Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat – 8/15/24

Dan Szymborski: Thank you those in attendance for fulfilling your legally required duties to appear here.

Justin: Hi Dan, what are your thoughts on the Victor Robles extension?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think it’s unreasonable for anyone

Dan Szymborski: He’s hit a lot better last two seasons, but in a limited role. But there’s certainly a good deal of risk

Dan Szymborski: but theres’ upside too. People forget that Robles was once one of the elite prospects and had a *very* solid rookie season

Dan Szymborski: But there’s downside too since he has like a low .600s OPS since COVID

Nick: Why do all of the CFs have a lower DEF on the site than their FRV? Shouldn’t the defensive adjustment be positive?

Dan Szymborski: Hmm, that does seem a little odd

Dan Szymborski: My guess since I can’t really dig into it in two minutes

Dan Szymborski: is that we recenter average to 0 in defensive projections

Dan Szymborski: err measurements, not projections

Dan Szymborski: defensive measurements

Dan Szymborski: Like take a basically all CF

Dan Szymborski: liek Kiermaier

Dan Szymborski: he’s at 8 FRV

Dan Szymborski: if you look down at value, fielding is only 5.7

Dan Szymborski: The average CF in FRV is an above-average CF

Dan Szymborski: and taht 2.3 run adjustments looks about right in recentering it

Dan Szymborski: and it looks like LFs have a slightly better Fielding down in the value table

Dan Szymborski: than than their FRV

Dan Szymborski: which also jibes

Sodo Mojo: Thoughts on the Victor Robles extension, I know the current form is not sustainable but is there enough actual progress there to warrant the small bet?

Dan Szymborski: Yup

tnst3b: Does Tyler O’Neill currently have both of his legs attached?

Dan Szymborski: It would be ideal. Not sure if they figured out what cause dhte infection

Refugee: What do you make of spikes in performance (e.g., guys with a career ~25% K% cutting it in half all of a sudden)? I assume ZiPS requires a lot of data before it’s willing to take a big turn?

Dan Szymborski: Yes, though less so in something like K% which has real changes quicker

Dan Szymborski: When ZiPS season-to-season calculates a baseline rate just from the line as a starting point, it weight those changes much more quickly

Dan Szymborski: Like in 2025 projections, assuming all things being equal otherwise

Dan Szymborski: the initial K% rate in the basic line baseline will have 2024’s strikeout rate as 136% more important than 2023’s striekout rate for a hitter

Dan Szymborski: but for HR rate, it’s only 71% more important and 1B/2B only 38% more important

Ethan Holliday: How has my brother’s ZiPS projection changed after he’s looked much more comfortable at the plate in his 2nd major league stint? And how confident are you he’ll be the 2025 Opening Day starting 2B?

Dan Szymborski: Not as much as you’d think because these are all small samples!

Dan Szymborski: He’s been right on track

Dan Szymborski: Remember, ZiPS wasn’t projecting crazy performance immediately

Dan Szymborski: Though it was JUST enough uncertainty that if I did my zips top 100 prospects on May 1st, he would have dropped to #2 behind James Wood

Dan Szymborski: assuming Yamamoto is off the zips top 100 at this point

Not the Lunch Guy: Favorite restaurant in Cincinnati? Where would you recommend for visitors?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t really eat in Cincinnati all that much

Dan Szymborski: my favorite Cincy restaurants may be Great American Ballpark concessions

Dan Szymborski: thought I’ve probably tried a good percentage of over the rhine places

Dan Szymborski: like I like five on vine

Dan Szymborski: As I get older and my digestive system becomes more and more grumpy, I’m less inclined to eat full meals at restaurants

druidiful: So does this mean that you are finally going to release the actual creator of ZIPs, if you are releasing everyone from your basement?

Dan Szymborski: No, he’s in the oubliette. Didn’t say i was released him

Matt: If Soto and Judge finish 1st and 2nd in WAR at the end of the season will this be the first time it’s happened?  What’s the closest it has come?

Dan Szymborski: This will be the first time they finished 1 and 2!

Dan Szymborski: Though I’m guessing you mean teammates! 🙂

Dan Szymborski: now, schilling/unit did it in pitchers with the diamondbacks

Dan Szymborski: among htiters, Griffey and A-Rod in 1996

Dan Szymborski: Boggs and Greenwell in 1988

Dan Szymborski: Bench and Morgan in 1972

Dan Szymborski: DiMaggio and Gehrig in 1937

Dan Szymborski: Ruth and Gehrig in 1931

Dan Szymborski: The Orioles swept both 1-2 in different combos from 1896-1898

Dan Szymborski: Anson and Gore in 1880

Dan Szymborski: Decan White and O’Rourke in 1876

Dan Szymborski: and then a four year run of boston red stockings

top1214: How does Zips react to someone like Paul Dejong’s last couple of years? He looked totally cooked for a couple of years that should’ve been prime seasons, had a good first half last year, then couldn’t hit at all, then to being close to league average this year. I have whiplash on him.

Dan Szymborski: Generally it takes the middle ground

Dan Szymborski: It’s a little under and the shape is slightly different (ZiPS had less offense but more defense), but ZiPS had DeJong at 1.3 WAR in 437 PA coming into the season and he’s at 1.4 WAR in 393

Mike Elias: Which of the O’s lurking outfield prospects do you trust the most to make a real major league impact in ’25/26? Bradfield, Fabian, Beavers, Honeycutt? Also what if Bradfield made the playoff roster this fall as a pinch runner / defensive replacement…

Dan Szymborski: Bradfield and Honeycutt are the most interesting

Dan Szymborski: Fabian’s going to drop off *hard* in ZiPS

Dan Szymborski: and Beaver hasn’t been that reat

Seamus: What do you think about Masataka Yoshida at this point? He’s been good-to-great since the start of July after dealing with injuries, and he had a great stretch last year before wearing down in the second half. I love watching him hit, but seems hard to see how he fits into what will be a crowded Red Sox lineup once all the top prospects start debuting next year.

Dan Szymborski: Dunno, I’m still wondering if he’d play better defense in anothe rpark

Dan Szymborski: Because him being only DH really hurts his flexibility. He can hit, but it’s not THAT amazing if you MUST DH him

MF Luder: Help me finish this sentence. Kyle Tucker returns and Houston wins the…

Dan Szymborski: ..prize for being the large American city with the least zoning laws

Dan Szymborski: OH GOD FEWEST

Bash Bros: What are the odds Judge gets to 500 hr and Soto gets to 600 hr?

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS has the first at 57% and the second at 53%, so that comes out at 30%

Dan Szymborski: they’re probably not THAT independent because they’ll correlate slightly because of the chance of any significant change in offensive levels

Dan Szymborski: though ZiPS doesn’t really address a model of drastically changing league offense

Brian Cashman: Seems like Rubenstein really may spend with his new toy, the Orioles (taking on 2 salary dumps at the deadline!). Should I be concerned they may bid on a certain high OBP OF bat hitting free agency this offseason? What other single free agent acquisition would make them take the biggest leap from “very good” to “whoa, scary” in 2025?

Dan Szymborski: I’m not sure he’ll go THAT far into spending. Though the team totally could

Dan Szymborski: I would like to see a run at locking up some of the team’s young players

Dan Szymborski: because the O’s have done precisely none of that lately

Factory of Sadness: Jhonkensy Noel has been good for a 143 OPS+ and a 145 wRC+ in his first 94 PA, for a 0.6 WAR so far. How much does a first 100 PAs like this swing ZiPS for a new callup—and does it matter that he’s doing this mostly as a part-time player as opposed to an everyday one (although it looks like that’s changing)?

Dan Szymborski: Doesn’t really matter, though ZiPS doesn’t consider pinch-hitting PAs

Dan Szymborski: (their inclusion actually makes the model slightly worse)

Pedro Judge: This Judge 22-24 run feels like a hitter’s version of Pedro doing THAT during the PED era. I know that’s the point of using WAR, though.

Dan Szymborski: He’s a Hall of Famer now for me

Stu: I must say I found it interesting to read recently that Anthony Rendon is a “veteran leader.”

Dan Szymborski: Well, not all leaders lead their teams to good places!

Alby: Has intermittent fasting helped you enjoy every remaining sandwich more?

Dan Szymborski: It does, though I’m careful to not eat like a lunatic on eating days

The person who asks the lunch question: What’s for lunch?

Dan Szymborski: I have some leftover linguine with white clam sauce in teh fridge

MF Luder: Why can’t Boston upset someone in the ALDS?

Dan Szymborski: Maybe they’re not mean enough to people

I am the apple: Were Seunghwan Oh to have played his whole career in the MLB, what does ZiPS think his career WAR would be? We only got three seasons of “The Final Boss,” but they were pretty promising for an older reliever

Dan Szymborski: I can’t do that quickly, but ZiPS was always a fan

99fletching: hi dan, what’s the deal with ronel blanco? specifically, he’s on track to have the lowest babip ever for a guy over 100 ip (currently .199). does anything about his profile indicate that he is genuinely elite at suppressing contact, or is this just an all time great variance season, albeit a feel-good one ?

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS thinks that he ought to be *slightly* better than average relative to Houston’s D, but nothing like a .199

Bobby Witt: I’m not saying the Orioles regret choosing Rutschman, but how lucky are the Royals that Witt fell to No. 2?

Dan Szymborski: They’re quite fortunate of course!

Dan Szymborski: Witt is ridonkulous

Sam: It seems Craig Breslow has done a pretty terrible job of talent evaluation for the redsox. Not adding in the offseason and then not selling at the deadline if he wasn’t going to actually address any of the team’s holes. How would you rate his tenure so far

Dan Szymborski: Still an incomplete. It’s hard to evaluate GMs/presidents quickly because organizations as a whole, including ownership, make decisions

Dan Szymborski: you don’t really have the transaction satrap as a model anymore like it was in a majority of places

James: Should a Yainer Diaz extension be on the table? Or are we not sure that he sticks at catcher long enough?

Dan Szymborski: I’m on the fence there. The chance that he moves off catcher down the road is significant

Dan Szymborski: and there are four years until FA

Honkus Wagner: Do you see Santander getting a new deal with the O’s? if not, would a ballpark of 3yr/$60 mil be about right?

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS actually suggests 3/60 before the season!

Dan Szymborski: So it would be more now. Hang on

Dan Szymborski: well, 3/59

Dan Szymborski: before the season

Dan Szymborski: I’ll have to come back around

Bob Loblaw: Juan Soto will finish the top _ hitter of all time

Dan Szymborski: staring

James: Astros have been playing .600 ball for 3+ months now. Its a long shot, but where do you put the odds of passing one of the other division leaders and getting a bye?

Dan Szymborski: Fairly low because they have to beat *three* teams

Dan Szymborski: There are fewer scenarios in which the AL East winner slumps

Dan Szymborski: because if only one of the Orioles/yankees slumps, the *other* team wins the AL East

Reframing Framing: Now that analytics have proved that pitch framing is indisputably more valuable than preventing wild pitches and stolen bases, when will the #2 position be renamed, “Framer,” instead of, “Catcher?”

Dan Szymborski: Well, framing is still part of catching

Dan Szymborski: it’s just specific location-based catching

Todd Bonzalez: How likely will Reds win both the Cy Young and MVP, but miss the playoffs?

Dan Szymborski: Maybe one-in-50?

Mike: What are the chances both the Dodgers and the Braves miss the playoffs this year? That seemed unfathomable back in April.

Dan Szymborski: I don’t have it in front of me, but really long

Dan Szymborski: The Dodgers COULD lose the division

Dan Szymborski: but they’re 8 1/2 games ahead of the third wild card team that *isn’t* the Braves (the Mets)

Dan Szymborski: and 11 games ahead of the next teams (Cards/Reds/Giants)

Sam: How would I go about transitioning the “Clutch” stat to a “Clutch+”? Is it as simple as multiplying the current equation by 100?

Dan Szymborski: not REALLY

Dan Szymborski: you’d need a Clutch rate

Dan Szymborski: then you coudl do it

James: Lets (very hypothetically) say that Reinsdorf hires a top end GM, gives him a top 5 budget and then stays away from the front office. What is the earliest the White Sox could make the playoffs again?

Dan Szymborski: 2027?

Tim Tebow’s Thunder Thighs: According to the Fangraphs WAR Leaderboard, the White Sox have an aggregate team WAR of 1.9, surpassing the total of the 2003 Tigers at 1.7.  Of course, this is still a work in progress for Chicago as we can’t yet account for the final 1.5 months of a depleted roster facing off against a bunch of contenders (Mets, Orioles, Red Sox, Guardians, Padres, and Giants, per Davy’s article).  Would you bet on the White Sox to finish with more wins AND accrue more total WAR than the 2003 Tigers, would you?  Losing means chugging a blended up can of skyline chili.

Dan Szymborski: Wait, what do I get if I win?

Dan Szymborski: I’m not drinking a chili smoothie on a close bet

Teddy: How do you project defensive value of prospects.

Dan Szymborski: erroneously for sure

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS has a TZ-esque measure for minor league defense

Dan Szymborski: I have the exact hit location of all balls hit in the minors and a probability-based method like David Pinto used to have

Down by the River Ryan: You have said that bigger change = more signal. What do you make of Tyler Fitzgerald’s power?

Dan Szymborski: The improvement should be pretty big

Dan Szymborski: though his power boost hasn’t quite matched the unerlying data

McGraw45: Merrill is on track for a 4+ war season and Zips has 3-year projections of ~1.4 war a year. Is that because of a high BABIP/low walk rate or just the nature of the beast?

Dan Szymborski: It’s because those are the preseason projections

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS is obviously going to be quite a lot more optimistic now

Dan Szymborski: Oh, ZiPS suggests 4/105 on Santander

.707 SLG: At what point does ZIPS basically give up and say, “I guess Judge is just… this guy now”

Dan Szymborski: Except here’s the thing – at his level, the risk is *all* one side

Dan Szymborski: so even if you assume a .700 SLG is his baseline, that doesn’t mean he’s equally as likely to become an .800 SLG guy as a .600 SLG guy

Phil: Kristian Campbell’s teammates are apparently calling him “Barry Bonds.” I guess I can live with his being not quite as good as Bonds, but should he be higher on prospect lists than he after the stretch he’s had in AA?

Dan Szymborski: He’s certainly going to move up quite a bit by ZiPS

Joseph: Dan, have seen a few mentions in articles lately about “X player has increased his bat speed by X mph and his numbers have jumped”.

Joseph: Dan, have seen a few articles about “X player has increased his bat speed by X mph and his numbers have jumped” lately.  Outside of the obvious correlation that higher bat speed leads to higher exit velocities, have you seen any work in terms of in-season bat speed changes and whether they correlate to anything meaningful?  Are they statistically correlated to increased results?  How long does it take in terms of time duration to become sticky?  What they normal baseline is for bat speed fluctuations and how much deviance one needs to see to matter?  Thank you!!

Dan Szymborski: It’s probably good, but I think people jump the gun a little too much

Dan Szymborski: now, bat speed correlates highly with other things that we DO know are predictive of better results

Dan Szymborski: but even with that highly likely hypothesis, people should be careful direct claims with numbers

Jake A: Does ZIPS incorporate Statcast data? If not, is it feasible as an avenue of improvement in the future?

Dan Szymborski: Yup – I forget off-hand that entered the main model, I think 2019?

Yeah Well Hiura Towel: If Ohtani hit ninth in the order instead of first, how much WAR would he lose?

Dan Szymborski: About 20% of offensive WAR, assuming no other changes

Rob Manfred: ESPN ran a story this morning about introducing a 6-inning minimum for starting pitchers. What is your preferred remedy (if any) to restore the prominence of the starting pitcher?

Dan Szymborski: It’s a tricky thing to manipulate, because you don’t want a scenario in which you end up with more injuries

Dan Szymborski: Though MLB has the right idea, in that changing rules is one of the best fundamental ways to change styles of the game

Dan Szymborski: Pizza Cutter wrote about it yesterday

Dan Szymborski: and it’s a subject I talk about

Dan Szymborski: (nto the innings change specifically)

Guest: 1.3 WAR in 437 PA coming into the season and he’s at 1.4 WAR in 393

someone’s gotta be in that 55th percentile! (do they?)

Dan Szymborski: well, 1% of players would hopefully be precisely there!

David Forst: What happened to Ryan Noda?

Dan Szymborski: He was a stopgappish type 1B who had a nice little BABIP-aided run last year and got off to a horrible start this year

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS only had him at 210/331/381 coming into the season and the other projectiosn weren’t that different

John: Does ZiPS account for minor league struggles of a player like Bobby Miller, or does it depend solely on past MLB performance?

Dan Szymborski: it takes minors into account

Dan Szymborski: except rehab

Pat: Are we at an all-time low in veteran all time hitting greats..at least as far as traditional stats are concerned? Freddie Freeman is the active leader in hits, runs, RBI..yet ranks below 140th all time in each. Can’t decide if this is normal or a weird one off.

Dan Szymborski: We’re definitely fairly low in veteran hitters right now

Dan Szymborski: There are only four hitters 35 or older with one WAR this season: Santana, d’Arnaud, Rojas, J.D. Martinez

Dan Szymborski: so if you have fewer veteran guys, you’re going to have not as mny with lofty totals

john: Feature request, feel free to toss it in the trash.  Fangraphs does their trade value series and they rank farm systems, but I would love to just see every organization ranked by surplus value, major leaguers and minor leaguers together.  Baseball trade values kinda had something like this but they went behind a paywall, and I would prefer if ZiPS were used.

Dan Szymborski: I need to figure out an automated way to do it

mile low: Zips had Wyatt Langford .346 wOBA for year.  Looking like actual will be lower.  Would you still bet future all-star?

Dan Szymborski: AN all-star appearance? Sure, though the upside has come down a bit

Guest: Is Juan Soto more likely to age worse than average since he has “old person” skills and his bat speed is below average?

Dan Szymborski: It’s quite possible, but remember, these are percentages – young player skills don’t necessarily mean aging well and vice versa

Guest: if the Orioles had a dollar for every top prospect callup who struck out 50% of the time in a short first stint, they’d have at least two dollars, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice in one year. (it would be rather less weird from the Rockies)

Guest: someone who wants to “call out” projection systems for being too low on Judge should aim at Steamer instead of ZiPS, but I guess those guys don’t hold weekly chats

Dan Szymborski: I don’t really “do” projection wars

Dan Szymborski: I present my product, give as much information away as I can justify, and as much detail of the model as I can, and let results speak for themselves

Guest: btw did the idea to update those 1x/year get anywhere?

Dan Szymborski: I’m thinking of doing ASB next year

Dan Szymborski: or maybe July 1st

Phil: Interesting about rehab. Do you just ignore those stints? I always wonder what can be learned from them, particularly right now whem Boston media is reporting breathlessly on Casas’s at-bats.

Dan Szymborski: I just find they create noise

wheelhouse: wait, who told that person that juan soto has below-average bat speed

Dan Szymborski: i assumed that bat was a stray word added

dontcare: I’m going to be very sad when two of the three NL West teams have to face off in the WC round

Ken Jennings Says: The Ides of August is the 13th. You’re two days late.

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

laughingstock: Are there any players/prospects with extremely bimodal future value projections? Something approaching “99% of the time they’ll be a utility guy, but there’s a 1% chance they might actually be the next Willie Mays”

Dan Szymborski: nobody as massive as the last two guys to be REALLY bimodal: Tanner Scott and Michael Kopech