be morbid, but zips shouldn’t die with you

Guest: not to be morbid, but does that mean that when you leave the mortal plane, ZiPS goes with you? (besides living on in our hearts forever)

Dan Szymborski: I don’t intend THAT, but I do need a more focused succession plan

Dan Szymborski: I’m 47, not 27 (and of course, 27 year olds die suddenly too)

Dan Szymborski: right now, my executor has directions to email David for advice on it, but I don’t have any specific advanced directives

Guest: high speed is a good strategy for showdowns. Do you prioritize that even over L/R splits?

Dan Szymborski: typically

Dan Szymborski: Showdowns are at Veteran, so the platoon problems are approachable

Sleepless in Philadelphia: Do you think the Padres actually try Mason Miller as a starter next season? I’ve seen a lot of speculation about it

Dan Szymborski: I think they at least explore it

Guest: is that the last time you’ve gone kayaking, the last time you’ve gone kayaking without wearing the vest, or the last time you went kayaking without knowing where the vest was at all times?

Dan Szymborski: I’ve gone kayaking since and put the lifejacket in a loosely tied grocery plastic bag

Dan Szymborski: so that nothing is dangling out, but I can still grab it easily

Dan Szymborski: I don’t kayak anywhere particularly rough

Dan Szymborski: and I’m very buoyant!

Karl Hungus: Any chance you could do zips for football? You would make a killing for fantasy.

Dan Szymborski: I had actually done some prelim for ESPN

Dan Szymborski: but the feeling there was that nobody would buy a projection system that believes thinks RBs shouldn’t be projected over 12/13 games, even if it was accurate

Dan Szymborski: and baseball is my first passion. I make more than enough money for my lifestyle, so I haven’t really had that push to do smore with NFL/NBA

Dan Szymborski: We actually used the rudimentary football ZiPS to project Bo Jackson in an ESPN the magazine issue a ways back

War2D2: Speaking of life jacket horror stories, you should read Dead Wake by Erik Larson.

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

Izzy: Todd Bonzalez seems to have forgotten the Cubs and Brewers have great infield defense. The Reds probably don’t even have the best infield defense in the division.

Karl Hungus: Average number of hours per day you watch baseball?

Dan Szymborski: 5?

Dan Szymborski: Though I multitask in everything I do, so I’m not just staring directly at the screen

Dan Szymborski: I may be watching three games, playing a game, and listening to Mahler simultaneously

Dan Szymborski: I’m really bad at filtering out things around me. I love baseball games, but I hate crowds, because I freaking hear every individual conversation that I can be heard. I’ve actually taken to wearing earplugs in public

Dan Szymborski: but I’m so used to being overstimulated after nearly half a century of it, I have a great deal of trouble sitting quietly in a quiet room

Dan Szymborski: if you put me in sensory deprivation, I’d probably go batshit crazy

Dan Szymborski: on THAT note, time to head out!

Joeg: What team are you gonna bandwagon this year

Dan Szymborski: brewers