Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat – 8/24/23

Dan Szymborski: And we are LIVE

Dan’s Mom: Daniel, I am still waiting for my DeadLinesmas present.  Should I just come over and pick it up?

Dan Szymborski: No, they’re supposed to be presents for people who know what the trade deadline is.

BlueJayMatt: Which13 Jays players? I hit return and the question got sent early, sorry Dan

BlueJayMatt: In your excellent article this morning you talk about Toronto saying “Blue Jays have an absurd 13″…”offensive players under contract who project at 1.5 WAR or more in 2024”.

Dan Szymborski: You don’t expect me to give *all* the secrets away do ya?

Dan Szymborski: But let’s just say that Schneider and Orelvis and Roden are there

Dan Szymborski: and Barger hasn’t fallen below the 1.5 line

Dan Szymborski: and Lantigua’s there

Bob: ZiPS was unusually optimistic about Bogaerts deal this past winter. You re-ran his projections for your recent article, but I didn’t get a sense of how much they have changed or how likely the deal is to be under water now that we’re mostly through a soft first season. Could you comment on that a bit?

Dan Szymborski: It’s definitely come down a bit

Dan Szymborski: especially the out years

Dan Szymborski: It’s become more underwater

Stevie: I feel somewhat responsible for jinxing Ohtani now.                                                                                      Stevie: Is there any upside to Ohtani pitching again this year?
2:55
 Jay Jaffe: Yes. Because he’s f’ing good at it, in the middle of perhaps the greatest season ever, and we want to be entertained!

Steve: Dan, does ZiPS take into account any x-stats? Is there any evidence that something like xwOBA has useful predictive value?

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS uses its own thing which I’ve talked about a lot lately!

Dan Szymborski: and it *is* desigend to be predictive

Dan Szymborski: xwOBA has predictive value, though it frequently comes under other things

Dan Szymborski: in predicting the future

Dan Szymborski: However, people assume that’s the end of it, but that’s not really how it works. You don’t just choose One True Input to Rule Them All

Dan Szymborski: xStats and zStats both have knowledge that the other stuff doesn’t have

Dan Szymborski: so even in the case of xstats where it doesn’t do that much better than FIP

Dan Szymborski: the question is whether using xstats *improves* FIP or any of the like measures

Dan Szymborski: Just as another example, there’s no point in the season, historically, in which preseason ZiPS team winning percentage is a worse predictor than actual team winning percentage.

Dan Szymborski: But we don’t just choose one and ignore the other. Actual team winning percentage does have some information that a preseason projection doesn’t

Dan Szymborski: So if that’s all we have, while ZiPS preseason beats in-season, ZiPS preseason *and* in-season beats both.

Kip: Given the widespread adoption of data I’m curious where the elite teams set themselves apart.  What’s something the elite teams are doing with analytics  most teams aren’t?

Dan Szymborski: I’m light on specifics, even though I do talk a lot with teams and also sell them a lot of data. Basically, there’s a pretty strict two-way wall in order to preserve my independence.

Dan Szymborski: But the *impression* I get is that the teams that do the best with analytics aren’t necessarily the ones with the fanciest systems

Dan Szymborski: But the ones who do the best job at taking data and turning the data into *actions* and *plans*

Dan Szymborski: For example, while the Astros have always had good analytics, what they’ve really excelled at is communicating that kind of information to players and to actually utilizing it in decision making

Dan Szymborski: The worst organizations at this frequently have some really good information but there’s a chokepoint somewhere in the decision making process

Dan Szymborski: Surrey can have all the troops in the world, but if they can’t get over the Stirling bridge, it doesn’t matter how many they have

q: How much of a disadvantage do you think franchises would be at if they relied on publicly-available analytics & rankings (i.e. your projections, BA prospect rankings…) instead of internal tools? A semi-recent Boddy tweet suggests the gap isn’t that big

Dan Szymborski: I agree with Kyle. They have very specific information about their own players, but they’ll never have the same detail about players on the rest of the team. Where teams excel is having the manpower and the ability to *implement* the data

Dan Szymborski: And on some level, if the gap was huge, I wouldn’t sell shit on the side.

Dan Szymborski: (Of course, I have some non public stuff too)

Totally clear-eyed realist: Bobby Witt Jr. is going to look good in pinstripes, isn’t he?

Dan Szymborski: THe thing is, that may be the place the Yankees need the least bit of help

leprekhan: What is one organization that is currently a dumpster fire, but you think there is actually hope that things could turnaround for them relatively quickly?

Dan Szymborski: The White Sox

Dan Szymborski: don’t laugh

Dan Szymborski: They’re not *going* to turn things around quickly

Dan Szymborski: But imagine if Reinsdorf sold the team

Dan Szymborski: The new owner would have a Chicago team, even if it’s the lesser Chicago team, in a low-effort division

Dan Szymborski: Fact is, the White Sox weren’t *that* far from having a few things go their way and the Reinsdorf-TLR-Hahn-Kennydubs garbage fire working out anyway

Matt G: Do you imagine ZIPS more like Data, Spock/Tuvok/etc, the holodeck, or the ‘computer’ / Majel Barrett?

Dan Szymborski: I would hope Data

Dan Szymborski: Though I’m certainly not

RobertoBeers: A man, a Dan, a Chat, Ohtani ennui, unneinathotahcanadanama

Laxtonto: Am i a potatoe?

Dan Szymborski: My mom spells potato wrong in both forms. Potatoe and Potatos

Laxtonto: Pizza or tacos?

Dan Szymborski: Tacos

Laxtonto: Beer or….. Beer?

Dan Szymborski: Why not both?

David Howell: If Ohtani has thrown his last MLB pitch, does that make everyone give up on the idea of a two-way player in the majors, with implications for drafting two-way amateurs?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think it makes everyone give up on the idea

Dan Szymborski: I think it’s always going to be rare

Jerry Reinsdorf: I’m not actually going to hire Dayton Moore and promote Chris Getz to run the baseball operations, am I?

Dan Szymborski: Getz did have the best walkup music of all time

Dan Szymborski:

tz: If Ohtani had TJ tomorrow, and you were running a big market team, would you still offer him 10/500?  I’d strongly consider it, if only because the upside of him pitching again is a plus on top of being a clear top 10-20 MLB hitter.

Dan Szymborski: I would not.

Phil: With the bad news about Ohtani, how does that effect his contract?

Dan Szymborski: Poorly I assume. But he won’t be dancing in the subway station for nickels anytime soon

Link: What are your thoughts on Tears of the Kingdom?

Dan Szymborski: Have not played yet

Mike: Are ZIPS 2024/2025 updated mid season? If not, is there a good way to identify mid-season projection improvements for minor leaguers or young big leaguers?

Dan Szymborski: On my end they are. We only do them preseason on the site

Scott: What has happened with Xander this year? Has it been mostly wrist related? I know he turned 30, but the guy had been a .300/.375/.480ish guy the last 3 years. Can we make the “first year of a new big contract” excuse? I know you did an article on SD recently, should Xander’s ZIPs really fall that fast? He was great last 3 years. Thanks.

Dan Szymborski: I certainly hope it’s a fluke

A Huge Dog: Woof woof! I feel like not enough people are discussing Sonny Gray’s excellent season and home run suppression. As a dog, I only see Gray, but do you think Gray’s stats tell the true picture? Do you think he has a realistic shot at the Cy Young? Bark!

Dan Szymborski: Never fall in love with a guy based on one year HR outliers

Dan Szymborski: xFIP only works as well as it does because HRs allowed is a crappy stat for pitchers

Dan Szymborski: Gray should be good at preventing homers, but there’s not much supporting *this* as a skill

Dan Szymborski: I’d probably vote for Gallen if the season ended today

Dan Szymborski: though it’s close

Dan Szymborski: (I’m RoY again, not Cy this year)

Oddball Herrera: Oh boy – the Monday morning quarterbacking on the Angel’s keeping Ohtani is going to be brutal after today’s news

Dan Szymborski: It’d be weirder if it didn’t

JasonM: How well does ZiPS do with limited pro data on a player such as Schanuel?

Dan Szymborski: Definitely much larger error bars

Dan Szymborski: When you have no professional experience

Dan Szymborski: Normally, I wouldn’t even give Schanuel an official projection for 2024, but now I’m stuck!

Dan Szymborski: Which means college translation, which suck

Joe: ZiPS had very strong projections for Yoshida. I believe 3+ WAR. At the time I thought the batting line was optimistic, but reasonable. Otoh, the defense and base running concerns raised by the scouting reports seemed to be mostly minimized. There was some crowing early in the year that the optimistic projections were correct. He’s now slumping badly and sitting at a disappointing 0.8 WAR. I think his hitting will bounce back some, but his defense and base running value make it hard to ever see him as a 3+ WAR player. Does ZiPS have difficulty projecting non hitting performance from foreign leagues?

Dan Szymborski: Yeah, because the data for the defense kinda sucks

Jerry Reinsdorf: I am scheduling interviews for the new “single decision maker” in baseball operations. You interested?

Dan Szymborski: Between him and TLR and Moore and Getz, it’s just a slightly different four-headed monster

Sirras: Two big stars hurt in one night. Who are the next brightest, must-watch players to watch every AB/pitch from?

Dan Szymborski: He’s still raw and McLain’s obviously the better player right now, but Elly De La Cruz IS fun

Zach: I assume this article is for the offseason. Would you consider writing an article outlining Ohtani’s rest of career projections? Could you include his projections before his second Tommy John surgery (TJ), as well as the possibility of him becoming a reliever or outfielder?

Dan Szymborski: I’m actually running some numbers along these lines for something Jay is working on

Dan Szymborski: Glad he grabbed that one as writing about this just feels too sad for my tastes

Todd Bonzalez: What kind of player is TJ Friedl moving forward? Tons of blue in the Savant page, but somehow still having a productive season at the plate. A lot of that has to be luck, right? Seems to do everything else reasonably well.

Dan Szymborski: Just an averagish stopgap dude

Guest: The games are too fast now! How can we slow them down? Oddly aggressive Burger King mascot runs on the field at arbitrary moments?

Dan Szymborski: Fast is good with me! I like high density baseball

brent says go padres: Would people be calling for Preller’s head if the Padres were playing at their run differential? It just seems like they’ve gotten historically unlucky but between Salas, Merrill, Lesko, and a few other guys it seems like he’s been able to replenish the farm system while assembling a talented but unlucky MLB roster. I get it, it’s not my money, and the year is frustrating, but it seems like an overreaction to me

Dan Szymborski: Probably not. Perception is a big thing

Dan Szymborski: Preller’s a roughly average GM. He’s done some good thing and done some crappy things

Nathan: If I were a fortune teller with 100% accuracy at predicting when and which players will get injured, but these injuries cannot be prevented, would I make more money off of MLB teams or gamblers?

Dan Szymborski: why not both? 😀

Sean: With the Ohtani news, what effect do you think it will have on his free agency?  Lots of opt outs?  No more pitching?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t have the slightest idea!

Sammy So-so: Truly enjoyed the Rebuild the Bombers piece. If they had sold on Bader and Peralta and maybe Gleyber at the deadline, would things look a little brighter right now or would it not be enough to move the needle?

Dan Szymborski: I’m not sure they would have really gotten anything future-changing

Failed Rebuild: Dan, we imagine that quite a bit.

Failed Rebuild: Imagining only hurts us.

JP: What are zips’ odds of Acuña, Murphy and Olson each producing at 99th percentile outcomes, Ozuna and Rosario coming back from the dead to top career averages, Arcia hitting for the first time in his life, and Riley/Albies/d’Arnaud matching or exceeding projected output ALL IN THE SAME YEAR? Has to be like .00001%

Dan Szymborski: I disagree with the premise though!

Dan Szymborski: In OPS+, Acuña’s only at his 63rd percentile outcome

Dan Szymborski: Oops wrong hang on

Dan Szymborski: (I still had it projecting 2024)

Dan Szymborski: 90 (i knew instantly it wasn’t actudally 63)

Dan Szymborski: And a little lower since it’s in 5/6 of the season

Dan Szymborski: instead of 6/6

Dan Szymborski: Murphy 87

Dan Szymborski: Olson 83

Dan Szymborski: (And again, these go a little lower when you account for fewer games)

Dan Szymborski: Even ARcia’s isnt’ crazy

Dan Szymborski: Percentile 2B HR BA OBP SLG OPS+ WAR   95% 23 20 .290 .352 .483 119 2.9   90% 22 19 .281 .340 .463 112 2.6   80% 20 17 .269 .327 .438 103 2.1

Guest: Is there any open source baseball stats prediction software (Python or R) you’d recommend?

Dan Szymborski: It’s handy to know both if you’re breaking into the game

Mike: Just wanted to say thanks for all the entertainment over the years.

Dan Szymborski: I try to be at least mildly amusing

Danny: I understand the philosophy behind using a fip based value metric as attempting to measure the contribution from pitcher skill. Given that, why aren’t all so fwar calculations based on the best descriptive metrics of skill (something like xwoba for batters, siera, xfip, or xera for pitchers)?

Dan Szymborski: Because FIP is designed for a specific purpose and it’s good for definitions to not changee

Dan Szymborski: I think it’s generally better to develop better stats rather than change existing stats

Dan Szymborski: WAR is different because WAR is really just a large framework, not a stat itself in the same way

leprekhan: I respect the answer, but I have no faith Reinsdorf’s decision-making including who he would sell the team to IF that were to come to pass.

Dan Szymborski: Here’s the thing. Put all the billionaire’s names in a hat. I bet that the majority of your draws would be a better owner than Reinsdorf

Sadness: I know it’s not nearly as fun but isn’t Shohei the right fielder enough value to cover his 2.3 pitching WAR? Seems like the defense/position value covers the pitching loss no?

Dan Szymborski: That’s a bit of a stretch

Dan Szymborski: There isn’t a 23 run positional adjustment from  DH to corner outfielder

Dan Szymborski: and we don’t know how good he’ll actually be in right

Guest: “Never fall in love with a guy based on one year HR outliers”. My wife fell for that trick and now she’s stuck with me! Bwaabwaaaaa

maximus: how many 17 year olds have played at AA?

Dan Szymborski: Not many!

Dan Szymborski: At least in recnet times

Dan Szymborski: hang on a sec

Dan Szymborski: 17 years old with at least 100 PA at AA include

Dan Szymborski: Wil Cordero 1989

Dan Szymborski: Robert Holbert 1964

Dan Szymborski: Danny Murphy 1960

Dan Szymborski: that’s all I have in my db

The Ghost of Wade Boggs: If we were to assume that Ohtani is done pitching for the foreseeable future or even beyond, do you see him transitioning as an OF or remaining as a DH?

Dan Szymborski: I can see him in the outfield once his arm is well enough for that

Mike: Reinsdorf’s son works at the Bulls and doesn’t care about the Sox. Likely the team is up for sale in the next decade when he passes.

LFC Mike: The Burger King mascot would frighten the children. It scares me.

Dan Szymborski: I bet I can make scarier Burger King mascots in Midjourney!

Mike M: Now that we’re a good way through the season, have you had a chance to reflect or analyze how well your ZiPS has down in light of the rules changes?  Knowing what you know now about the way the game has been played, would you have tweaked ZiPS any differently in the pre-season if you got to redo it?

Dan Szymborski: higher SB for sure. Not a ton has really changed that much otherwise

Dan Szymborski: But I haven’t given much thought to how Future Dan in a time machine should affect a model

Dan Szymborski: because Future Dan going back to troll Past Dan sounds like something I would do

Dan Szymborski:

Dan Szymborski:

Dan Szymborski:

Dan Szymborski: I’m sure kids will like one of those

Dertom: I loved the AL East ZiPS preview for 2024 in the Yankees article. Can you find a way to do the same for other divisions in upcoming articles please?

Dan Szymborski: I wasn’t planning on something quite so formal.

Dan Szymborski: I’ll probably do a start-of-free agency run as I do most years

Dan: If you could perfectly predict the future you could make millions until the casinos banned you (or worse) if you could convince a team you had this power without outing yourself to the other teams you could make millions slower but could keep making millions for the rest of your life

Dan Szymborski: It would make life kind of boring. I’d be wealthy, but I’d basically be ruining baseball for myself

Dan Szymborski: Why watch if you know what’s going to happen?

Dan Szymborski: Yeah, we can predict the Royals suck. But HOW they suck is worth watching it unfold

C-Low: Does Jackson Holliday make a 2023 appearance?

Dan Szymborski: No

Dan: At the beginning of the year I asked who would miss the playoff by less wins than the value of a solid free agent DH and good non closer reliever) you or your colleague (can’t recall) predicted three teams. Is that still a likely number?

Dan Szymborski: Must have been a colleague as I would have demanded you say fewer!

Eli: Regarding “Rebuilding the Bombers” – Cashman has got to be fired, right? Has any GM fallen more in estimation over the past few years? The hiring Sean Casey move is such overweening hubris and idiocy that that alone should result in sacking the whole front office!

Dan Szymborski: The thing is, I think most jobs like this, after a long time with the same person, a new perspective can be refereshing

Wireless Joe Jackson: Dan, can you please write an article about what factors influence Pythagorean over/underperformance (and the factors we can prove do not)?  I’m getting tired of arguing about it.  Thanks!

Dan Szymborski: Here, I’ll list the meaningful ones:

Dan Szymborski: /end

Dan Szymborski: Top closer was closest to mattering and it had an r^2 in the 0.02 range

LFC Mike: Dan.. What food or drink will you use to drown your Ohtani sorrows?  Hefty pot of chili… masterful sandwich ?  Sweets?  Everyone has coping mechanisms.

Dan Szymborski: Actually, based on lunch, a whole bunch of blueberry mini-muffins

O’s going all the way!: Were you leaning Henderson or Jung before the injury? Has to be Henderson now regardless, right?

Dan Szymborski: Henderson.

Dan Szymborski: Though I have no vote in AL ROY

Dan Szymborski: I’m in Cincy BBWAA chapter, so I’d vote on NL awards

Dan Szymborski: now, they can draft someone from another chapter if they’re short

Dan Szymborski: but I would decline that because there are many people who don’t get to vote because they’re in large chapters and I’ve gotten to vote in 6 of 8 seasons

Dan Szymborski: Jay has *never* gotten to vote in a year-end award, which is completely bullshit

Mark: Just wanted to say how much I enjoy your chats. Nowhere else to we get baseball, chili, Olivier Messiaen, and Henry George in the same place! Your chili recipe is delicious, I would add.

Dan Szymborski: Ah, I’m glad you enjoyed real chili!

Dan Szymborski: And it’s super simple

Dan Szymborski: While I would consider myself a foodie, I like a lot of simple things being prepared simply

Dan Szymborski: A hunk of salami and a hunk of nice hard cheese are a perfectly wonderful meal

Kevin: You don’t have to ruin baseball! Ruin another sport with your predictive powers

Dan Szymborski: Ideally, that would be the way to go

Dan Szymborski: Like Future Dan can give the soccer/association football record book

Dan Szymborski: My enjoyment of sports correlates with enjoying playing them as a kid

Dan Szymborski: I loved playing baseball

Dan Szymborski: I absolutely hated playing soccer. Such an awful ratio of running around to doing stuff

Dan Szymborski: On that note, I have some projection stuff to take care of, so gonna have to keep this at an hour today

Dan Szymborski: Thanks for coming everyone!