JotCast | Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat

Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat - 1/11/24

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Dan Szymborski

12:56

So basically, you need a team like that and they have to also be unfortunate relative to expectations

Behind Enemy Lines

12:56

Adam Ottavino last night said Imanaga might have the "hoppiest" fastball in MLB, meaning perceived rise. Is this a thing? And, can we get an actual rhythm section with organ instead of canned samples?

Dan Szymborski

12:57

Maybe we should call his fastball the pale ale?

Colton

12:57

In my quick research of that offense vs defense topic, I ran across someone (I think on Reddit) who mentioned the idea of having a team of Adam Dunn's vs a team of Kei Igawa's and run a 100 game simulation of them against each other to see who wins and it's all I've been able to think about since.

Dan Szymborski

12:57

Pitching too?

Marshall

12:57

I think I saw that you and Jay teamed up to do some JAWS projections. Is there anywhere I could see a list of players who project to clear the JAWS standards at their position (say, based on a median projection)? If not, that would be a really fun series of articles.

Dan Szymborski

12:57

Generally, I give them to Jay as Jay needs them

12:58

I notice most analytic writers have moved to using fWAR vs bWAR. Is this because most people are writing about what might happen next as opposed to what has happened? When should you use one vs the other ?

Dan Szymborski

12:58

Here's the problem: when it comes to individual pitchers, there really *is* no "what happened"

runs allowed happened to a team, not to the individual pitcher

it's just that someone in the 19th century decided "if it happens while the pitcher is on the mound, it's the pitchers fault"

12:59

People act like RA9-WAR is a what happened WAR

But the decision to assign *everything* to the pitcher is just as much a theoretical construct as assigning *some things* to the pitcher, whether by isolated pitcher-specific events or applying a general defensive metric

Dan

12:59

how does Chris feel about you calling him out in a internal forum like this?

Dan Szymborski

1:00

Hey, I didn't say his last name!

Colton

1:00

Just reading "Emilio Pagan was the worst RP addition a team has made" gave me a good laugh cause I thought the exact same thing when it happened lol

They inferred having a league average pitching staff for the simulation.

Dan Szymborski

1:00

Oh that's not fun

Dan

1:00

offense is better because you can't have negative runs so the closer you get to allowing zero runs the less better defense helps but on offense the better you are at offense the more at bars your best players get and the more you face weaker pitchers so adding offense has an increasing effect.

Dan Szymborski

1:01

True, but it doens't really come into play when talking about assembling a roster for a season

individual games, of course

1:01

Baseball trade values is a pretty cool site. Fangraphs led the way on this valuation logic. Have yiu or FG considered using zips to create a public version of trade values ? (I assume you use it privately)?

Dan Szymborski

1:01

I actually have my own thing I've tinkered with in ZiPS

1:02

I don't know whether anyone's considered putting one together on site. If they have, I wasn't in the conversation

I actually have a pitcher vs. hitter individual matchup tool that I use myself that may pop up on FG at some point

Milk Toast

1:02

Does Chef Boyardee still visit you in your dreams?

Dan Szymborski

1:02

If he is, I have no memory of it

1:04

For those who are confused, some years ago, I woke up to find I had scrawled this on the notepad on my nightstand at some point during the night.

Oddball Herrera

1:04

Per the tracker, Sheffield is actually over the HOF threshold. If he and Ortiz end up in the hall and other PED linked (or even speculated) guys don't, I give up on trying to figure out what the standard is

Dan Szymborski

1:04

I think the issue is simply you have hundreds of different standards

1:05

On that note, it's time for me to head out for another week.

Got some ZiPS to finish ZiPSing

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