JotCast | Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat

Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat - 8/8/24

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Dan Szymborski

12:29

The organization is actually slowly improving, but I have zero faith in ownership

12:30

If Bridich was still there, Brenton Doyle would be in Japan by now and Tovar blocked by Amed Rosario or someone

#1MetsFan

12:30

Baseball is fun game. Its a probabilities wonderland, where each pitch changes the stats for everybody on the field. That being said, tell me I'm wrong when I say the Mets will fall just out of the wild card spot. TELL ME!

Dan Szymborski

12:31

You're a Mets fan. The Mets could have a 15 game lead in the NL East in mid-september and your gut would say they'll probably just lose 16 games in the standings in the last two weeks!

Big Brain Boy.

12:31

Cubs 9 of their last 12. Do they sneak in to the Wild Card?

Dan Szymborski

12:31

It's certainly POSSIBLE

12:32

The NL Central didn't feature a ton of aggressive buying and the Cubs were always better than their record

Atheist Yelich

12:32

If you had the power to choose the playoff format in any possible way (number of teams, games in each series, etc.), what format would you choose that optimizes the quality of the postseason, trade deadline, incentive for teams to try, etc

Dan Szymborski

12:33

There are a lot of formats I'd prefer

12:34

But one thing I absolutely would do without the largest changes is require the lower-seeded team to sweep to win a three game series.

12:35

There's nothing inherently wrong with having large playoffs, so long as the difficulty of advancing in the playoffs reflects the season and is large enough to be meaningful

You could feasibly design an extended playoff system in which allowing *all* 30 teams in makes sense.

Not necessarily a *practical* one given time constraints though

12:36

I totally don't mind the White Sox getting a shot to topple the Phillies. But that shot would have to be something like a seven-game sweep.

#1MetsFan

12:36

And what's for lunch.

Dan Szymborski

12:36

It's not an eating day

Guest

12:36

You've been appointed new manager of the White Sox. How soon can you be in Chicago?

Dan Szymborski

12:37

I think I might go and commit the least serious crime that would take me out of consideration for the job

Big Brain Boy.

12:37

Thoughts on White Sox firing manager?

Dan Szymborski

12:37

deck chairs, Titanic

Guest

12:38

best pasta shape aesthetically?

Dan Szymborski

12:38

alphabet. I like eating crazy words

druidiful

12:39

I know its not you, but who should we tell that it looks like the leaderboard page isnt updated correctly? It is saying that Judge only has 38 homers and Witt has 19 when they both have more. The player pages are correct, unless you go into game logs that have the last game as 8/4/24.

Dan Szymborski

12:39

FanGraphs twitter is usually read pretty rigorously

Telling me isn't a bad idea though, I'm likely one of the easier people to get ahold of and I can bring it up on slack

When people on Reddit express FanGraphs issues, I frequently bring them up

Cards fan

12:40

What was it that your system saw about Masynn Winn last year when you had him as big mover ? It never seemed that he showed in MILB what he's showing in MLB but obviously zips saw it

Dan Szymborski

12:41

I don't know if there was anything *specifically* that it saw in him other than the fact that he repeated the year at a high level while still really young in 2023

as in repeated his 2022 performance

Even with ZiPS not going full neural network, it's complex enough that it can sometimes be difficult to always grok out the why

Dan's Mom

12:41

Is Zips capable of predicting MVP? If so, does it have Judge or Witt as AL MVP.

Dan Szymborski

12:42

I do have an MVP predictor, though I haven't used it. Maybe I shoudl for Monday!

Rob

12:43

I like you personally. They can go f themselves.

Dan Szymborski

12:43

I'm not really THAT likable

#1MetsFan

12:43

You cut so deep with your truth. Thanks Dan

Mike Trout

12:43

Can ZIPS estimate the odds of us every seeing a 150-game Mike Trout season again? And would you consider it reliable, or is the science of injury prediction not much more advanced than the science of dowsing for water?

Dan Szymborski

12:44

It doesn't do a bad job -- weirdly, from Jeff Z's work, ZiPS actually does a really good job at predicting playing time for guys we *know* are major leaguers

But I'm not sure it's THAT precise

and I don't really have it configured to give that readout easily

Adam

12:44

The White Sox had a chance to do the funniest thing and fire Grifol the day they finally won a game. So close.

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