JotCast | Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat

Return to

Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat - 11/13/25

Prev Page View Full Chat Next Page

Dan Szymborski

12:16

https://library.fangraphs.com/misc/war/positional-adjustment/

12:17

The ones I use in ZiPS are a bit "mellower"

12:18

I use C 9, 1B -9.5, 2B 3, 3B 2, SS 7, LF -7, CF 2.5, RF -7, DH -9.5

Lord Thunder

12:20

Will Adley be considered a top 5 catcher in MLB 3 years from now?

Dan Szymborski

12:20

Honeslty, I'm leaning to no

Though it's certainly quite possible he is

Insert Witty Name Here

12:20

How can baseball regulate their gambling revenue stream to where all star pitchers who make tens of millions of dollars won’t juke their stats for 1919 Black Sox money?

Dan Szymborski

12:21

That's the thing that amazes me, the piddling amounts of money involved.

It's like if a team asked me to change a projection to a fake on they provide and paid me with a sandwich

I can buy my own sandwich, thank you very much

Tom

12:21

Ha-Seong Kim, do you think he ends up being getting a contract less than consensus - and who makes the most sense to you? That seems high for a waiver claim a few months back...(FYI 3/ $45M per crowdsource)

Dan Szymborski

12:21

I tend to think he will and shoudl probably consider a pillow deal. We'll see

Shandy Koufax

12:23

Saw today that DRS and FRV, despite both being above average stats, sum to very different non-zero values. What gives? (FRV was -33, and -6 the last 2 years and DRS was 427 and 466)

Dan Szymborski

12:23

DRS isn't being ruthless rebalanced to average clearly!

Mike

12:23

This likely isn't the last gambling issue sports has. We have to believe some NFL officials are doing this, yes? How bad will it get how fast?

Dan Szymborski

12:23

It'll probalby get worse before it gets better. It's kind of a messy thing

Boo Dodgers

12:23

I have a number of coworkers who think MLB teams can just buy world series nowadays and point to the Dodgers as their prime example. I agree with them that money matters and helps, but I don't think it is the primary factor for determining success. Yes, teams that win WS tend to have spent more money, but part of that is good teams spend money when it is more valuable to them to do so. The Dodgers also happen to be the among the best at developing players. What do you think?

Dan Szymborski

12:24

The thing is, money only goes so far because the sport is *inherently* coin flippy

12:25

A team going from a 15% chance of a WS trophy to a 60% chance just by spending a whole crapload of money would be a real problem

But if the best that money alone can do is move you from, say, 15% to 19%, it's hard to care THAT much about it

matt w

12:25

I'm sorry about Mercutio. We lost our 17-year-old cat a little over a year ago and it was very hard. Now we have three young cats.

Guest

12:25

Sorry for your loss, Dan. Losing a furry family member is always really tough.

Alby

12:25

No question, just sorry to hear about Mercutio. It's always tough.

Dan Szymborski

12:26

Thanks! It was quite a surprise since he had been acting relatively normal.

But he *was* getting that old cat look so it had been in the back of my mind for about a year.

He was getting bonier and his arthritis was bad, and I'm pretty sure he was going deaf

12:27

He was getting monthly injections for his arthritis which had been helping, but still, he was only going to get worse, not better

12:28

When I got the vet ER, I did have them perform a battery of tests and try to stabilize him, just so I could be sure what was going on. Since it was so quick, a number of things could have happened

12:29

but his blood chemistry from his kidneys was off the table bad

12:30

the vet thought it was triggered by pancreatitis

Guest

12:30

Obviosley you aren't going to completely spoil it for us, but how does ZIPS feel about the Reds rotation? Top 5?

Dan Szymborski

12:30

I'll just say it decently likes them!

War2D2

12:30

As an aside: sorry I’m machine gunning you with questions, I’ve not been able to attend a chat in like a month. I appreciate that you do these!

Dan Szymborski

12:30

I don't usually do chats during playoffs simply because I'm sneaking every minute to get zips ready that I can! So you didn't miss anything

Schwarbomb

12:30

Are you able to change a players home ballpark and see hypothetical changes in their projections? Ex. Schwarber plays 81 games at GABP, vs 81 games at Oracle Park. Is that something you can play with?

Dan Szymborski

12:31

Yeah. In fact, a common thing that player-agents like is a readout of the ZiPS for a player in every park

mmddyyyy

12:31

What do you try to do for professional growth?

Dan Szymborski

12:32

At this stage in my career, I'm just trying to arrest professional decline!

War2D2

12:32

Don’t the piddling amounts kind of imply that Clasé et al had more going on? I tend to assume that if you’re so desperate for $5k you’re probably over-extended. I’m not by any stretch a rich man, but I don’t think $5k would be enough for me to even consider making a change in the data I use at work.

Dan Szymborski

12:33

It's certainly possible, but I don't want to speculate what EXACTLY was going on, since I don't know.

Connecting…