JotCast | Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat 4/3/25

Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat 4/3/25

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Dan Szymborski

12:48

12 maybe?

12:48

How worried should we be about Sasaki?

Dan Szymborski

12:49

Not yet. He was always less developed and "complete" than Yamamoto, so an adjustment period being needed was a real thing

12:49

Are you inclined to make any tweaks to ZiPS' treatment of prospects to account for do anything to account for things like the overwhelming consne

Dan Szymborski

12:49

I don't like external things being in ZiPS. I feel it's cheating to include any work that isn't mine

which is why I developed my own zstats version of xstats

12:50

Voros' DIPS work was the impetus for me seriously looking at projections, but all the work was done by me

Zebra1

12:50

How is Fangraphs treating the Rays and A's for park-adjusted stats? Neutral park factor; last year's stadiums? Trying to figure out the mental adjustment I should be making to those stats.

Dan Szymborski

12:50

I'm honestly not sure. I assumed neutral

Jason

12:50

What's your estimation of the diamondbacks? Do you feel like they have a legitimate chance to contend this season, or is LA just too dominant?

Dan Szymborski

12:50

I think they contend, but the NL West is tough

12:50

People get too caught up in total dollars when looking at extensions and don't consider that Merrill is making $809K this year and now gets a $10M signing bonus and a ton of guaranteed cash. That's life changing money at an age when he would otherwise not have gotten it, and he previously had a downside risk of a career-ending injury leaving him with a few million dollars in career earnings.

appa yip yip

12:51

you have lost your calendar. you no longer know it is april. what are you getting most excited about in baseball this past week?

Dan Szymborski

12:51

I'm thinking this feels like the year Wheeler gets the Cy Young cred that he should have last few years

David

12:52

Is there a way to see Prospect ZIPs updates throughout the season or is that purely a preseason exercise

Dan Szymborski

12:52

purely preaseason

Brosius

12:52

Also, is the Dan picture before the weight loss, or after? Don’t take this the wrong way, but if it’s the after, you definitely needed to lose that weight brother! Congrats

Dan Szymborski

12:52

Middle. I'm definitely a fatass!

oh no, this avatar? before

but my face hasn't really slimmed down, but I'm working on my impressive beer belly

12:53

it helps that I'm rarely drinking alcohol now; it just too upsets my GERD these days

Brosius

12:53

Hey Dan, thanks for the chat! Are you planning on doing a futures game ZIPS article again this year around the All-Star break?

Dan Szymborski

12:53

As with a prospects update, it kinda depends on what other pies I have my fingers in at the time

Phil

12:54

It's not unreasonable though to think about contracts in comparative terms, even if all of these guys are comfortably rich. For complicated reasons a guy who reports to me is about to get a promotion and raise that will surpass my salary, even though he'll still be reporting to me. I can't say I wouldn't prefer that that weren't the case, even though I'm doing OK with my current salary.

Allan 2.0

12:54

Will any team realistically threaten 117 wins? I understand the plethora of talent the Dodgers have, but if things are looking that good 100ish games in and the roster is relatively healthy, you have to think load management starts to become more significant?

Dan Szymborski

12:54

117 wins is hard because you have to be amazing AND really fortunate

There comes a point of diminishing marginal returns, where you struggle to get all the value you want on the field

12:55

and at that point, additions are mostly improving your downside, not your upside

Stu

12:55

Those AI food images are very calorie dense. It's tough out there. Happy for you, though.

Dan Szymborski

12:55

Still gotta lose a lot of weight!

12:56

I've always been a fatass even when I played sports, but for decades, I was a fatass in the 220-250 pound range. But going over 300 was too much fatass, and that's what happened after I started having significant back issues in 2017

12:58

Like before, i was fat, but need to walk five miles? No problem. But my back has made that really hard

12:59

The silver lining is that my measurables haven't gotten noticeably worse (as reference above), though that doesn't temper my doctor's displeasure

Yeah Well Hiura Towel

12:59

Don't you hate pants?

Dan Szymborski

12:59

I do! I've always been the guy who prefers shorts until it gets down into the 50s

and since I work from home, I wear a lot of gym shorts

1:00

I only have one long gym pants, and I didn't wear that until we got below zero here

(inside, of course I had long pants outside)

Boog's

1:00

Who's most likely to finish the season in the Orioles rotation: Morton, Sugano, Gibson, or some other 40+ year old I haven't thought of?

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