JotCast | Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat

Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat - 2/25/21

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Inaccessible Rail

12:18

I've been looking at the depth chart rankings almost every day. After the Lindor trade, the Mets were third, but gradually slipped down to 7th as other teams made signings. But now I see they are back up to 4th. How did this happen? Can't just be the Taijuan Walker signing, can it?

Dan Szymborski

12:18

.Hard to sasy as I hvaen't been tracking it every day

Zimboarsky

12:20

Who are your top breakout candidates for 2021? Non-rookie category

Dan Szymborski

12:20

Doing an article on these next week!

DFan

12:20

Have you heard any news concerning Forrest Whitley's performance in camp so far? Be nice to see him get back on track.

Dan Szymborski

12:20

Haven't heard anything specific yet

Guest

12:20

Do you think the Mariners end up starting Kelenic in the majors this year? Their only choice is basically call him up to start the season, or like, in July/August or something to prevent a service time manipulation grievance open and shut case, right?

Dan Szymborski

12:20

I think they call him up midseason.

Weirdly, Mather's quotes probably make the team wait longer

12:21

Because if the team did a Kris Bryant Special on him now, the anger would be immense.

Old Prospector

12:21

Hi Dan, good work on the ZiPS top 100 as always. Josh Green is rated very highly on the Dbacks ZiPS (1.7 WAR;2nd best pitcher) but didn’t crack your top 100. What caused him not to make it?

Dan Szymborski

12:21

Hmm, I'm really not sure.

He probaby should have

12:22

Hang on

12:24

Bah, I did the RoY eligibility manually for players who did not make Eric's lists

12:25

and I did not mark him as rookie eligible for some reason

12:28

And I did mark Hays as one

Marshall

12:28

Which franchise do you think will be the best (i.e., win the most games) over the next 5 years?

Dan Szymborski

12:28

Dodgers are still a safe bet, if a boring one

Chamaco

12:28

Is this the sandwich chat or the beans in chili one?

Dan Szymborski

12:28

This chat cna be whatever the questions make it into!

what cheer

12:29

Is it wrong for a team to offer a long-term extension, and an immediate slot in the MLB lineup, to a prospect who is at least one year away from being MLB-ready? Think of Jarred Kelenic, Evan White and Logan Gilbert in Seattle's 2019-20 offseason.

Dan Szymborski

12:31

I don't think it's wrong. I think it's frequently less-than-ideal for the player -- and will say so -- but in the end as with Albies, it's their choice and their personal risk aversion. However, where I *do* cry foul is if teams are improperly leveraging in bad faith, for example, not promoting or benching someone as a punitive measure to cajole a contract or punish not having one.

Don Von Handburger

12:31

It's often a futile task to predict SP's innings. But given that Zac Gallen threw 170 pro innings in 2019, would he would be a good bet to be one of the few guys to throw 190+ this year if healthy?

Dan Szymborski

12:31

Generally, the guys who throw a lot of innings are the safer bets, but safe is relative here.

Don Von Handburger

12:31

When you eat chocolate bunnies around Easter, do you just gobble the whole thing down, foil and all?

Dan Szymborski

12:31

I don't eat much chocolate.

Aceman

12:31

What % of hitters could change their approach mid season if there is a noticeable change with the ball....will they even try or will they mostly stick with lift and pull no matter how the ball plays?

Dan Szymborski

12:32

It's hard to say. I dont' think the ball would lead to any mid-season changes just for the ball

Nick

12:32

What do you think the terms of a fair Bieber extension would look like?

Dan Szymborski

12:32

Ima doing something on this next week too!

Guest

12:32

Is all weight gain good weight gain and all weight loss good weight loss?

Dan Szymborski

12:33

I can assure you that all weight gain is not good weight gain.

12:33

Why is ZiPS still scared of Tyler Matzek? Are the horrors of the yips still too fresh on its mind?

Dan Szymborski

12:33

I'm not sure SCARED is accurate, but it's still cautious given his history before

12:34

He was gone for a very long time!

Question

12:34

An evidence that COVID has meaningfully hurt revenue/profitability of MLB teams? It seems like there are just as many extensions, big contracts, low contracts and disappointed mid-tier FA as any off season.

Dan Szymborski

12:35

I expect it has. My complaint isn't that teams aren't struggling, but that they loudly insist they want the players to share in the pain when, prior to this year, they had no interesting in them sharing the gain

TooDamnTall

12:35

What would you say was one of the more crazy ZIPs projections you ran that you thought was crazy, and then turned out to be pretty close?

Dan Szymborski

12:35

It's really Bieber.

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