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Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat - 5/28/26

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Guest

12:59

If anyone was going to walk up to their own music it would have been Bernie williams.

Dan Szymborski

1:00

Bronson Arroyo?

war2d2

1:00

Jay Jaffe’s walk up would be ska/folk fusion song about the food at Yankee stadium, written by Davy Andrews.

Guest

1:00

“passive-aggressive AI songs I target family members and friends who get on my nerves for something” is now going to be my new go-to with annoying co-workers.

Steve E

1:00

To Asher: I was a sportswriter for 30 years. Yes, really. My advice is to change your degree.

Dan Szymborski

1:01

I keep telling people

Journalism should be something you DO, not something you major in.

1:03

The first "article" I ever wrote in my life was for the Oakland Tribune. I never took a journalism class in my life; I took creative writing for the required English credits in college

but I DO journalism with the other skills I have

zipmetrics

1:04

how often does chat ask about a player you don't know much about, other than what Zips says? or do you have a pulse on EVERY possible MLB player

Dan Szymborski

1:04

once in a while

I'd like to say I know EVERYONE in professional baseball, but I totally don't

1:05

if it's a question that I don't have any insight on, and I can't even make a dad joke about it, I tend not to answer the question

Sonny

1:05

A college teammate would have a producer friend make him beats for his walk up. It was funny in the south to have 17 batter come out to some version of commercial country then our CF come out to one of one boom bap beats.

CFH

1:05

Re. the Brewers beating projections, I had two thoughts after reading the article - could having a lot of players with a large gap between 80th and 50th percentile outcomes (and perhaps 20th and 50th) indicate a higher likelihood of different playing time configurations, and a higher upside from optimizing them? Also could post-season projection beating (with correct playing time) beating pre-season projection be a skill, sort of like how you model ERA beating FIP?

Dan Szymborski

1:05

It might be, but I'm still trying to figure it out

Oddball Herrera

1:05

If you can do custom songs it's probably a travesty that someone hasn't walked up to a death metal band singing "We want a pitcher not a belly itcher"

Sonny

1:05

If you were an elite command pitcher whose name started with a K wouldn’t you have a moral obligation to yourself and the game of baseball to change your name to a backwards K?

Dan Szymborski

1:05

Yes

Guest

1:06

On the walk up music question, didn't Jose Iglesias use his own song OMG back for the 2024 mets?

Dan Szymborski

1:06

He did, under his Candelita name

Guest

1:06

Responding to your previous comments about "getting your work out there." I recently start a small blog. What other way do you suggest getting my work out there?

Dan Szymborski

1:07

Engage with others on social media. It's more fragmented now, but interacting with people gets thiem more interested in your work

Guest

1:07

I'll be going into my senior year of HS and trying to figure out my major. If not journalism then what would you suggest? Any good college suggestions?

Dan Szymborski

1:07

Depends what else you're good at!

1:08

Major in something that can help you in a lot of different careers, you don't know what the future will hold

like, don't major in hungarian puppetmaking, even if you really enjoy hungarian puppetmaking

I would have absolutely LOVED to have been a music theory major for example

Oddball Herrera

1:09

Really skywriting is the most bang for your buck in terms of getting your work out there

InsertWittyNameHere

1:09

Do you consider yourself a cat Dad or a cat owner or any other term?

Dan Szymborski

1:09

cat owner

cat dad or cat daddy sounds like some weird sexual fetish that I can't define and don't want to look up

Alec

1:09

As a disappointed Tigers fan who's watched most of their games this year, what drives me mad is (1) the amount of pitches the team takes that seem middle-middle, (2) the amount of pitches they chase with two strikes (feels like they're always sitting fastball?), and (3) how often they seem content to walk with RISP rather than work to drive a run in. Is there anywhere on Fangraphs I can explore to try and get an assessment of team or player passivity or chase rates / swing rates in / out of the zone?

Update: I may have found the answer to my question and it may have done the complete opposite of confirm my priors (sixth in H-Swing %, though can't find anything situational). Probably something all fans of bad teams try to pick out, oops!

war2d2

1:09

I was a sportswriter for a year in college and immediately changed my major to, and I shit you not, Math Programming. As a math programmer I’m a wonderful sportswriter, but also I’ve had 20 years of steady employment and a decent nest egg. So while I’ve had less fun in my career than I would have had otherwise, I’ve also had a lot less stress about job prospects. Some days I wonder whether I made the right choice, but I’m so risk-averse I can’t imagine me ever _not_ choosing “safe and boring.”

Keith Hernandez

1:10

I always hear announcers talk about what a player needs to do to get out of a slump and what adjustments they need to make. How necessary is that vs. staying the course and waiting for regression? Do we know when a slump is fixable or when it's just random?

Dan Szymborski

1:10

It REALLY depends on the situation. It's an unsatsifying answer, I know, but it's ahrd to have bright lines on this

because sometimes, it IS just the volatility of life

but sometimes, there's a definable mechanical issue or something

Sonny

1:11

HS Senior “Guest” I have an MFA and work in tech. Study something you’re genuinely interested in and the rest takes care of itself. The over indexing on STEM has created a lot of similar candidates with nearly identical strengths and blind spots. Major in Philosophy if that’s what you’re most passionate about and you’ll be totally fine as long as you’re not dogmatic about your title post grad.

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