JotCast | Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat - 1/29/26

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Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat - 1/29/26

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Dan Szymborski

12:18

I'm not sure there's that much they can do unless it's really weird and off the wall

maybe sign Valdez

JC

12:18

Non baseball, but I'm writing my first ever article hoping to be published. I'm going to try submitting it to local papers. Any advice for a 29-year-old wanting to enter the field of journalism? I was going to study journalism in college but chose a different career

Dan Szymborski

12:18

I'm not sure my advice is super useful, simply because I had a really odd route to journalism, that I'm not sure is precisely replicable

12:19

I didn't right for high school or college papers ever, and took creative writing for my english credits in college

write

god

I said right for write when talking about education in english

12:20

My first ever newspaper writing was a guest column for the Oakland Tribune in 2005

Submitting is a good idea though, I believe. As is having your writing somewhere on the net

And networking is really important

And so is having a very particular niche

12:22

I got hired by ESPN by them reaching out to me. And I got hired by FanGraphs on a call to David (I had seen the writing in the wall for me at ESPN, though I left under very cordial terms and turned down a counteroffer chance). Also talked to the athletic briefly. Having done things with David in the past plus having something specific I could do/offer was really helpful

I don't know what it is, but if there's SOMETHING you can do, that other people don't, that's a huge bonus

12:23

And you did one smart thing by NOT majoring in journalism.

I believe Journalism is something you DO more than something you STUDY. I do not believe a lot of journalists would like this answer

Yes, there are a lot of ethical things to learn, but there are in most human activities

Big Fan

12:24

Do you expect the Rays' front office to operate differently under the new ownership group?

Dan Szymborski

12:24

Not really

Is this AI?

12:24

Well?

Dan Szymborski

12:24

What is?

12:25

99% of my AI use is as a high-tech toy, to execute dumb jokes I think of

I also use it to double check my visual basic code as I am not a good coder

ZiPS doesn't use AI, outside of the traditional supervised learning techniques, and I don't write with AI

Smore Grizelle

12:26

How worried are you and/or ZiPS about Ranger Suarez' declining FB velo? If you linearly project the trendline it seems like he might be cooked within a couple years. But as they say, linearly projecting trendlines into the future makes an ass out of you and me!

Dan Szymborski

12:26

ZiPS will mostly be worried if he dips below 90

12:27

a guy throwing 91.5 and having success has a better outlook than a guy having success throwing 94.5 who suddenly starts throwing 91.5

drplantwrench

12:27

hi dan, im a naively optimistic angels fan, but things look goddamn bleak. i feel like 68 wins might be a little lower than what i'd expect of them, but its hard to imagine them doing that much better. what's their absolute best case scenario? 3rd place in the AL West?!?

Dan Szymborski

12:27

Probably

It's a really uninspiring team

bringbackpologrounds

12:28

Has Fangraphs considered adding a total bases column to their leaderboards?

Dan Szymborski

12:28

oops, hold on still answering last one

12:29

I can see the crazy scenario where the white sox are OK or the marlins or even nationals are OK

But the Angels have just so MEH an upside. They're the least risky bad team in baseball IMO, and that's a really dumb thing to be

We're having some leaderboard changes that are coming through soon and some new tools Ben's been working on

12:30

I don't know about TB specifically

I never erally gave thought to it as I don't really use TB for anything

and if I needed to, I could always just do SLG*AB for the dataset

I didn't even consciously know we didn't have TB until you said this

S. Mejdal

12:30

Adding Framber would do what exactly to our ZiPS projections / AL East race?

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