JotCast | Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat

Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat - 6/29/23

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Dan Szymborski

12:01

Let's slowly get this party started!

Very slowly - I was late to set up the chat

because I was over at mom's because she incompetently broke her outside faucet and I had to go over there and fix it

12:02

and it was *really* incompetent. She literally turned one of the handles until it fell off and then basically took the whole thing apart

Guest

12:02

If you could build a pitcher in a lab what's their handedness, arm slot, and 3 pitch mix (spinrates or break measurement optional)? Fastball sits 93-95.

Dan Szymborski

12:03

Is this for aesthetics or optimization?

I'm going for aesthetics because it's more fun

12:04

sidearmer (not quite submariner) with a fastball, a sweeper, and figuring out how to get a knuckle-curve to work sidearm

German

12:04

Was it you who, years ago, wrote the "Domingo German appears to be very talented" article?

Dan Szymborski

12:04

I don't recall having written that

12:05

Found it

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/domingo-german-seems-incredibly-talented/

Written a day after we came to an agreement on me joining FanGraphs

(though I didn't write the piece

I almost drowned myself with a life jacket. *And* it was my 40th birthday. Interesting times

James

12:05

Jose Abreu has a .822 OPS for June. Odds that he can maintain this and at least be league average from here?

Dan Szymborski

12:06

I'm not sure about league average, but it was encouraging to see signs of life from him

Because he was headed towards being out of the league at the rate he was going

12:07

And his hard-hit rate was up where it's supposed to be

Travis

12:07

Still think Acuna doesn’t reach a combined 100 HR/SB?

Dan Szymborski

12:07

It's going to be close, but I'm still on the no side

12:08

He's ahead of the pace now, but he's also playing at probably the peak of his form

Guest

12:08

When you have a rookie season like J-Rod '22 or Carroll '23, is it fair to say the trajectory is already about sustaining instead of improving?

Dan Szymborski

12:09

Pretty much

people make this error in which they see a young guy who is a superstar at 21 and then extrapolate a normal growth curve from there

Which is a mistake - the better you are as a young player, the less likely you are to improve. Now some improvement is possible of course, but some of the young play is *time shifted*

12:10

Trout's two best seasons were 20 and 21 remember

Whappen?

12:11

Winker, Tellez and Adames are underperforming their OPS+ projections by like 30-60 percent. Wha happen?

Dan Szymborski

12:13

(Can't really do percentage this way since OPS+ is a weird stat - differences shrink as the scale moves from 100)

Well, they're underperforming. The reasons are going to be have to be dug into for each of them individually

It's not super unusual to be underperforming or overperforming. Error bars for a season are massive

and then this is a half season

12:14

Like for a season, Adames' ZiPS had him with an 8% chance of an 80 or worse

But over just half a season, that's 14%

12:15

Adames has more of a valid BABIP objection than the other two

Blair

12:16

Not sure if my question went through... If you could build a pitcher in a lab what's their ideal handedness, arm slot and 3 pitch mix? Fastball capped at 96 sitting 93-95. You can also provide pitch shapes or spin rates. And a name

Dan Szymborski

12:16

Wait, I can name pitches?

So I can have a 89 MPH screwball?

12:17

I'll definitely have one of those!

let's make the REVERSO SWEEPER a thing even better than a two seamer

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