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Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat - 8/27/26

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Dan Szymborski

12:18

Jeremy Fox

12:18

I would be interested in an article that compared how much ZiPS projections degrade if you drop various bits of the model one at a time, to how how important those bits of information are. Like, how bad are the projections if ZiPS doesn't know about aging curves? How bad are the projections if it doesn't know about injury history? How bad are the projections if it doesn't know about performance more than one year ago?

Dan Szymborski

12:19

It might be interesting, though it's hard to find a good "in" to write about it. I tend to usually like to write things connected to stuff that's going on. I don't like writing pure technical pieces, mostly because they kinda bore me

limron

12:19

Are we really going to let 1930s baseball Sal Stewart take away hardware from a 5 WAR 2B?

Dan Szymborski

12:20

I mean, you gotta value a great mustache

I'm 25 years older than him and I can't grow half as good a mustache

12:21

(like the hair on my head, my facial hair is too fine to ever have much heft)

12:22

I would give the nod to wetherholt, though it's probably a little closer than WAR

thing is, stewart's not having some crazy offensive season. He's got a 116-107 lead over Wetherholt in wRC+

12:23

And it's fair to say that defensive measure is volatile, so you may not actually consider a short-term +20 D to be accurate enough to give "credit" for all that when voting for an award. But at +5, he still has more WAR than Stewart

12:24

And unlike defense, we *can* measure offense quite well and quite quickly. Basically, Wetherholt is having a better season if you care at *all* that he appears to be a solid defensive 2B

I'm not an NL ROY voter this year though, I'm an NL Reliever voter this year

(For those for forgot, we're debuting a new award this year for relievers)

12:25

Five-man ballot, just like Cy and the updated ROY ballots

Jeremy Fox

12:25

How much do you think ZiPS projections would improve (especially in season, on time scales of days to a couple of months) if all players had to send you daily updates on whether they were a little banged up?

Dan Szymborski

12:25

Might help a little bit in the short term

but the practicality of turning that into data is a nightmare for me!

evanm

12:26

Dan, what should the Guardians do with Ralphy Velazquez? you want to keep him off the 40 man due to the lockout but he could be a huge addition for the playoff/division push

Dan Szymborski

12:26

I think they shoudl focus on 2026 and get him on the roster

oaktownblues

12:26

It looks like the park factor was updated for Sutter Health Park a few days ago and its now considered even more hitter friendly - can you confirm? A's hitters all lost 5-6 points of wRC+ overnight. (Also that feels like kind of a big change; is it normal for a park factor adjustment to have that big of an effect?)

Dan Szymborski

12:26

Honeslty, I don't know the background story of this, but I can find out for next chat!

12:27

Guys, you have to remember, while I'm a very longtime analyst, I'm not a coder or a programmer, and I don't really do anything on updating the website, so I frequently don't always know specifics of something going on unless we've talked about it on Slack

12:28

My job is to write, tinker with projections and models, and provide assistance to any FanGraphiérs who either need ZiPS help or something with a model

scottsjunk1981

12:28

Do you get statcast defensive stats for AAA? How about lower levels? And, if you don't, do you know if teams are? (I'm assuming that if you're able to license it, it means the teams have it too.)

Dan Szymborski

12:29

I don't honestly know the status of those. I do have quite a bit of data however, some not easily obtained by the public, that goes into my probabilistic measure that ZiPS uses for minor league defense (and can go down to rookie level)

If we ever get public FRV up and down the minors, that will be better than my model

Philip Christy

12:30

If Schwarber makes it to 500 home runs, will he become the worst player enshrined in the Hall?

Dan Szymborski

12:30

Did they throw out Tommy McCarthy?

Tommy McCarthy is basically like having David DeJesus in the Hall

12:31

Even with a reduced DH penalty, which we'll do at some point, Schwarber would probably be among the lowest

But that doesn't mean I don't freaking love Schwarber

leoneforthird

12:32

Thoughts on Kade Andersons first outing and what do the Mariners do with their rotation through the end of the year? Also thank you for chatting today appreciate it.

Dan Szymborski

12:32

Not an ideal start, but you gotta trust your talent

12:33

As for the M's, there's no way I can be more insightful in 45 seconds than Ryan Blake's piece this week! https://blogs.fangraphs.com/mariners-hope-kade-anderson-can-save-their...

opifijikl

12:33

Regarding ZiPS comps changing, here's Gunnar's
2026 Hanley Ramirez Joe Cronin Jim Fregosi
2025 Hanley Ramirez Alex Rodriguez Joe Cronin
2024 Grady Hatton Yoán Moncada Bill Madlock
2023 Tommy Harper Gavin Lux Bobby Grich
2022 Giomar Guevara

Jeremy Fox

12:33

Are pitchers with very unusual mechanics or pitch mixes harder to forecast? I'm thinking of submariners and knuckleballers.

Dan Szymborski

12:33

It's knuckleballers that seem to be the problem

ImKeithHernandez

12:33

Carson Benge has been worth about a win more than Sal Stewart, but it seems like Stewart is still seen as the more serious ROY runner-up. Is that just because of when their hot streaks happened or traditional stats? Both?

Dan Szymborski

12:34

Both

plus RBI

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