Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat – 4/11/24

Dan Szymborski: It’s a chat!

Chaz: Are the Royals overwhelming favorites to win it all now or do you still think other teams have a chance?

Dan Szymborski: Heh

the guy who says it’s april: it’s april

Dan Szymborski: Yup, I’m behind on my “April” responses since I was doing Career Day last week at at elementary/middle school

Closer problems: Have to drop one of Fairbanks, Alzolay, and Tanner Scott?  Who is your pick?

Dan Szymborski: Do you HAVE to? It might be Fairbanks. He looks the messiest right now

Seltz: If you were to create a deli menu off your favorite composers, who do you choose and what sandwich do you name after them?

Dan Szymborski: Hmm, I think a Beethoven would have some very peppery roast beef and some strong mustard or horseradish

Dan Szymborski: but this isn’t an eating day for me

Pasquatch: How real are the Royals right now? SSS but they have a great run differential, and are rated top 3 in offense, defense, and baserunning. Could this be a playoff team?.

Dan Szymborski: Skeptical

Dan Szymborski: Though certainly nice to see Melendez hitting how he is

Nicholas: Is MJ Melendez now an elite hitter? He had an amazing 2021 season, and seems to be channeling that again based on his power and really good BB:K ratio

Dan Szymborski: Not going THAT far

Idiotic Failson: Is the Jordan Hicks experiment…working?

Dan Szymborski: Early returns are good, but I’m slightly worried he’s taken too much off to be a starter

IdeatoMakeMLBGreatAgain: I have a proposal for MLB that I call The Gladiator Rule for Umpires: each MLB coach gets one opportunity to trade places and toss the home plate ump per season. The umpire who gets tossed the most times each season gets demoted to MiLB. Explain to me why fans would not absolutely love this rule aside from the difficulty of keeping a backup ump at every game it causes, please?

Dan Szymborski: While that’s FUN

Dan Szymborski: I rather just have robot balls/strikes and work on getting the calls right \

Dan Szymborski: I know I differ from a lot of fans, but I don’t consider umps a true part of the game, but a necessary evil to make sure the game is played correctly

Key Flaw: Not to call anyone out, but can Fangraphs send a memo to their writers that 100th percentile does not exist?

Dan Szymborski: It’s a mistake many make!

Guest: Prior to this chat, you’ve chatted twice since Feb 9th. I think apologies and explanations are in order.

Dan Szymborski: While I don’t apologize

Dan Szymborski: I was on vacation two weeks post ZiPS, was sick one Thursday, did one career day, and the remaining day I had a crunch to finish my positional ranking contribs

Mike: Is JJ Picollo a legitimately good GM? I was worried for a long time he would be another Dayton, but the gems he has found and his investment and usage of analytics has me very hopeful

Dan Szymborski: I think it’s still premature

Mark Grudzielanek: Last year, JJ Picollo traded a Rookie Ball player, below average middle reliever, and rental reliever for an ace (Ragans), closer (McArthur), and middle of the order bat (Nelson Velazquez). Did he have one of the greatest trade deadlines ever?

Dan Szymborski: Early returns are good. Though I’m not sold on Velazquez yet

Mario L: What to do with Nolan Jones? Should I drop him to pick up Brandon Nimmo, Lane Thomas, Masataka Yoshida or Tyler O’neil?

Dan Szymborski: No, he’s always going to be a Coors dude (well, in Colorado

Key Flaw: What should the O’s do with Coby Mayo? We all love his potential, but his defense at 3rd hasn’t had the best marks from what I’ve read, and his arm is somewhat wasted at 1st, plus there is a glut of players at those positions in the majors. Would it be best to let him play 3B full time at AAA for the whole year (he is so young), so that you can bring him up next year from the beginning and try to angle for a draft pick?

Dan Szymborski: I think you get him experience at multiple positions and see how the roster shakes out this year

Dan Szymborski: then revisit depending on what happens with Santander

Captain ACAB: How come there aren’t really baseball blogs anymore?

Dan Szymborski: I think blogs themselves have gone down a bit

Dan Szymborski: unless you think of substacks that way

Dan Szymborski: and I think social media has replaced some of it

Guest: Can we all agree that the solar eclipse has some role in pitcher injuries this year? I know it might not be the sole reason but we should be realistic.

laughingstock: has ZIPS changed it’s mind meaningfully on any players based on their small sample performance so far this year?

Dan Szymborski: By a huge amount? not really

Dan Szymborski: I’ll probably do a late april/early may piece on that if people are interested

Dan Szymborski:

San Dzymborski: What team has your opinion on changed the most in the first dozen games of the season?

Dan Szymborski: I dunno, Red Sox?

Dan Szymborski: I mean, my opinions haven’t changed much

Dan Szymborski: because, you know

Dan Szymborski: April

Oaktown Blues: Let’s say a guy you currently consider a low variance, 100 wRC+ type suddenly starts hitting home runs in every single PA. How many consecutive HRs would he have to hit before you think he’s likely the best hitter in baseball?

Dan Szymborski: I feel like this is an answer that shouldn’t be off the cuff but I can’t just run something to experiment right now

Dan Szymborski: I dunno, 8?

didace: I had to laugh at your article on if a AAA team was better than . It reminded me of all the times some sports announcer would declare “Alabama could win the NFC South”. While most of the time it is just hyperbole, many times they actually think this. It shouldn’t take a statistical analysis to declare “No, no they wouldn’t”.

Dan Szymborski: Yeah, I think that when it happens, it’s exceedingly rare

Dan Szymborski: Though I don’t think the difference is as large as college to NFL

Dan Szymborski: People will note that teams win fewer than 56 games at times

Dan Szymborski: but MLB teams aren’t PROJECTED to win fewer than 56 games

Dan Szymborski: when you go 47-115, something’s gone wrong in almost all cases beyond just being crappy

Trop-Top: Feelings toward the Raley-Caballero trade two weeks in?

Dan Szymborski: It’s certainly looking good for ZiPS which was SUPER into Caballero

Dayman: Bullish on Pepiot after the Colorado performance?

Dan Szymborski: It was a solid start

Dan Szymborski: But I’m not changing opinions on things based on doing an awesome job getting Rockies out!

AA: Should I make a low-level or high-level move to replace Strider for the year?

Dan Szymborski: For STRIDER I’d be aggressive

DJ: Are you buying that his flattened bat path swing change is the reason behind Anthony Volpe’s early offensive success?

Dan Szymborski: I’m not sure I’d choose THAT based on just a handful of games

Dan Szymborski: But I do like how his plate discipline has improved

DJ: Are there any teams you now think may be better than you thought two weeks ago?

Dan Szymborski: Yankees, maybe because I’m a bit more confident on Rodon

Nate: Anyone ever tell you you look like Rich Evans from Red Letter Media?

Dan Szymborski: Him specifically no

Dan Szymborski: Things I’ve heard are one of the guys from Of Monsters and Men, Phil Kessel, “a cross between Shrek and Göring, and an overweight actor with a greek sounding last name that ends in us that I forget right now

Dan Szymborski: (nto Galifianakis)

Dan Szymborski: not

Icehouse: Does Benintendi have much of a future as an everyday player?

Dan Szymborski: Meh. I think he’s really a fourth outfielder type

SmarterThanSzym: What metric is most important to lineup strategy and why is it WHIP?

Dan Szymborski: Heh, that was an amazing Reddit thread

Dan Szymborski: TLDR version

Dan Szymborski: Guy insists he has a secret lineup model using OBP/RBI/R that can improve teams by 10 wins a year

Dan Szymborski: But only a few teams contract his services because a lot of teams only need 1-9 wins

Dan Szymborski: Then claimed to have met me and being disappointed with my behavior

Dan Szymborski: and accusing me of not being the real Dan Szymborski

WanderingWinder: How quickly do projections shift for players where we’re getting their first looks at Big League playing time?

Dan Szymborski: Not TOO much

didace: Hot Take – Jackson Holiday is overmatched and needs to be sent down to AA.

Phil: Tyler O’Neill. . . I guess I don’t have a question.

hi there: Dan we need more entries in that “what if?” series that you ran during 2020 with projections for players who were derailed by injuries

Dan Szymborski: I know, I gotta do more Time Warps

DJ: Which Jackson (Chourio, Holliday, Merrill) do you think finishes the season with the highest wRC+?

Dan Szymborski: Holliday

MilwaukeeBeerJays: Justin Turner is the Jays best hitter. Discuss.

Dan Szymborski: I wouldn’t go that far

Drew: Are the Tigers destined for another bottom 5 offensive season or is there enough potential improvement there to bring them out of the basement?

Dan Szymborski: I think they’re OKish, somewhere between the 8th-11th best AL offense

Idiotic Failson: Re: Career day – did you tell the kids that your job is basically fiddling with spreadsheets and talking to strangers on the internet about your cats?

Dan Szymborski: I just did the straight up version

Dan Szymborski: I think most of the older kids were more interested in the esports I wrote about for a few years at ESPN than my baseball things

Dan Szymborski: Though a couple teachers were really excited to talk baseball with me

Dan Szymborski: Nobody’s said anything to me, but I think the first grade class was a disaster

Dan Szymborski: I was kinda shoved in with first graders because I got there early and a speaker cancelled, so they just sent me there as a bonus rind

Dan Szymborski: round

Dan Szymborski: I started off asking them if anyone enjoys writing

Dan Szymborski: which is pretty stupid for six year olds

Dan Szymborski: crickets and they just got more confused from there

John Fishers wallet: Since the A’s supposedly want to be a $120-130M in the Short Term, which player do they throw a stupid amount of money to

Dan Szymborski: Maybe Gelof

Idiotic Failson: How does ZIPS estimate Holds. It seems like that would be incredibly context dependent and difficult to model.

Dan Szymborski: It doesn’t!

Dan Szymborski: If it is, something’s really gone wrong since I’m unaware of trying to model them

The Munson: Is the Carlos Rodon start a mirage? He’s way down in k’s from his big years, and he’s giving up a lot of hits while also suppressing runs.

Dan Szymborski: I’m just happy he’s not getting destroyed

Seattle’s K:BB Ratio: Was not trading a young arm for an everyday bat this offszn the wrong move?

Dan Szymborski: I think it’s a real risk

Brad in Bmore: Who’s called up next for the Birds? Stowers? Kjerstad? How do they make room? And why do all these guys bat from the left (I know Stowers’ splits right now, but still, getting pretty susceptible to LHP).

Dan Szymborski: I think it’s really hard to call up offensive players after Holliday without some very bad things having happened

Dan Szymborski: There’s just not a lot of room int he lineup

Tim Livingston: Nick Ahmed lapping the field in defensive metrics early on as we all suspected. Still enough in the tank to be a worthwhile contributor after the small sample size mojo goes away?

Dan Szymborski: Color me skeptical

Oaktown Blues: MLB should set a pitch speed limit of like 96 or 97. Anything faster is simply a do over pitch. I’m only 80% joking

Dan Szymborski: Thing is, I don’t know how you do this even if it’s practical

notbrandonzink: What all goes into the ZiPS defensive projections for prospects/guys without any of the advanced defensive metrics? Is it mainly going off of the scouting grade or are there other factors weighing in there in any significant way?

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS has it’s own Total Zone system for the minors and does an aggregate of advanced systems in majors

Icehouse: Why is he not known as John Wilkes Strider? Have you taken a look at the man?

IdeatoMakeMLBGreatAgain: With regard to blogs going downhill, blogs initially built community being written by fans, those fans burned out and left the blogs for the most part and faceless tech cos like Vox have underpaid replacements come in and run them as click mills. This is the story of the death of the baseball blog. See Bucsdugout and Vox’s “disgraced preacher” site admin story as the most hilarious/weirdest version of this story.

Dan Szymborski: The difficulty to monetize really hurt

Dan Szymborski: In a way, blogs became more lucrative for the creators as launching pads for other things than for the blogs themselves

Dan Szymborski: I mean, given what they pay, we could easily do a ton of team blogs on FG

Dan Szymborski: *but* we pay people

Dan Szymborski: And things like Substack are just more lucrative for creators

Andrew: Can the O’s please be done with Austin Hays? It’s not even the slow start, he’s just a very streaky barely above league average bat and I’d rather see Cowser or Kjerstad in over him pretty much all the time

Dan Szymborski: Perosnally, I agree. Mullins has a lot more rope

Pedro: Thoughts on Brady Singer’s early season success?  Pls dont say April

Dan Szymborski: Avril

Greg: Do you think moving to a 6 days between starts or a different ball would be more helpful in reducing pitching injuries

Dan Szymborski: I’m…not sure

Dan Szymborski: It might be more the magnitude of the effort rather than the amount of the effort?

Dan Szymborski: Does this sentence make sense to anyone?

SmarterThanSzym: Do any MLB teams have significant data in kinesthesiology? I’m curious if any analysis has been done to prevent their arms from falling off

Dan Szymborski: I think this is one of the big things that teams would love to have

Captain ACAB: Who is the handsomest active baseball player?

Dan Szymborski: Not sure I’m the best judge of that

Dan Szymborski: I dunno, Kris Bryant?

Dan Szymborski: He’s got those piercing eyes

Dan Szymborski: I imagine if I were into that kind of thing I’d get lost in them?

Coaches impact: Do you or does zips have an idea of how to quantify the impact coaches have on the team? I’m looking specifically on how if 1st and 3rd base coaches have tangible impact on their team’s base running, but if you have info on pitching or hitting coaches that would be awesome too. Thanks in advance

Dan Szymborski: I do not

Duchess: Every year we fall for Victor Scott types don’t we

Dan Szymborski: We fall for fun things

Dan Szymborski: I tell you, Victor Scott II on my bench in MLB the Show was an easy way to get the CF SB requirement in one of the MLB the Show programs

Dan Szymborski: Since a lot of the highest SPD/STL ratings in MLB the Show are guys listed as corner outfielders (Carroll for one)

Mike: What’s considered meeting expectations for a top overall prospect? 10 years, 40 WAR?

Dan Szymborski: Even that’s progbably aggressive as the future is very uncertain

Harmon Ripkowski: Is there a rule of thumb formula to estimate a player’s expected RBI or Runs Scored based on their hitting performance? Please give me some idea…

Dan Szymborski: a model of runs scored based on times on base and sprint speed or speed score are is really good

Dan Szymborski: I didn’t have time to get back into a Judge RBI piece I was working on

Dan Szymborski: but when I have a good excuse for an RBI piece

Dan Szymborski: RBI is VERY competently modeled with ABwROB, HR, overall BA, overall SLG

Dan Szymborski:

Ohtani: Is there a problem with media if the news of my exoneration is being buried compared to the initial headlines?

Dan Szymborski: Yeah, but if it bleeds it leads

tnst3b: Sometimes I go back and read that thread on Tom’s Hardware about power supplies being partisan.

Dan Szymborski: Wait, what’s that?

laughingstock: Juan Soto to the A’s?

Dan Szymborski: poor Soto

Time Warp: If you’re looking for guys to examine, I’d be curious to see Herb Score, Roy Oswalt after 2008, Gooden after 1988, and Tom Tresh after 1966

Idiotic Failson: “who here likes to do multivariate regression analysis?” – Dan, as 1st grade kids stare completely befuddled

Dan Szymborski: I did not mention regression analysis or nonparametric modeling!

Dan Szymborski: Even I’m not dumb enough to do that

Dan Szymborski: “Hey gang, who here likes cluster analysis?”

mile low: the pitch clock is wonderful, I hope everyone can stay calm and not overreact

John: I saw all the changes that Fangraphs made to WAR math.  Does Bbref do something similar and if so how did they announce the changes when they happen ?    Are you a fan of “ever-changing” WAR ?

Dan Szymborski: I’m a fan of changing WAR

Dan Szymborski: because our understanding of the game and things that happens is always improving

Dan Szymborski: and WAR is framework to represent our best estimate

Rick E: Hey Dan, thanks for all of your work. I’ve got a question about a stat I’ve been trying to find that seems important, but that I never see anyone writing about. Does fangraphs track (and can people view somewhere) the ratio of a player’s in-zone-swing-rate to out-of-zone-swing-rate? Or put differently, the percentage of times that a player (given that he swung at a pitch) was swinging at a pitch that was in the zone rather than out of it? It seems like a good way of quantifying a player’s eye for the strike zone, but I don’t know whether it’s readily available anywhere

Dan Szymborski: No, but you can calculate it pretty quickly unless I’m misunderstanding the question

J: It’s Julio Rodriguez (who has even more piercing eyes)

Ben: Is there any locked away Statcast/similar data that you’re itching to get your hands on or is everything you need public?

Dan Szymborski: I want more bat speed data!

notbrandonzink: When simulating, how do you account for the value of an additional inning pitched by the starter?

Doing some quick Statcast searched, SP allow a .309 wOBA the first time through the order, and a .319 wOBA the second time (2021-present). RP allow a .309 wOBA across the board, so it seems like from a modeling standpoint an “ideal” manager would pull his starter after 9 batters faced. Since the rough rule of thumb is to pull them after two times through the order, there must be some ~.003 wOBA value for every additional inning pitched by a starter, but how would you actually measure/value that other than looking at how teams are managed in real life?

Dan Szymborski: On a team level, I don’t go into those nitty gritties

Dan Szymborski: I make a model of teh general team quality from the percentile projections

Dan Szymborski: make a distro

Dan Szymborski: and then sim on game level

Colton: Re: Most Handsome player in baseball, my wife is a very strong advocate for Bryant and Kiermaier to hold that title lol

Dan Szymborski: A very nice woman my age whose name I will not say has seemed very into Votto and Blackmon when I’ve dragged her to games

Kris Bryant’s Piercing Eyes: Jordan Montgomery has fired Bott Scoras. Thoughts?

Dan Szymborski: Well, he’s certainly not happy about the results!

O’s Fan: And is it wrong to miss Esskay franks?

Dan Szymborski: No, because one’s history/memories plays a huge part in how we perceive food

TomBruno23: Does anyone win 82 in the NL Central in 2024?

Dan Szymborski: Yeah, someone does more likely than not

Brian: Do I need to drop Hoerner? Pick up caballero or Julien or cronenworth?

Dan Szymborski: I’m honestly always a little sour on Hoerner in fantasy simply because you’re not really taking advantage of his defense

DEF: Dan, any eta on the Diamond Mind Projection disk?

Dan Szymborski: It was submitted right at opening day

Dan Szymborski: the guy who makes it for DMB also does work for Red Sox and it depends on his workload

Kitten: Just got my first kitten. Did you know that they’re crazy?

Dan Szymborski: kittens are frequently insane

Dan Szymborski: Though I strongly recommend adopting in pairs if the situation arises

Dan Szymborski: Kittens will use a lot of their energy playing with their littermate

Idiotic Failson: DMB = Dave Matthews Band

Dan Szymborski: A Dave Matthews Band projection disk would be a weird thing to do

Kitten’s Kitten: I am Kitten’s Kitten. I am crazy. I crave a buddy, I was not adopted in a pair.

Dan Szymborski: All the kittens I’ve had have been crazy

Dan Szymborski: except for Galileo, who was always a cool customer

Dan Szymborski: Though for the first few weeks, he insisted on being carried to the litter box

hey: Name one Cardinal player you feel optimistic about more than ZiPS

Dan Szymborski: Walker

Dan Szymborski: though he’s not been good

Dan Szymborski: (Jordan)

Okra: Do you like the idea of tying the DH to SP remaining in the game?  Maybe if the starter goes 6 you get to keep DH full game but otherwise lose DH when starter exits?

Dan Szymborski: I think the curren timplementation is fine

Phil: The Red Sox obviously need a shortstop. When is the earliest Mayer could be called up? Is going up too early really going to affect his development that much, if he’s playing everyday anyway just for defense?

Dan Szymborski: Honestly, I’m hoping they get him up by midseason if they’re still in the race

Person: why do baseball teams make starters pitch so much more then relievers

Dan Szymborski: Remember, starters are already selected for being ostensibly able to pitch more

J: We’re only 10 innings in, but so far ZiPS’ optimism in Imanaga seems like a win compared to Pecota’s unbelievably dour 4.17 ERA 99th percentile projection

Dan Szymborski: It’s REALLY early of course

Dan Szymborski: but I won’t lie, I like Imanaga *and* I also like looking smart, so I have an incentive to root for hoim!

Harmon Ripkowski: Is Brady Anderson’s 1996 really the flukiest homer season ever? Seems less odd to me, I guess, than Boggs or Campenaris big years, probably some others too

Dan Szymborski: You know, I’ve never really modeled this

Dan Szymborski: Maybe Davey Johnson?

Dan Szymborski: Sveum

Dan Szymborski: Boggs is a big one of course

Dan Szymborski: was gonna say Bob Cerv but forgot he had another 20 homer year

Oddball Herrera: When will Fangraphs be adding a “neither” row to day/night splits to account for stats accrued during the eclipse?

Dan Szymborski: heh

Dan Szymborski: Wasn’t Guardians-White Sox the only eclipse game?

Key Flaw: When you have a really tall player like Oneil Cruz, do projections for strikeouts and walks change? His strike zone would be proportionately bigger, so that would be more area to hit for a strike. Is there any relationship between height and any strike zone thing? Would it only show up on the outliers?

Dan Szymborski: I haven’t found much value

Dan Szymborski: because the height is already factored into their reults

Dan Szymborski: and I haven’t found it improves projections

danny: do you think that there’s anything predictive behind how a final score is reached? for example, is a team worse for losing 5-6 after the first leading 5-0 rather than losing by the same score but coming back from 0-6 (assuming no usage of low leverage players)? My hypothesis is no but the fan sentiment in both of these scenarios I imagine would be very different

Dan Szymborski: Not really, no

Dan Szymborski: On that note, I have to head out for another week

Dan Szymborski: Thanks for coming all!