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Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat - 11/13/25

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Dan Szymborski

12:33

People sometimes just do very stupid things that provide them no real benefit

For instance, I'm a sucker for gas station hot dogs and lukewarm gas station breakfast sandwiches

Guest

12:34

Sorry about cat, I had 13 year old lab i lost and now my 13 year old Scottish terrier and I miss her terribly

Dan Szymborski

12:34

I'm sorry for your losses as well! My grandparents had a scotty when I was little that I was very attached to

Tom

12:34

What is the highest 80th percentile projection you have seen ZIPS produce, and does it surprise you that it was 2026 Paul Skenes?

Dan Szymborski

12:34

I'm pretty sure it was a de grom

Springerdingding

12:37

How unusual would you guess or would ZiPS say is a rebound year like we saw from Springer? This many years past the steroid era, any signs of re-lengthening of the peak performance window as a result of non-cheating conditioning and surgical improvements?

Dan Szymborski

12:38

It's on the unusual side - 4% of players beat their 95th percentile OPS+ and Springer was one of them

I haven't seen any performance changes

War2D2

12:38

Condolences for the loss of Mercutio as well. I lost my 17yo tux cat in 2019 and I still accidentally call both my dog and my new cat by his name.

Dan Szymborski

12:39

BRB

12:41

Ok internet just went out so im on phone. This will be slower

JD Martin

12:41

has the widespread availability of AI tools helped ZiPS at all?

Dan Szymborski

12:42

Not really. It's helped clean up some of my hamhanded visual basic code

12:43

Zips is already more or less a supervised model

Tike Mrout

12:44

Are there any players that you think ZiPS is flat wrong about, but in ways that are difficult/impossible to fix within the model?

Dan Szymborski

12:45

This was a larger problem the first few years, but wringing put calibration issues has eliminated this as a big problem

Year to year misses are uncorrelated, and I've found no common threads on large misses

12:46

Which is too bad; I wish there were easy accuracy boosts out there to be found

Cats

12:47

Adding to the chorus of condolences here. It's such a sad thing. Have you ever explained to us how you arrived at your cats' names? Mercutio is an 80-grade name.

Dan Szymborski

12:47

No rhyme or reason really. I like historical and literary names

12:49

I was going to name my sibling pair Antonio and prospero, but I thought that people who didn't get the reference would think i gave that cat a random person name

It's weird to me when cats have common person names

12:50

I know someone who has a cat Ed. That's just so odd to my ears

Sir Nerdlington

12:50

Any idea how ABS will change the catching defensive value in zWAR? Do I need to start working with my kid on anti-framing and yoinking balls out of the zone?

Dan Szymborski

12:51

Probably not a huge amount in this sorta robot system

Wish they just went to all robot location rather than this half measure

romorr

12:52

Phillies first, Dan? Where are the Orioles? Your bias isn't showing.

Dan Szymborski

12:52

All random!

TameImp

12:52

Given that Gleyber Torres was only able to get 1 for $15mm last year, was his 2025 season bounce backy enough to get more bidders on board? Just seems like something in his profile that doesn't excite teams.

Dan Szymborski

12:53

Hell get a better deal but nothing huge

Sir Nerdlington

12:53

The Cubs payroll is infuriating, but I'm trying to mature and give them the benefit of the doubt. Do you have any insight as to whether they're spending considerably more than other teams on tech, FO staff (not scouts obv), amenities? Or is it just paying off the Hotel Zachary?

Dan Szymborski

12:54

I don't. It's one of the things least likely to be communicated to me.

12:55

Teams are usually happy to talk shop with me, and everyone knows im not a reporter, but im still journalisty enough that there a limits on what's shared

Patrick Kivlehan

12:56

What goes into the decisions regarding displaying “external” stats on Fangraphs? Thinking of the PitchingBot grades as a recent example, and wondering if something like SEAGER from BPro might make an appearance.

Dan Szymborski

12:57

That's a question for Dave mostly! I'm sure price is a factor too

Mike

12:57

How do you do, zips for a team like the Twins who have maybe two guys in the bullpen, no first baseman, one catcher?

Dan Szymborski

12:58

I mean its mostly zips for the players currently associated with teams rather than actual team projections

But that's a pretty wordy article totle

12:59

Uh oh I hot dog finger d a w about which nl west team is biggest threat to la