Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat – 8/8/24

Dan Szymborski: Good afternoon gang!

Dan Szymborski: Well, not an organized gang

Dallas: Why can’t Ke’Bryan Hayes hit more consistently, and is there any chance some team might be willing to trade for him this offseason?

Dan Szymborski: He’s a decent contact hitter, but his pitch selection has always been rather dysfunctional; he’s not a Javy Baez-esque flailer, but he hits a lot of rather mediocre pitches and lets a lot of good ones go by

Dan Szymborski: Add in taht he has power upside and the swings in fortune can be pretty intense

White Sox FO: What “outside the box” manager should I use for the rest of the season?

Dan Szymborski: Draw a random seatholder every seventh inning stretch and make that person the manager for the next game.

Dan: Two good starts for Kikuchi after the Astros have changed his pitch usage. Were those calling this deal a fleece overreacting?

Dan Szymborski: The thing is, the trade may still *could* have been more than what was needed to get him

Dan Szymborski: In any case, I wasn’t quite as negative about the trade as some others were. I don’t like the prospects quite as much and I liked Kikuchi more (which is why I included him in my fantasy trade piece this year)

Dan Szymborski: Though I didn’t give the Blue Jays as much in prospects

Datt Mamon: Are you in any way bullish on Gavin Stone moving forward (meaning next season, really)? He seems to have hit a bit of a wall.

Dan Szymborski: I mean, he’s certainly not *bad*

Dan Szymborski: but he seems to have problems finishing off batters on two strikes

Dan Szymborski: (and this is purely from my feelings, I can’t really dig too deep in the context of a quick chat)

Matt: There’ve been lots of complaints about the dead ball impacting offensive production this year.  Do you think that’s true? And if so, how does ZIPS account for the dead ball when projecting numbers for future seasons?

Dan Szymborski: I think it’s very likely, but I don’t have sufficient information to say it’s true. Unfortunately, there’s not much to do; MLB has no transparency on their ball construction and I have no way of knowing what offense will be like in the future beyond what it is in recent years

Insert Witty Name Here: Curious to know how much clout you have in the baseball world. Like if you had the best idea that would save baseball, do you have contacts where you could make a call to the commissioner and pitch your idea?

Dan Szymborski: Figuring out one’s own reputation is an impossible task to approach objectively. My gut tells me no, but I can’t be positive about that.

Dan Szymborski: I’m not even sure what my reputation is if you just polled the smaller analytics community. I *suspect* people like my work and perhaps dislike me personally, but I don’t really knwo that

Guest: CJ Abrams laughs in the face of pitch selection, turning Birdsong into Wormcophany

Dan Szymborski: heh

Phil: Tony La Russa is waiting by the phone.

Eddie: Kind of obvious NYY should be going Soto Judge 1,2 but we know that won’t happen. If they have to bat 2nd and 3rd, would you flip them at this point?

Dan Szymborski: Given how little different lineups are, I’d basically put players where they are comfortable unless the idea is ludicrous

Dan Szymborski: Like if Martin Maldonado feels most comfortably leading off, I do not do that

AARON JUDGE!!: How much has helped his rest of career projections this year by showing that 2022 was not a fluke?

Dan Szymborski: Quite a bit, but age and injury history still kind of hold down those numbers

Dan Szymborski: I’d vote for him for the Hall *right now* though, based on his insane peak

Dan Szymborski: He was only 208th in HRs through 20s, which tends to keep down the career totals

McGraw45: All time favorite minor leaguer? Hank McGraw (Tug’s brother) is a legend in my family, who all say he was better than Tug but teams wouldn’t promote him for being a hippie

Dan Szymborski: Luke Easter. After his MLB career ended in his late 30s, he basically said “screw that” and dominated the International League for nearly another *decade*

Guest: Is Benintendi’s future ZiPS projection now negative for the remainder of his career?

Guest: if Joe Ryan makes his next start how many hats will Thomas Woodrooffe’s descendants eat

Dan Szymborski: (hang on for Benintendi)

Dan Szymborski: In fairness, he didn’t really eat his hat, just a hat-shaped cake, IIRC

Dan Szymborski: You should never make bets, brags, or boasts that you can’t feasibly fulfill.

Dan Szymborski: Like, I said I’d eat Cincinnati chili if Kyle Nelson didn’t finish the season with an ERA under four. I did not say I’d eat a 2011 Toyota Corolla.

Justin: In terms of a making it a less extreme environment, I always wonder if the Rockies would have been better building Coors Field with closer fences and a smaller outfield. Do you think the tradeoff between more homers and a lower Babip would be worth it?

Dan Szymborski: I’m honestly not sure what the best approach is.

Dan Szymborski: The organization is actually slowly improving, but I have zero faith in ownership

Dan Szymborski: If Bridich was still there, Brenton Doyle would be in Japan by now and Tovar blocked by Amed Rosario or someone

#1MetsFan: Baseball is fun game. Its a probabilities wonderland, where each pitch changes the stats for everybody on the field. That being said, tell me I’m wrong when I say the Mets will fall just out of the wild card spot. TELL ME!

Dan Szymborski: You’re a Mets fan. The Mets could have a 15 game lead in the NL East in mid-september and your gut would say they’ll probably just lose 16 games in the standings in the last two weeks!

Big Brain Boy.: Cubs 9 of their last 12. Do they sneak in to the Wild Card?

Dan Szymborski: It’s certainly POSSIBLE

Dan Szymborski: The NL Central didn’t feature a ton of aggressive buying and the Cubs were always better than their record

Atheist Yelich: If you had the power to choose the playoff format in any possible way (number of teams, games in each series, etc.), what format would you choose that optimizes the quality of the postseason, trade deadline, incentive for teams to try, etc

Dan Szymborski: There are a lot of formats I’d prefer

Dan Szymborski: But one thing I absolutely would do without the largest changes is require the lower-seeded team to sweep to win a three game series.

Dan Szymborski: There’s nothing inherently wrong with having large playoffs, so long as the difficulty of advancing in the playoffs reflects the season and is large enough to be meaningful

Dan Szymborski: You could feasibly design an extended playoff system in which allowing *all* 30 teams in makes sense.

Dan Szymborski: Not necessarily a *practical* one given time constraints though

Dan Szymborski: I totally don’t mind the White Sox getting a shot to topple the Phillies. But that shot would have to be something like a seven-game sweep.

#1MetsFan: And what’s for lunch.

Dan Szymborski: It’s not an eating day

Guest: You’ve been appointed new manager of the White Sox. How soon can you be in Chicago?

Dan Szymborski: I think I might go and commit the least serious crime that would take me out of consideration for the job

Big Brain Boy.: Thoughts on White Sox firing manager?

Dan Szymborski: deck chairs, Titanic

Guest: best pasta shape aesthetically?

Dan Szymborski: alphabet. I like eating crazy words

druidiful: I know its not you, but who should we tell that it looks like the leaderboard page isnt updated correctly? It is saying that Judge only has 38 homers and Witt has 19 when they both have more. The player pages are correct, unless you go into game logs that have the last game as 8/4/24.

Dan Szymborski: FanGraphs twitter is usually read pretty rigorously

Dan Szymborski: Telling me isn’t a bad idea though, I’m likely one of the easier people to get ahold of and I can bring it up on slack

Dan Szymborski: When people on Reddit express FanGraphs issues, I frequently bring them up

Cards fan: What was it that your system saw about Masynn Winn last year when you had him as big mover ?  It never seemed that he showed in MILB what he’s showing in MLB but obviously zips saw it

Dan Szymborski: I don’t know if there was anything *specifically* that it saw in him other than the fact that he repeated the year at a high level while still really young in 2023

Dan Szymborski: as in repeated his 2022 performance

Dan Szymborski: Even with ZiPS not going full neural network, it’s complex enough that it can sometimes be difficult to always grok out the why

Dan’s Mom: Is Zips capable of predicting MVP? If so, does it have Judge or Witt as AL MVP.

Dan Szymborski: I do have an MVP predictor, though I haven’t used it. Maybe I shoudl for Monday!

Rob: I like you personally. They can go f themselves.

Dan Szymborski: I’m not really THAT likable

#1MetsFan: You cut so deep with your truth. Thanks Dan

Mike Trout: Can ZIPS estimate the odds of us every seeing a 150-game Mike Trout season again? And would you consider it reliable, or is the science of injury prediction not much more advanced than the science of dowsing for water?

Dan Szymborski: It doesn’t do a bad job — weirdly, from Jeff Z’s work, ZiPS actually does a really good job at predicting playing time for guys we *know* are major leaguers

Dan Szymborski: But I’m not sure it’s THAT precise

Dan Szymborski: and I don’t really have it configured to give that readout easily

Adam: The White Sox had a chance to do the funniest thing and fire Grifol the day they finally won a game.  So close.

Guest: but Dan I thought ZiPS was just you spitballing numbers

Frank: How worried are we about Corbin Burnes? He doesn’t seem as sharp lately (although still getting wins).

Dan Szymborski: I’m not

Dan Szymborski: but I can only speak for myself

Local: Is there a way to listen to ones local team announcers once the playoffs come or only the national broadcasters?

Dan Szymborski: I think you’d have to hire them without them violating their contracts?

captain planet: WITHOUT LOOKING: Who was the better pitcher, Hiroki Kuroda or Daisuke Matsusaka?

Dan Szymborski: Easily Kuroda, so long as we’re talking MLB

Guest: even if the White Sox don’t pass the 2003 Tigers in losses, what are the chances they manage to do it in GB? currently 40.5 behind Cleveland; Detroit ended up 47 back in ’03

Dan Szymborski: Dunno, I’m not really equipped for that

Benjamin, J: If you’re the Guardians, what prospect would you promote to provide an offensive jolt in the arm? Brito? Manzardo? Valera?

Dan Szymborski: Manzardo

I Miss Kyle in Boston: Apologies if this is doubling up my question, new to the chats and not sure if it sent the first time. Schwarber is going to finish his age 31 season with ~280 home runs, does he have an outside chance at 500?

Dan Szymborski: I get an absurd amount of questions, so me being able to unanswer defintiely doesn’t mean I didn’t see

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS thinks he has a about 180 left in him before decline takes him away, so that’s certainly enough to have an outside chance at 500

Dan Szymborski: (180 not including this year)

Adam: Does ZiPS have a way to approximate a whole season out of teams given their roster construction at a particular moment?  In other words, how many wins would the July version of the Dodgers with all their injuries be expected to produce over a full season?

Dan Szymborski: As long as I have the roster, ZiPS does that

TomBruno23: Favorite MiLBer is Ramon Sambo. Guy could swipe some bags. Currently a coach with the Norfolk Tides.

Guest: best approach for Rockies: move team to Death Valley

2025 Orioles: Reasonably, how much better could the Orioles lineup be next year (assuming Santander is retained)? They are Top 3 this year, but there’s a hoard of young hitters. Holliday, Gunnar, Westburg, Cowser, etc. will be another year into their careers. Or would you let Santander walk and put all of your available money into pitching considering all of the injuries and question marks there?

Dan Szymborski: I think they’re kinda near where they can likely be. Once you’re this good, the risk is mostly one-sided

Dan Szymborski: oh crap, I was supposed to do Andrew Benintendi

Dan Szymborski: proejction

Jason N: I have a question inspired by Angel Hernandez.  When he retired, I read some commentary on FG (Ben maybe?) claiming that Hernandez was rated an average umpire a decade ago and it speaks to how much umpiring has improved.  Got me thinking about Maddux and Glavine for some reason.  I remember so much broadcaster commentary about how they worked the outside of the zone so well that they regularly enjoyed an expanded strike zone as the games went on.  If they were playing in today’s game with these umps (and their slow fastballs), do you think either of them would thrive in a modern rotation?

Dan Szymborski: Was he? It certainly didn’t feel that way!

Dan Szymborski: If he’s better than I thought, the AI song I wrote for his retirement is really mean.

Jon D: Pirates are a playoff team when? What do they need to add this offseason to make your answer 2025?

Dan Szymborski: They would actually need to add bats in free agency and pay for them

Dan Szymborski: They coudl literally sign Juan Soto and have a significantly below-average payroll. They won’t, of course

Pirates Hurdles: If Schwarbs did get to 500, he would have the lowest WAR by anyone by almost 2 fold less than Papi.

Dan Szymborski: Someone’s gotta be worst at something

Dan Szymborski: If Nick Markakis had hung on a bit longer, he coudl’ve been the worst 3000 hit member

Dan Szymborski: and there’s a decent chance that Giancarlo Stanton is easily the worst 500 homer hitter ever

Dan Szymborski: (If schwarber doesn’t get there)

Harry: If you were AA how would you approach shortstop this offseason?

Dan Szymborski: depends if I can extend Bichette

Dan Szymborski: err

Dan Szymborski: no

Dan Szymborski: braves

Dan Szymborski: (sorry, I still associate AA with the Jays for the first few seconds I think about him)

Dan Szymborski: I would go seriously after Adames if I’m the Braves

Judge’s Defense: Judge is getting killed on the defensive metrics right now. If I’m reading the player pages right he’s being credited for -15 UZR runs in 57 innings in right field. This is enough to give Witt the overall WAR lead. What’s causing this? The metrics all feel he’s much better in center than right.

Dan Szymborski: You’re not reading the right column

Dan Szymborski: He has -0.5 UZR at RF in 57 innings. He has -15.3 UZR *per 150 games* in RF this year, which is purely a pace measurement

Dan Szymborski: And in any case, WAR hasn’t used UZR in a few years

Dan Szymborski: so even if he were at -15 runs in 57 innings in RF in UZR, it would have no effect on his WAR

Dan Szymborski: And there’s no conclusion about the RF/CF split to draw since 57 innings is just about worthless to draw a conclusion from

Dan Szymborski: We don’t have a full career of statcast fielding, but based on UZR, the eight run difference between his UZR/150 in rightfield (9.1) and his UZR/150 in center (1.2) is not noteworthy. Typical is about 10 runs.

Adam: Who’s the best bet for a team to a) miss this year’s playoffs, and b) make it next year?  What about the reverse?

Dan Szymborski: Cubs probably for the first one?

Dan Szymborski: The biggest differential for the second *might* be the Yankees right now, simply because Juan Soto is unsigned

Dreamin: How much better does Ketel Marte have to be than Ohtani over the rest of the season to win the MVP?

Dan Szymborski: Probably a good bit

Dan Szymborski: I think a lot of people are unaware just how ridiculous Ketel’s been since the start of June

Guest: Why are you hanging out in the Rockies subreddit?

Dan Szymborski: I make lots of poor decisions

Dan Szymborski: On that note, it’s time for me to head out for another week.

Dan Szymborski: Thanks as always for coming out, and I hope to see you next time!

Dan Szymborski: OH CRAP HANGON

Dan Szymborski: Year BA OBP SLG WAR   2025 .260 .327 .383 0.8   2026 .257 .325 .376 0.6   2027 .258 .326 .377 0.6   2028 .252 .318 .363 0.2   2029 .249 .319 .361 0.0   2030 .226 .291 .301 -0.2

Smiling Politely: Excited to make the live chat!

Dan, I’m the only one left on Gavin Lux Hill, but I know you were there with me. Does he have a future as a positive platoon bat, at least? He’s been hitting quite well since the ASG, but of course, that doesn’t negate *history*

Dan Szymborski: I think at the very least he’s a good complementary talent

Dan Szymborski: ok, NOW I’m going