Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat – 9/11/25

Dan Szymborski: mesdames et messieurs, bienvenue, nobles FanGraphiers et vénérables sabermétriciens!

Alex: Drake Baldwin has had a wonderful rookie season. What would you expect from the rest of his career? Brian McCann had a career year at 22 and never exceeded the numbers he posted that season; Big Dumper hit a stratospheric other level. Where do you see Baldwin going from here?

Dan Szymborski: As I always tell everyone: catchers are weird

Dan Szymborski: Sometimes they peak weirdly, sometimes they stop developing, sometimes they just blow up late somehow

Dan Szymborski: I’m not sure we know which weird way Baldwin will age, so just assume something fairly normal and prepared for Mets level tracknessy (tradgety + wackiness)

Idiotic Failson: Grisham and Bellinger are both going to be free agents. Do you think the Yankees resign one, both, or neither?

Dan Szymborski: I think they may keep Grisham and lose Bellinger

Guest: Which 2026 MLB free agent reliever would you give a contract worth mrke

Dan Szymborski: mrke?

Dan Szymborski: Maybe it’s still too early (my brain doesn’t really function before 2 PM), but if someone can tell me what that is, I’ll respond

Guest: I know that ZiPS projections start to be saved for the offseason around now, but what would Caleb Ferguson being stretched out as a starter look like? Obviously he’s mainly been a single-inning guy, but he looks like a decent candidate for a kick change and has explicitly expressed an interest in starting before.

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS things fairly third-fourth startery, but it’s not predicting things like knowledge of a new pitch

Guest: You think 2/10 would get it done for Devin Williams in the offseason?

Dan Szymborski: No, I think he’s good enough that he either gets a bigger contract, or a really nice one year deal

Idiotic Failson: Wenceel Perez came into the year with extremely ‘meh’ forecasts. Given his >300 AB sample size of 120wRC+ at the dish, do you (or Zips) see him an a comfortably above average hitter now? Or is his current run at the plate a fluke?

Dan Szymborski: I wouldn’t say comfortably above average, but I think he’s showing he’s decent, especially not BABIP driven

Eli: Does ZiPS see any hope for Volpe or Wells? Or are they doomed to join the island of lost yankee prospects with Bird, Frazier, Sanchez, Andujar, etc.?

Dan Szymborski: I still have hope and ZiPS does too

Dan Szymborski: While I don’t want to parrot Yankees reddit too much, given their insane blame of analytics for everything that doesn’t work and attributing at everything that does work to ignoring analytics, Volpe *has* gotten too far into big power hitter approach; he’s not Kyle Schwarber and line drives are good

Dan Szymborski: And I don’t WTF is going on with his defense this year

Chi Sox Chip: What do we make of Colson Montgomery?

Dan Szymborski: The power’s been impressive and you can’t really fake that. But you can’t ignroe that the dude had nearly a half season of low 200 BA under 300 OBP in *AAA* THIS year

Sodo Mojo: If the Mariners can only choose between keeping Arozarena
or  trading him and resigning Naylor this off season which one should the choose. I assume that the last year of Randy’s Arbitration will be similar to the first year salary in Naylor’s deal.

Dan Szymborski: I’d probably choose Arozarena

Guest: 43% less awful is still a lot of awful

Dan Szymborski: Hey, I never promised I WASNT awful. Just anything going on in Twitter or BlueSky right now while you’re reading this is at a MINIMUM 43% worse

LEO RIVAS: LEO RIVAS

J: Who’s your NL rookie of the year thus far?

Dan Szymborski: Just a note: I’m an NL ROY voter, and I’m not supposed to reveal my feelings on this

James: Do you know where to find data on how often the Manfred man scores in extra innings? Seems like the conversion late has been low and wondering if that lines up with reality

Dan Szymborski: I’m nto sure, I haven’t really done it myself. I’m wondering if a combo of stathead queries can catch it

Pinstriped Power: Yankees are rolling with 3 young pitchers in the rotation right. Not bad for a team that has a reputation for relying on past-peak overpriced free agents. Does zips think Gil, Warren and Schlitter are long term solutions

Dan Szymborski: All 3 to an *extent*

Sodo Mojo: How much will this year effect Cal Raliegh’s future zips projections.  In the past it was hard to project him becoming a part time DH over the next 3 years because the bat was not strong enough. Do you think that this year will change his projections enough so he could have a Joe Mauer like transition to either 1B or DH?

Dan Szymborski: the projections are pretty solid now!

Ethan: Otherthan reading this site, what’s the #1 way to understand sabermetrics better?

Dan Szymborski: Simply asking questions about things and trying to answer them with investigation

Dan Szymborski: Every thing in sabermetrics cames because someone had a question

Dan Szymborski: WHY do teams score runs

Dan Szymborski: WHY are pitcher hit totals seemingly volatile

Dan Szymborski: WHY the fricking hell do people think Jack Morris should be a Hall of Famer

Jacob: Hi Dan! You mentioned yesterday in your Connelly Early article that ZiPS has a “playoff mode” for assessing the way rotations shorten up in the postseason. Do you know yet if you’ll write up a more detailed playoff mode ranking for October, and how does the Phillies’ ranking react to losing Wheeler for the year?

Dan Szymborski: (The answer to the last one is “people have bad ideas”)

Dan Szymborski: I don’t usually do the playoff ranking, since you see it in the playoff projections!

Guest: Good afternoon, Dan! Being a Mets fan, it seems like I’d been hearing about how talented Sproat was for years. It surprised me this year when it appeared he took a step back and got leapfrogged by first McLean and then Tong. Now that he’s up and looking pretty good, might he wind up being as as good or better than the other two? What’s your rank for the three ROS, as well as 2026 and beyond? Thanks!

Dan Szymborski: I think they all have a pretty good chance of being good long term. There’s a lot of taking a step forward and maybe taking a step back before you take a few more forward in prospect development

Bob Loblaw’s Law Blog: Hi Dan, pretend that you’re Chaim Bloom. What would you do this winter?

Dan Szymborski: Calling the now Dan Szymborski housing Chaim Bloom’s soul and apologizing to him for the weight gain he just endured with the swtich

Dan Szymborski: I really want to try and flesh out what the infield looks like. This was kind of the play it by ear year, and I don’t want another winter where I’m improvising mid-winter

Unabashed Cubs Fan: Hey Dan, who do you think starts for Cubs next year between 3 OF spots and DH?

Dan Szymborski: I think it’ll look much like this year, but Caissie out there instead of Tucker

Smokin’ Jim Leyland: Dan – can we expect that the Playoff Tigers will play more like the team that has terrorized the Yankees’ bullpen the past two nights than the team of imposters that lost 2 of 3 against the White Sox and was recently swept by the Oakland-Sacramento Athletics of Las Vegas?

Dan Szymborski: Like most things, in the middle!

Kristen: Are you buying the Rangers?  Their road record is horrendous and the hitting lineup is dotted with no-names, but they just swept the team with the best record in MLB and the rotation is still solid without Evo,

Dan Szymborski: I’m not. the offense just scares me

Insert Witty Name Here: What’s the best/worst thing about this season that you enjoyed/hated?

Dan Szymborski: Well, I’ve most hated the Orioles kind of sucking

Dan Szymborski: but I love Cal Raleigh going nuts

Bardo Bill: In your article on opt-out candidates you projected a pretty big bump for Bregman in ZiPS, from a 2026 projectioin of 2.4 WAR in the pre-season ZiPS to 3.7 WAR now. But since coming back from injury he’s at only 0.8 WAR with a 99 wRC+. How does ZiPS deal with that sort of pre-/post-injury split? Does the big bump in his projection still feel right to you?

Dan Szymborski: I think what I wrote was taken more literally than I intended. Bregman has a better projection for 2026 than he did coming into 2025, but I think his *general trajectory* and the perception of his talent level is about the same

Dan Szymborski: He’s a star, not a superstar, on the wrong side of 30, and he can stick at 3B for quite a while

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think he’s change how any thinks about him. Most felt already positive

Dan Szymborski: The full ZiPS model has all the injury stuff; in season is a big simpler

Dan Szymborski: bit

War2D2: Re: catchers being weird: take a look at Rick Wilkins’ career sometime.

Dan Szymborski: Ben Davis

Dan Szymborski: Ben Petrick

Dan Szymborski: Mickey Tettleton as a prospect was a GLOVE FIRST prospect in the minors

Dan Szymborski: Charles Johnson had a weird ass career

Guest: Is there anyway to track expected fWar, that is based on expected stats as opposed to real-life results?

Dan Szymborski: to track, no, but you coudl do something yourself if you were creative

J: When you vote for ROY I’ll know that you’re responding to me personally, at least.

Dan Szymborski: I’ll vote for an eligible candidate!

Jerry: Dan, just wanted to say well done on that Mayo article. Really impressive insight.

Dan Szymborski: Thanks. I like when I get compliments for things I didn’t do 🙂

Dan Szymborski: Ben wrote the piece!

Dan Szymborski: So please direct your plaudits at Mr. Clemens

Dan Szymborski: If Samuel Clemens is Mark Twain, should baseball writer Ben Clemens be Park Twain?

johnboy: What does Jazz get on the open market?

Dan Szymborski: I think jazz, like classical, will sells best when it’s one of the old school names or a crossover, than for anything new 🙂

Dan Szymborski: Doesn’t anyone have mrke yet?

Jeremy: Have teams gotten meaningfully better at playing matchups  with their position players (beyond just seeking the platoon advantage) thanks to granular data on attack angles, performance against specific kinds of pitches, etc.?

Dan Szymborski: I believe they have, but these things benefit both sides

Dan Szymborski: Like you may know Capo Ferro, but the other guy may know Thibault. And then the hitter might have studied his Agrippa

Idiotic Failson: If you took a modern pitcher (velocity, pitch shape recognition, etc) and dropped him into the 1940s, what would his ERA look like? Would he completely dominate since those hitters would struggle with velocity, sequencing, and pitch shape?

Dan Szymborski: I think he’d do *pretty* well, but there are caveats

Dan Szymborski: SOME of the knowledge won’t be directly applicable, simply because hitters approaches are different

Dan Szymborski: Showing up with a 98 mph fastball and a 91 mph changeup and slider will do more to destroy 1940s hitters than specific knowledge

Dan Szymborski: more than the sequencing part, I think

Dan Szymborski: since they’re such dangerous tools

Dan Szymborski: But the 98 mph will probably have to be taken a bit off of it

Dan Szymborski: because your manager is giving you 350 innings and you’re going to have dead arm in two years, and people of 80 years later will never remember you when they talk about how durable pitchers were in the old days because they’ve forgotten all the Ewell Blackwells

Karl Hungus: Best baseball movie?

Dan Szymborski: The Sandlot

21127: There are 5 series left. I would love if, at this exact point in the season, a team had one series left against each team in its division.

I am the Apple: Could be more for the mailbag, but: Who is the one player from each of the top international leagues (NPB, KBO, LMB, CPBL) with the highest projected rest-of-career MLB WAR if they were to make the jump today?

Dan Szymborski: Honeslty, I can’t do this one justice and I think you shoudl definitely ask in mailbag

Guest: should the yankees trade volpe this offseason? He’s struggled with more than just baseball, the yankees fandom appears to have broken him. He still has high upside too, we have already seen his potential. Volpe to Rockies confirmed?

Dan Szymborski: Volpe does seem like he could use a change of scenery

Greg: I know it has only been 3 starts but watching Kyle Bradish dominate while “recovering” has to be a late-season bright light for Orioles fans. I love him more than anyone and I’m still quite surprised/impressed.

Dan Szymborski: hmm

Dan Szymborski: there once was a pitcher named bradish

Dan Szymborski: who ails had use recite the kaddish

Dan Szymborski: hmm

Dan Szymborski: his elbow intact

Dan Szymborski: he still has the knack

Dan Szymborski: uhhh.. something radish? I got myself in a bind

Farhandrew Zaidman: I would just like to shout out Adam Ottavino on youtube real quick, he’s doing daily shows and it’s some of the best pitching content out there.

bob: If the rangers make the playoffs, it will be the best comeback since _____

Dan Szymborski: sliced bread

Dan Szymborski: his slider still bites like a radish?

Dan Szymborski: I dunno

Dan Szymborski: And the Tigers comeback last year was better

johnboy: if every player was a free agent at the end of the year, who would get the largest contract? Bobby Witt?

Dan Szymborski: Witt or Soto I assume

Greg: “Oy vey!” he said, “There
Is no need for a prayer!”
“My slider is sharp as a radish!”

Tiger Fan: Hey, statistical semantics question. Why is wOBA scaled to OBP and not OPS?

Dan Szymborski: I think since OPS in itself is a weird stat and OBP ranges are more familiar among old school fans

Aviaries: Would you give Cody Bellinger 9-figures if you were GM of, say, the Padres or Dodgers? I worry about his production in other ballparks

Dan Szymborski: I *probalby* wouldn’t

Dan Szymborski: but I can see a specific team having the justification

Jeremy: Analysts draw a distinction between true talent that’s very autocorrelated (doesn’t change with time, or only changes slowly due to age) and noise/luck that’s not autocorrelated at all. But is player performance autocorrelated on intermediate timescales–days, weeks, months?

Dan Szymborski: I’ve actually experimented with this quite a bit – I think of talent as fluctuating in a range

Dan Szymborski: Otherwise, we have way too many no hitters and homer streaks and hitting streaks

Guest: I remember a while back there was an article comparing Bichette to a poor mans Turner. With his recent bounce back in the last couple weeks since, what do you project his contract to look like

Dan Szymborski: Don’t think he’ll get Turner money

Dan Szymborski: We’ll talk more about this in offseason!

Greg:

Guest: Best sabermetric-focused book to read after finishing The Book?

Dan Szymborski: I think that hidden game of baseball and the bill james abstracts are foundational. Simply put, seeing where sabermetrics “started” and understanding its evolution kind of makes you understand the insides more

Dan Szymborski: And it also depends on where you are

Dan Szymborski: And remember, I speak from the perspective of someone who has been into sabermetrics for 40 years

Greg: Since someone asked you about movies, I sent you an image and I think you’ll love it. I couldn’t get the game to give him fungus on his shower sandals, though.

War2D2: I think it’s scaled to OBP because “wOPS” would be offensive.

War2D2: is a radish sharp though?

Dan Szymborski: a good radish should be

Dan Szymborski: could also rhyme it with horseradish

Dan Szymborski: though would have to tinker

Dan Szymborski: I normally don’t try to write a limerick in live chat

Farhandrew Zaidman: On the wOBA v OPS topic – Tom Tango’s short chapter on the topic in The Book always cracks me up. It’s basically “wOBA is better in every way than OPS and here’s why and we won’t be discussing OPS any more in this book”

Dan Szymborski: OPS is always controversial because it’s a really useful kludge

Dan Szymborski: honestly, xFIP is the same way

Dan Szymborski: xFIP is kind of stupid. But it also kind of works because HR totals for pitchers is kind of a crap stat

Dan Szymborski: so it works by sucking less

Dan Szymborski: We do a lot of brute force shortcuts in life because they work kinda fine

Pinstriped Power: I like to think of OPS as just a bit analytical but still easy to understand

Dan Szymborski: saber-adjacent

Tiger Fan: Thanks. I would’ve thought OPS was more mainstream for catch-all offense than OBP (I hear way more dads talk about judge’s 1.100 OPS than Soto’s .400 OBP) which is what I thought wOBA would target

Greg: I always try to write a limerick in your live chat Dan, you can count on me

Guest: Is Anthony Volpe just New York’s Marner? If so, Volpe for Lawrence butler 1 for 1?

Dan Szymborski: I haven’t known enough about hockey in 30 years to be making analogies

Farhandrew Zaidman: Mookie since declaring his season over has been like a .300/.400/.500 hitter. Maybe the solution all along was just giving up?

Dan Szymborski: I mean, didn’t we all learn from that Voyager episode where the ship was going into an anomaly and the configuration of the ship kept changing and they realized that the solution was just to sit there and shut up?

12 to 6: can’t see the dodgers being a realistic belly location this offseason – they have pages and teo and a passel of of prospects on the come and freeman blocks belly at 1b. they may pump the market and i’m sure he’d love to go back to la, but the fit doesn’t seem to be sensical to me.

Dan Szymborski: yeah, I’m not sure dodgers would

Farhandrew Zaidman: Would you be in favor of MLB amending the Ohtani rule to allow his team to keep the DH if he comes in as a relief pitcher (a la WBC)?

Dan Szymborski: I would, but I haven’t greatly pondered the loopholes

Sawx: After a few Tolle starts, one Early start, and one appearance for Kyle Harrison, which of the Sox lefties do you think makes the biggest impact on the last month of the season?

Dan Szymborski: I think Early might be the safest. I think he’s better than Harrison, and he didn’t advance quite as quickly as Tolle did

Dan Szymborski: Tolle really has very little upper minors experience

James: Is it just me, or has there been an uptick in hitters starting to first after 3-ball pitches that are clearly strikes and having to get called back by the umpire? Makes me wonder how an ABS challenge system will go

Dan Szymborski: hmm, not sure how to measure this!

Dan Szymborski: But I hadn’t noticed it. But I don’t notice a lot of things

Dan Szymborski: and then when I’m aware of them, I hyper notice them

Insert Witty Name Here: I had friends as a kid, no I did not see that episode of Voyager.

Dan Szymborski: hey, I had friends!

Dan Szymborski: You can’t play goldeneye by yourself

Dan Szymborski: and street fighter II is way more fun with friends

Dan Szymborski: or fireworks

Dan Szymborski: or this weird outside violent hide and seek game we had. It was hide and seek outside, but when you found someone, you could only catch them by tackling them to the ground before they tackled youi to the ground

Dan Szymborski: that game’s REALLY not fun wtih strangers who don’t know they’re playing the game

Guest: I think the “mrke” question was supposed to be:

“Which 2026 MLB free agent reliever would you give a contract worth [more than $XM per year]?”

What’s your answer if X=10?

Dan Szymborski: I’d be comfortable with Suarez, who isn’t going to require six years or anythign becuase of his age

Guest: What do you think the market for Josh Naylor will be in the offseason? He is under 30 yrs old, and making a claim for trade deadline MVP.

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think it’s a huge market, somewhere between Walker and Santander

Karl Hungus: Odds MLB adopts the all star game homerun off instead of the ghost runner extra innings?

Dan Szymborski: Probalby very low. It’ sjust TOO different for MLB

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think I’d like it, but I REALLY don’t like zombie runners

Dan Szymborski: and on some level, I rather it be something new and obnoxiously different than ruining something that was already good

florp: what was your 9/11 like

Dan Szymborski: oh geez, I didn’t even realize today was 9/11

Dan Szymborski: I kinda heard about most of it later in the day

Dan Szymborski: I was at Damon’s in Lutherville eating all you can eat ribs and $2 honey browns the night before for monday night football

Dan Szymborski: that was the MNF where ed mccaffrey shattered his leg and rodney williams had that 90 yard punt

Dan Szymborski: My mom called me about 10 AM and it woke me up and she made some comment that someone ran their plane into the wtc and I thought it was someone flying a little cessna or something and went back to bed

Dan Szymborski: I then woke up about 1 to get ready since I was going to the ironbirds game later and got cuaght up

Lowetide: Darren Daulton wasn’t much until he was something. What about Agustin Ramirez? Is he a future 1b? Like two years from now?

Dan Szymborski: I think he’s a future 1B, but I’d keep him at catcher until he conclusively proves otherwise

Dan Szymborski: what would the downside be? the marlins lose?

Dan Szymborski: On that note, it is 1 PM and time fo rme to head out

Dan Szymborski: Thanks for coming everyone!

Dan Szymborski: See you on the NEXT installment

Dan Szymborski: maybe I’ll tighten up the limerick, but I’ll probably forget it