Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat – 9/28/23

Dan Szymborski: Sorry, was busy talking about the Springfield Bear Patrol

Andrew: Which minor leaguer improved their projections the most this year?

Dan Szymborski: Dangit, why do you guys always ask questions there’s no way I can answer on the fly! lol

Dan Szymborski: Hold on, let me call up the September update and the preseason and see if I can crunch this super quick

Dan Szymborski: OK, the minor leaguers whose 2024 projections have gone up the most (hitter)

Dan Szymborski: Colt Keith, Justyn-Henry Malloy, Tyler Black, Masyn Winn, Luisangel Acuna,

Dan Szymborski: for pitchers

Dan Szymborski: Allan Winans, Walker Powell, James Meeker, Andre Saalfrank, Gavin Williams

Dan Szymborski: (I’m using guys who STARTED the year in the minors)

Mike Cantstandya: I always look forward to your preseason ZiPS prospect rankings. (No shade on the other prospect guys!) What do you think are the odds Jackson Holliday is #1 ZiPS prospect going into 2024?

Dan Szymborski: Without even looking, really frigging likely

The Oriole Bird: We should be dubious about breaking players’ seasons into chunks and saying “the most recent chunk is what the player is going forward.” But are there valid reasons to buy in more to this line of thinking with young, highly-touted developing players like Grayson Rodriguez?

Dan Szymborski: Not really, simply because struggles, adjusting, readjusting are normal parts of pitching

Chili Sin Carne: Is there a non-zero chance that the Orioles call up Jackson Holliday or Coby Mayo in the next week?

Dan Szymborski: there’s a non-zero chance that the Orioles call up the ghost of Rutherford B. Hayes in the next week

Dan Szymborski: zero is zero!

The Oriole Bird: If you were building a team starting today, would you rather have Gallen + Carrol or Henderson + Rutschman?

Dan Szymborski: The latter as I’ve got more time to lock in those two than Gallen

Kyle: Is there a way for you to do a sensitivity analysis with ZiPS on pitcher performance depending on the velocity of his fastball? For example, Skubal seems to have taken a step forward in part by throwing 2 mph faster on his FF. What would his ERA projection look like at 94, 96, or 98mph?

Dan Szymborski: I can, but I don’t really have a good way of achieving it super quickly and easily

Dan Szymborski: I in fact have done custom projections for teams and agents along those lines before.

Dan Szymborski: For example, one agency wanted a full projection with assumed changes in a player’s contact rate

Dan Szymborski: and another a projection for if a player played a particular position they never had before

Chris “Mad Dog” Russo: HEY DAN.  LOVE YOUR SHOW.  WE WERE PROMISED ROBOT UMPS.  WHERE ARE THEY?

Dan Szymborski: They’re still coming! Gotta make sure they know not to kill batters

Tacoby Bellsbury: What’s the least interesting thing to happen to you this week?

Dan Szymborski: I got really pissed when I realized that in the MLB the Show Pennant Chase program, you can no longer do Stage 1 stuff to get points in Stage 2, so I had like 10 points worth of unfinished Moments.

Tacoby Bellsbury: We spend a lot of time on chili around here, but we don’t discuss barbecue nearly as much. What’s your favorite kind of barbecue?

Dan Szymborski: Pork shoulder

Kikuchi’s Sleep Schedule: Hey Dan, how come Yusei Kikuchi’s 3 year ZiPS projections on this site are all whacky? Ages 32-34:
2023: 0.5 WAR, 4.63 FIP, 110.3 IP
2024: 0.3 WAR, 4.84 FIP, 97.7 IP
2025: 1.2 WAR, 4.16 FIP, 107.7 IP

Surely the computer doesn’t think he’ll magically get better at age 34? Is it just a small sample size of comparables?

Dan Szymborski: No, there’s something wonky in some of the 2025 projections that I haven’t figured out

Dan Szymborski: on the site, not my end.

KC Pain: Cal Raleigh or Dylan Lesko better Star Wars name?

Dan Szymborski: Neither.

Dan Szymborski: Bligh Madris

Dan Szymborski: also Terrin Vavra and I like Grae Kessinger

Tacoby Bellsbury: How much has Bobby Witt’s second half boosted his long-term ZiPS projection?

Dan Szymborski: A bonkers amount!

Dan Szymborski: I did a piece on that

Dan Szymborski: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/bobby-witt-jr-may-be-2023s-best-kept-secre…

Dan Szymborski: You guys should be reading the articles because you REALLY don’t want to look at my centerfold

Vote for NOYB: Thank you for stats, and analysis. Thank you for being non political.  Thank you for cats and chili. I anticipate ZIPS 2024 updates.  So…Thank you.

Dan Szymborski: I’m not actually personally non-political, I just don’t want to impose any of my nonsense on others.

Dan Szymborski: I won’t cast shade and any who take a different approach, but my feeling is you get that crap from one direction or the other endlessly in your life, and since nobody should really care what I think about political things, why pile on and make your life even more of a slog?

Dan Szymborski: I want you all to hate me for baseball opinions and my general personality.

NotGraphs Revivalist: Dan we need your thoughts on Boog/JD complaining about RAJ stopping the game to celebrate

Dan Szymborski: I’m torn about it

Dan Szymborski: It’s hard to not celebrate

Dan Szymborski: but it’s also at a really awkward time

Dan Szymborski: Like, I’m happy if the pilot asked the air traffic controller to marry them and she/he said yes but I’d rather you land the damn plane first

Dan Szymborski: But on the other hand, teams should be able to get over stuff like this fairly quickly. Acuna didn’t crash your plane into the Hudson

Kris: How much has the value of a single changed given the new SB based changes?

Dan Szymborski: I think second-order effects are going to be really small

Gerrit Cole: In a group chat I have with my friends, we were saying a few weeks ago that while Cole was Cy frontrunner it was a “Weak” year and then he basically told us to shut our mouths at the end there.

Dan Szymborski: If he didn’t tell you to know your role before telling you to shut your mouth, it’s not legally binding

Gertrude: is this Cynthia’s facebooks wall i was told by myrtle i could contact Cynthia here.  Happy birthday Cynthia i love you -Gert

Dead or Dying: How bleak are the Pirates’ projections for next year compared to the rest of the NL Central?

Dan Szymborski: Not as bleak as you may think

Dan Szymborski: Because it’s the NL Central

KC Pain: Do you think a team will ever just admit next year is an L, and go ham on the rule 5 draft (take like 5 guys) and give retreads a shot to find the next JD Martinez, Duvall, etc?  *Looks at KC* Wouldnt that accomplish more finding a dude who can play than trotting out bodies to stand on the field?

Dan Szymborski: PROBABLY not?

The Oriole Bird: I fear that Felix Bautista will return in time for ALDS 80% his old self, only to be used as if he were regular Felix Bautista… and disaster ensuing for the Orioles.  This feels so likely.  Agree?

Dan Szymborski: I’m super duper worried

Big Fan: Jay has a great article up on Mike Trout.  What is a realistic trade package that GM’s would be talking about?  Is there that one team out there that would give up prospects of note, would a few teams absorb his contract without giving much back, or would the Angels really need to eat money to find him a new home?

Dan Szymborski: I actually had a short discussion with Jay on the topic in Slack

Dan Szymborski: Honestly, I’m not really sure

Dan Szymborski: GMs aren’t really gamblers these days. They’re Turturro in Rounders, not Norton

Dan Szymborski: If GMs made the decision, I’d think they’d have to eat a ton to get real prospects back

Dan Szymborski: BUT, the Angels don’t need all the owners to be crazy, just one

Dan Szymborski: and if an owner can think that giving Kris Bryant an absurd contract will bring in fans — which Monfort legitimately thought would happen — one can evaluate Mike Trout based on who he was the last decade rather than the next one

HappyFunBall: How do you handle changes to projections where there was a fundamental change to the rules that more or less invalidates prior year data? I’m thinking stolen bases in particular

Dan Szymborski: Poorly

Loser: What makes ZiPS so special?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think I’ve ever called it special.

Dan Szymborski: I think it’s useful

Dan Szymborski: and it’s the one I have access to, so I use it all the time

Dan Szymborski: and it can do a lot of stuff since I’m able to devote a large part of my full-time job to tinkering

Justin: Hi Dan. Do your projections value end of season performance in any way over beginning of season. Wondering if there’s any built in assumption of adjustments being made. Thanks!

Dan Szymborski: I’ve found the signal is drowned out by noise

Natitude Adjuster: I recently read an article that claimed something like: the Nats obviously picked the wrong college bat (Crews vs. Langford).  is that really a valid takeaway from such small sample?

Dan Szymborski: Too soon to say

DJ Kitty: 2023 Orioles: have they figured something out that isn’t yet quantifiable, or do some teams sometimes just outperform their projections?

Dan Szymborski: I’m going to get in trouble, but I’ll say the latter

Dan Szymborski: I’ve been to this rodeo many times before.

Dan Szymborski: Like I got WAY more grief about the 2021 Giants

Dan Szymborski: same with the 2017 Padres

Dan Szymborski: and 2016 Rangers

Dan Szymborski: Projections are inaccurate because they’re always going to be

Dan Szymborski: You expect to miss by at least 8 games on six teams every year even with PERFECT knowledge of the underlying probabilities, which we obviously don’t have

Dan Szymborski: The important thing is that projection misses aren’t correlated

Dan Szymborski: Which is good in that there’s not a specific bias out there

Dan Szymborski: but bad in that there’s no low-hanging fruit to harvest

Dan Szymborski: So I always aks people who are mad at me the simple question:

Dan Szymborski: What is the characteristic of _____ that is causing them to overperform and do teams with that same characteristic also overperform?

Dan Szymborski: I’ve had 0 successful answers to that.

Dan Szymborski: If you’re going to argue something unique is happening, then you ought to have an idea what’s unique

Zach: The Dodgers are going to win 100 games again this year, and it will be their lowest winning percentage in 5 years lol. How much longer does this dominant franchise run last? It doesn’t seem like it will for the foreseeable future.

Dan Szymborski: I can’t see any particular danger on the horizon

Dan Szymborski: The team is very, very competent at dealing with setbacks

Dan Szymborski: And they’ve avoided lol contracts

Dan Szymborski: The *Rockies* have larger guaranteed salaries from 2025-2027 than the Dodgers do

Appa Yip Yip: The Major League single season doubles record is 67, set by Earl Webb in 1931. Imagine you are a ball player and you just broke the record, you hit your 68th double with a couple of games to spare in the season. Your team has clinched a playoff spot and your manager wants to sit you for the last two games of the season so you can get some rest. Do you fight for playing time because you want to hit another double and set the record at 69? When fighting with your manager do you try to use the “sex number funny” argument? Which, if any, managers do you think might be swayed by the “it’s super funny” argument?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t know managers well enough personally for who would find the joke funny

Dan Szymborski: I’d probably want to set the record

Steven B. Smythe: Quite frankly this is preposterous.

Dan Szymborski: I’m not even sure what this is referring to, but I’m sure I’ve written something preposterous

Multiphasic: That agency projection project is amazing. I love the idea of an agent pitching a contract along the lines of “yes but, hear me out, what if he were a different, better player?”

Multiphasic: I’m absolutely using that next time I try and get a raise.

Dan Szymborski: I wouldn’t think of it that way

Dan Szymborski: Agencies do a lot of work trying to improve players. And having something to point to can be helpful

Dan Szymborski: I don’t inquire about particulars. I have to set up a pretty strict wall in the things I do, so I cannot offer advisory opinions, so I never suggest if anything is a good idea or not

Dan Szymborski: I’ll sell you a projection, but I won’t tell you what I *think* about a projection unless you’re a reader

MH: What is the lower limit of WAR? Say that they put me in as a DH, i have 658 PA with 656 SO and two groundouts, what would my WAR be?

Dan Szymborski: I think I did this for someone

Dan Szymborski: I actually did a projection for a guy who asked

Dan Szymborski: Have to find it in my media history

Dan Szymborski: meanwhile, enjoy this one

Dan Szymborski:

Dan Szymborski:

Dan Szymborski:

Dan Szymborski: Found it!

Dan Szymborski: Obviously,e xtremely speculative

Dan Szymborski:

Guards Insider: Great article you wrote last year re your NL ROY Ballot choices!  The NL ROY is a lock and the AL ROY seems closer than I thought when examining Tanner Bibee’s season (he started in the minors and did not play in MLB in 2022, unlike the other candidates, which makes his season more impressive). I enjoyed your explanation of voting for Trevor Rogers which made me think of this year’s AL ROY. How do you see the AL voting this year?

Dan Szymborski: I think Gunnar’s got it

Dan Szymborski:

Asteroids: Why doesn’t dusty baker play Yainer Diaz as the primary catcher?  Shouldn’t he?

Dan Szymborski: I’m more confused by his occasional suspicion of Chas

Gus Chiggins: i made a traditional hot dog: bun, dog, mustard.  I take one aggressive bite, causing the bun to tear along its crease, such that the bun is two pieces.  I continue eating.  Was i eating a sandwich or hot dog after the first bite?

Dan Szymborski: You converted it into a sandwich

SporerBurner: Which Fangraphs staff (current or former) would receive an 80 grade for eyebrows?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think there’s any FGer that I’ve met that I’ve had a notable position on their eyebrows, good or ill

Dan Szymborski: I probably have the worst eyebrows of any FG employee

Dan Szymborski: For some reason, they’re platinum blonde (my head hair is dark blonde and my beard is red) and they grow wild and crazy

Dan Szymborski: But I’m really incompetent about trimming them and half the time, I end up carving a big chunk off the eybbrows

Dan Szymborski: I once accidentally shaved off 80% of one eyebrow so I shaved them both off and looked odd for a few weeks

Star Wars name: Seby Zavala

Fred: Jaff Decker is the most Star Wars name of all time

Gertrude: Myrtle is this your wall please respond here it’s safe

Gertrude: Where am i

Retired WFT Fan: Can you give us more stories about bars and/or restaurant deals in Baltimore County in the early 2000s?

Dan Szymborski: Ha, I’m sorry, but you guys should know that I can go off on tangents very easily

Guest: Am I right in thinking that *in theory*, if a player were to move to another position, their WAR should stay the same?  Isn’t that what allows you to compare player’s across positions?  I realize it wouldn’t work out that way in reality but it helps to think of the positional adjustment that way.

Dan Szymborski: In THEORY but some moves are less advantageous than others

Dan Szymborski: Like here’s the thing, imagine you have a +10 defensive shortstop

Dan Szymborski: They’re simply not going to become a +30 defensive first baseman

Dan Szymborski: there just aren’t enough plays available to be 30 runs better than the average 1B

Dan Szymborski: So you can “waste” value

Zips user: “game planning WAR”.  Do you believe in this as a material unmeasured part of catcher WAR.  The cubs rave about Yan Gomes “unmeasured” value.  Do you believe in it and has the pitch clock made it more valuable?

Dan Szymborski: There could be value out there. It’s just next to impossible to measure. That’s one reason we have such an error bar in our evaluations

Guest: unfortunately Dan we don’t hate you for those either

Dan Szymborski: You MIGHT

Bardo Bill: I’ve always thought of “Terrin Vavra” as Corman McCarthy’s last cut before he settled on Anton Chigurrh.

Homer Simpson: Let the bears pay the bear tax! I pay the Homer tax!

Fire Greg Walker: Did you ever give Marvel Snap a shot? If so, how’d you like it?

Dan Szymborski: I keep meaning to, but I’ve never gotten around to it

Lathund: Kyle Wren is easily the best Star Wars name

Dan Szymborski: And he was just one letter off from being Kyle O. Wren

Dan Szymborski: (I didn’t look it up, I was praying his middle name started with O awhile back)

Dan: Would you be nervous is the air traffic control person said no?

Dan Szymborski: I’m not sure there’s a good answer in that situation

TomBruno23: I upgraded my MacBook to the new iOS and now it is running like it is 1985. Can you help? Thanks.

Dan Szymborski: I know nothing about Macs

Dan Szymborski: I think the last time I used one regularly was in 3rd grade playing Oregon Trail

What Does the Z Stand For?: If the “Z” is supposed to stand for Szymborski, shouldn’t it really be called SIPS?

Dan Szymborski: SIPS sounds like a hipster bar that sells just juice boxes

Who’s Fabio?: Dan, did you get your 14 hours of sleep last night or are we going to lose you to a neck strain half way thru the chat?

Dan Szymborski: If you guys follow me on Twitter, you should know I don’t sleep enough!

Guest: ok what did you hack into to get access to ZiPS Dan

Dan Szymborski: The creator wanted dinner in his oubliette

Dan: What’s something that zips doesn’t project or use for projections because people don’t think it has a reliable affect on winning baseball games that we haven’t ruled out as useful, something that is just not on the radar but could be useful in the future.

Dan Szymborski: Physical characteristics

Scuba Steve: Will there ever be a time where teams use projections in arbitration?  Or performance relative to projections?

Dan Szymborski: You’d have to change the CBA

Dan Szymborski: I’ve done reports for arbitration  hearings, but they never contained projections

Dan Szymborski: The CBA contains things you’re allowed to argue

Dan Szymborski: Performance relative to the expected performance from algorithms written by a fat jerk is not one of those things

Steven B. Smythe: Is this is the beginning of the end for the Astros?

Dan Szymborski: No, it might be the end of the beginning though

Dan Szymborski: or the beginning of the end of the middle

Guest: People don’t really seem to care much about 40/70 huh? Last year, Judge was all over TV chasing a team record

Dan Szymborski: It’s cool, but it’s also a new club

Dan Szymborski: And really, the 41/68 club that he was in before the game was better than a 40/70 club

Dan Szymborski: a 45/65 club would be even better

Slew: Does Zips have functionality to quantify how much we’re all going to miss Francona?

Dan Szymborski: I’m not magical

Dan: How many people in this chat would have batting average over 0.00 in a full season? How about OBP?

Dan Szymborski: The thing is, I worked on assumptions at the request of the person asking

Dan Szymborski: You’re going to run into a few hits

Dan Szymborski: Because pitchers run into a few hits, even pitchers that have *no* experience batting past high school

Dan Szymborski: If Randy Johnson could hit .125 swinging a bat like Lurch having a stroke, I’m sure most reasonably fit people between 20-40 will accidentally run into a hit from time to time

Tyler: Tuesday you wrote “There’s a reason ZiPS currently has the Braves with 29% odds of winning the World Series” and today it’s at 21.2%, so could you share the reason, and why things changed dramatically?

Dan Szymborski: The ZiPS probabilities are entirely ZiPS and have a different methodology

Dan Szymborski: the FG model is Steamer/ZIPS based with its own generalized model

Cat: Don’t mind me.  I don’t give a rat’s “you know what” about your fancy chat.  (Licks paw)

Zips user: Quentin Tarantino in a Sox jersey bodysurfing while channeling Tony LaRussa?

Dennis: If you’re the Orioles are you still looking for an ace SP this winter?  Between Bradish, Grayson, and Means the starters going into 2024 look a little better than they did a couple months ago.

Dan Szymborski: I still hope so

JRoth: Ke’Bryan Hayes now has over 300 PAs as a very good hitter, after 1100 as a subpar hitter. His Launch Angle has gone from 5.4º to 14.0º. Is he finally a star, or is it too early to tell?

Dan Szymborski: everything, everything will be alright, alright

Dan Szymborski: it just takes some time

A Boy Named Yu: Braves lineup seems relentless right now.  Is this an all-time great offense?

Dan Szymborski: It’s quite stout from top to bottom

Frodo: In your article about deadline trades, it seems one takeaway is that top-level teams (Rays and O’s) have a tougher time increasing their playoff odds.  Maybe obvious already because they’re at the extremes, but still interesting.

Dan Szymborski: Yup

A Boy Named Yu: Why did the league get rid of Game 163?  Math tiebreakers are boring….

Dan Szymborski: Schedule stuff, though I think they could figure it out if they tried

Scott: F Curt Schilling. No question, just putting it out there given what he revealed about the Wakefields.

Dan Szymborski: Yeah, that was a real schmuck move

Slew: Wait wait wait. WAR should remain the same in theory upon position changes? Doesnt that theory require you to believe that defense is a fungible ability that can be applied to any position?

Spring Chicken: This is the saddest sentence I’ve ever read in a SzymborskiChat: “The *Rockies* have larger guaranteed salaries from 2025-2027 than the Dodgers do.”

Dan Szymborski: I could do a Tinker to Evers to Chance saddest of possible words for the Rockies, but I already did that joke about Windows Update

Dan Szymborski: These are the saddest of possible words:

“Restart for Windows Update”

I’m trying to work now, I’d rather eat turds!

“Restart for Windows Update”

Security update for x64,
Delay for a day, but now 9 updates more,
Whether a Ryzen or old Intel core,

“Restart for Windows Update”

Butterfly: Was Mookie Betts being “wasted” in RF given what we know now?

Dan Szymborski: It’s possible

Spartanboy: Let’s say the Cubs decide to be a 1st-tier CBT “offender” next year. Should they (a) Go all-in for Shohei, or (b) Spread the $$$ on, say, Bellinger and Candelario?

Dan Szymborski: I’d first make sure you have Stroman

Dan Szymborski: I’m not in on Bellinger. I think he’s going to be a bad contract fo rsomeone

John: You are posting on Twitter during this chat.  Does multi-tasking reduce your chat WAR?

Dan Szymborski: Oh, sometimes I come across something while searching for something I’m reference in here

Morbo: “No, it might be the end of the beginning though or the beginning of the end of the middle” sick smashing pumpkins reference

Dennis: 42/69 club would have been nice

Captain ACAB: Was Gary Sheffield really the worst defender in MLB history?or is it some quirk based on positioning or era or playing at the dawn of fielding metrics, etc?

Dan Szymborski: It’s kind of a we don’t know thing because the worst defensive player may be some dude in 1934 that we can’t really evaluate all that accurately

Dan Szymborski: And there’s a difference between worst and least valuable.

Dan Szymborski: There are a lot of players worse defensively that ddidn’t hit enough to make the majors

Dan Szymborski: YOu have to kind of be awesome to be that bad defensively, if that makes sense

I am the Apple: Mike Trout is projected to finish career with about 100 WAR. At what point was his projected career WAR the highest? And, of course, what was that number?

Dan Szymborski: Oh god, I’m going to have to open crap now aren’t I?

Dan Szymborski: (This is last question guys, so don’t ask anymore as they’ll go into the aether)

Dan Szymborski: OK, 92.3 after 2014

Dan Szymborski: err before 2014

Dan Szymborski: 112.1 before 2015

Dan Szymborski: 104.2 before 2016

Dan Szymborski: hang on, wrong number there

Dan Szymborski: 114.5

Dan Szymborski: 123.8 before 2017

Dan Szymborski: 113.4 before 2018

Dan Szymborski: 120.5 before 2019

Dan Szymborski: 119.1 before 2020

Dan Szymborski: and then down every year after that

Dan Szymborski: so 123.8 after 2016

Dan Szymborski: Remember, ZiPS always built in the very good probability of health and quality decreasing throughout his 30s

Dan Szymborski: And on that note, time for me to take off!

Travis: Acuna just decided to change his entire approach in September to hit more home runs. He should do that for an entire season.

Dan Szymborski: I’m actually working on something about that

Dan Szymborski: OH GOD I DIDNT END CHAT