JotCast | Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat

Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat - 7/20/23

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Dan Szymborski

12:29

But he was usually a pretty bland hitter for a guy with little or no defensive value outside of 2019

I tried to tell other O's fans that when they were all panicking about how the O's were DESTROYING their playoff chances by trading Mancini

Guest

12:29

I believe in Kyle Bradish 100%. I'm less sure about his talent as a major league pitcher.

Dan Szymborski

12:30

I'm not 100% sure any of us exist

James

12:30

Is Chas McCormick good?

Dan Szymborski

12:30

I think so

Withrow

12:30

Cardinals have gone from 4th among 30 teams in Defensive Efficiency Ratio in 2021 to 13th last year and 30th this year. How much does this matter? And how does something like that happen?

Dan Szymborski

12:30

Well, losing Bader certainly hurts there and adding Wwalker does too

The Other Dan

12:30

Hi Dan. You mentioned in the ZiPs second half piece that you were pleased the giants were playing well because ZiPs had them at 88ish wins. A big part of their success so far has been the rookies, especially Patrick Bailey, which not many people, and I'm assuming ZiPs, saw coming. Do you ever look at ZiPs being right about a team but for the wrong reasons?

Dan Szymborski

12:30

Oh, this happens all the time!

12:31

I think the problem is, when doing a look at it, is that it's *all* probability

12:32

The Giants succeeded in the projections for all sorts of reasons and they weren't always the same reasons.

Theo be Praised

12:32

Is the gap between the Majors and AAA pitching wider than it used to be? Seems like so many players RAKE in AAA, and struggle in the bigs.

Dan Szymborski

12:32

Arguably it's even smaller for pitchers because of the offensive changes

Triple-A offense these days is so high relative to even the bumped majors that in hitters' park, a player's translated ERA is basically his minor league ERA!

Random Nerd

12:32

Hi Dan, Im embarking on a project to quantify command with only statcast data from pybaseball. Do you have any insights on what you think is important to recognize when trying to understand command. With your background, I assume you have background with python and pybaseball! Thanks!

Dan Szymborski

12:32

I'm actually *not* a python guy

12:34

Back when I was in college I did C++ for the related credits

12:35

and we used stuff more like Statistica at the time

I know Visual Basic far better

That's not to say that people *shouldn't* learn python

Only that I had to learn to do stuff before Python 2.0

Doug

12:36

Are you surprised how quickly Tatis got back ton himself after his injuries? And now kor

Dan Szymborski

12:36

Retired WFT Fan

12:36

What data/metrics would you love to see on the hitting side of the equation?

Tiger Fan

12:36

How often do teams that really need to blow it up all the way for 2+ years (in ZiPs perspective at least) just try to gut it out? Flip the rentals, sign some short term guys, status quo kinda stuff. And how much does that usually hurt their short and long term projections?

Dan Szymborski

12:36

I want more bat speed data available!

12:37

I'm not sure I can define the answer to your question that easily Tiger Fan as I haven't specifically studied this

But generally speaking, I think teams, for obvious reasons, are sometimes far too slow to blow things up

As a general belief, I think teams should look at transactions and roster spots as always "does this help us win now?" and "does this help us win later?"

12:38

And if something or someone doesn't answer Yes to either question, then the team needs to figure out how to get that something or someone that does

Theo be Praised

12:38

Is it me, or are the A's now terrible at trading? The returns on Murphy, Olsen, etc, look terrible in hindsight.

Dan Szymborski

12:38

It's not looking great

Chas

12:41

Am I… a top 10 CFer?

Dan Szymborski

12:41

ZiPS at least has him getting *near* there on a per PA basis

like 11th-14th depending on who you call a CF

12:42

Since we ahve questions like "will buxton ever play the OF again"

RTJ

12:42

is the emphasis on framing (which is warranted, no doubt) resulting in catchers not catching pitches more often than in the past? Or am I making this up in my mind?

Dan Szymborski

12:42

I'm not sure what the connection is

The Batman

12:42

I don’t have a baseball question or even a question question, I just wanted to say the fishing pole/wand cat toys you recommended/linked to a while back are elite. Even my cat who never plays loves them a crazy amount!

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