JotCast | Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat

Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat - 6/24/21

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Dan Szymborski

12:19

glopping

Derek

12:19

As everyone expected, the Dodgers and Padres beating up on each other means... The Giants are strengthening their hold on the division! Is this actually going to happen?

Dan Szymborski

12:19

I think the Giants fall short, but they do make the playoffs

Travis

12:19

What kind of alt-zips approaches have you tried? AIUI, zips regresses most things, which is how you get broadly accurate projections. Have you ever tried tweaking it to better perform on outliers or a specific subset of players? (Eg a “zips for pitchers who just added a new pitch and velo”; normal zips seems to take a while to adjust to real changes because of it being conservative by nature)

Dan Szymborski

12:19

The cohorts are designed to look at similar subsets

12:20

Things like new pitch are hard to gauge ahead of time so no

Though the more robust model of in-season ZiPS will know increased velocity

12:20

do you think Gallo will be traded? If so what’s a realistic return, a top 100 prospect and a lottery ticket?

Dan Szymborski

12:20

I think you *maybe* get a back of the top 100 prospect from a team who REALLY needs Gallo and pretty much nothing else

John B

12:20

I’d love to see a wayback machine projection of curt flood after 1969 to see where he was headed had he not become the poster boy for breaking the MLBs grip on its labor. Seems like he might have been hallworthy on baseball skills only

Dan Szymborski

12:21

I'm actually on planning on doing that as a ZiPS Time Machine when the CBA negotiations are in full force

Kate

12:21

Do you expect workload management as a result of last year's truncated season to spill into next year for some pitchers as well? Or do you think most guys will be back to a normal workload next year?

Dan Szymborski

12:21

I think we'll see things *more* normal

Erik

12:21

Do you believe ZiPS has any specific strengths or weakness compared to other projections? Any types of players it specifically loves or hates more than others?

Dan Szymborski

12:22

Unfortunately, this kind of calibration is low-hanging fruit, so I can't rely on it to get better projections these days

12:23

ZiPS does awful with Yuli Gurriel, but everyone tnds to also

12:24

People tend to think that there may be certain types that projections do worse with, but outside of things like injuries, that's not really the case and people see patterns where none exists

12:25

Kyle Hendricks is a good example. ZiPS has missed on him a couple of times -- though it always liked him even as a rookie -- but people conclude there's an issue with pitchers *like* Hendricks

But...

Just as an example, looking at ZiPS projections from 2004-2020 and everyone’s historical difference between projections and reality, the r^2 between ERA miss and strikeout rate is 0.006785 and the r^2 between ERA miss and fastball velocity is 0.001327.
And yes, ZiPS has missed overall on Kyle Hendricks, by about 0.4 runs of ERA over his career. But there are hard throwers that rank above him in this (ZiPS has underrated Jacob deGrom the second-most, behind Gavin Floyd, with a 95.2 mph fastball at 0.63 runs of ERA). And there are plenty of soft tossers in the ZiPS most overrated (Dave Bush, Jeff Francis, Joe Pineiro in the top 10 here).
I *wish* there was such an easy bias to find. I’d be ecstatic if there was an issue out there like this because I could improve the projections with an afternoon’s worth of work.
What it comes down to is that the errors are distributed exactly as you’d expect from random error; errors aren’t predictive in this manner. If someone out there has specific criteria a projection syst

Kate

12:25

How much (if any) has ZiPS moved on Bryan Reynolds since the season started? I never really saw anything interesting there, but with the power ticking up, I'm wondering if he can be like Conforto-lite or something?

Dan Szymborski

12:26

ZiPS has ticked up 27 points of wRC+!

There's a lot of reason to like him right now

And any contender that needs an OF should be annoying the hell out of the Pirates

Jim Leyland Palmer

12:26

I know your specialty is eastern medicine, but should Zac Gallen's arm be considered a ticking time bomb? Is there a history of people rehabbing UCL injures like that and being completely out of the woods?

Dan Szymborski

12:26

Wait, what?

12:27

I have zero medical speciality

I took physics as my college science. My last biology class was in ninth grade. I'm aware that drinking poison is bad and I have a sorta basic understanding of where babies come from and that's about it

12:28

I consider every pitcher a ticking time bomb on all hours of the day, days of the week, and week of the year.

Ryan Weathers

12:28

Assuming that I'm a trade chip, and why else would I be in AAA if I wasn't, am I a big enough headliner for the Padres to land a real differencemaker at the deadline?

Dan Szymborski

12:28

I think the Padres would, but I suspect they're hanging onto him.

Kate

12:28

Is Josh Bell someone's everyday 1B going into 2022? Or is he moving into platoon bat territory?

Dan Szymborski

12:29

Honestly, I think he's getting near NRI-or-a-trip-to-NPB territory

12:29

What ought to be done with Anthony Rendon? Is he hopeless for the reason of the season...?

Dan Szymborski

12:29

I think the Angels have to ride him if he's healthy because I don't think there's a path to the playoffs without that happening successfully

Kyle

12:32

The Phillies seem to be in the exact same situation as they were last year, Girardi has been horrible and they have no depth. Think theres any saving them or is Harper going to waste his prime on the outside looking into the playoffs?

Dan Szymborski

12:32

As I said, I was disappointed in their offseason

Because really, Realmuto only *maintained* the Phillies roster since they had him last year too

Kate

12:33

Patrick Sandoval: bad fastball, awesome secondary pitches, questionable command. What are the best examples of this profile you can think of working on the MLB level?

Dan Szymborski

12:33

I dunno, Tom Gordon?

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