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Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat - 8/14/25

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Well-Beered Englishman

12:16

What's your hottest or weirdest Mahler take? I love the Seventh but don't get the Fifth, which I'm told is reverse of normal. (But 7's finale is like Mahler Looney Tunes!)

Dan Szymborski

12:16

I think Mahler 2 needs an editor. I've always found it overbloated, and think you could shave off at least a third of it without fundamentally changing the work

Alby

12:17

In a general sense, how much of a gap does ZIPS see between AA and AAA?

Dan Szymborski

12:17

On a pure wRC fashion, about 18-20%

21127

12:17

Were you surprised to see an additional 11 projected innings from Greene bump the Reds' playoff odds by 7 percentage points? It seems high to me even for an ace on a playoff bubble team.

Dan Szymborski

12:18

It did, which is one of the reasons I wrote about it! Cincy is in high-leverage city, and pitchers are naturally volatile

Guest

12:18

Kyle Tucker has been trbl for going on six weeks now. Has that meaningfully affected his expected payout this offseason, or does ZiPS still see him get something in the neighborhood of 10/$380m? What are the chances he winds up with a Bregman-esque high-AAV/low-years-with-opt-outs deal?

Dan Szymborski

12:18

ZiPS was always kind the low one on him, so it hasn't really changed much

I think he'll do better than Bregman though

Sox

12:18

Roman Anthony looking terrific lately (plate discipline, hard contact) - Is a MVP in the range of outcomes?

Dan Szymborski

12:19

It's certainly possible. There are some 2026 percentile in the piece I wrote last week!

Kwanbelievable

12:19

I have been unable to make this chat for several weeks, but I am extremely bummed I missed the bit on port-dan-teaus with my name

Dan Szymborski

12:20

It's been a few weeks since we had one! Was swamped with deadline work two weeks ago and had a piece to finish that had to get done last week

Guest

12:20

Cubs fans are going nuts stanning for Caissie, but I have a hard time believing he’ll be more than “Gallo without the glove.” I known you’re high on him. Can you give me reason to believe he won’t just run out a 40% K rate and play his way into the Pioneer League?

Dan Szymborski

12:20

OK, he's not the prospect that Kris Bryant was, of course, but I have something I call the Kris Bryant rule.

12:21

"Strikeouts for a guy who is crushing the ball in the minors aren't that concerning"

12:22

He's not going to be a contact htiter, but when you have a guy with a 140 wRC+ at a level and slugging near .600, they're *incentivized* to be aggressive at the plate. I literally had this same argument in these chats a decade ago with Kris Bryant.

and AGAIN, Bryant was a better prospect

12:23

He doesn't have a terrible track record for swinging at bad pitches

But he can destroy those not-so-good pitches thrown by a minor league pitcher, so he's GOING to go and destroy thoe

For a guy killing the ball, I'm far more concerned with passivity

If I have the Kris Bryant rule, I also have the Ben Grieve trap.

Alby

12:23

A 27-out inning? You'd lose an audience, too.

Dan Szymborski

12:24

Piss off some advertisers too

"And that ends the top of the game. Come back after 90 minutes of commercials for the bottom of this game."

PinstripedProblems

12:24

How much has Judge's hurt the rest of the year projections. Is he still an MVP lock? Over under on 8.5 WAR

Dan Szymborski

12:24

Not too much. I wouldn't say lock because Raleigh, but he's the favorite

12:25

over 8.5

Look At This Sotograph

12:25

What's the biggest ZiPS miss of all time? I.e. biggest difference between projection and real-life stats, in a negative way

Dan Szymborski

12:25

I don't actually know offhand (more so with teams)

but as blunders go, Lastings Milledge was a particularly bad one!

Hoplarsko

12:26

Did you see the rumors about Andrew Friedman leaving the Dodgers to take an executive role with the Lakers?

Dan Szymborski

12:26

I've seen some of the rumors, but I don't really have anything to add of value. I don't know Friedman personally, and if I did, I'd probably have learned anything about this being a possibility -- if one existed -- off the record

my specialty is ruining the joy of baseball with math homework

Matt

12:27

How good is Colson Montgomery actually?

Dan Szymborski

12:27

TBD

Roman Empire

12:27

Who would be your Roman Anthony's comp?

Dan Szymborski

12:28