JotCast | Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat - 9/25/25

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Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat - 9/25/25

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Dan Szymborski

12:01

"Give me an introduction message for a Dan Szymborski FanGraphs chat that sounds like it's from a deranged person with limited connection with reality and an obsession with history who also really really like FanGraphs"

12:02

"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your WAR calculations! I rise today in this digital amphitheater not as Caesar, not as Napoleon, but as a humble pilgrim trudging across the blood-soaked battlefields of history in pursuit of a single shining truth: FanGraphs is the Rosetta Stone of civilization. When Rome collapsed, did the barbarians have wOBA? No. When Napoleon marched on Moscow, did he consult ZiPS projections? He did not — and look what happened! Yet here we stand in the Year of Our Lord 2025, blessed to witness the holy gospel of OBP+, xFIP, and Dan Szymborski’s inscrutable oracles. I have not slept in three nights, my parakeet now knows what BABIP is, and I carved the FanGraphs logo into the oak desk of my landlord while screaming about FIP- minus. Brothers, sisters, eternal strugglers against the darkness of ignorance, we gather not to talk of weather or bread, but of spin rates and aging curves, of regression to the mean and the cruel march of time itself! History collapses into the present momen

tongue

2

Guest

12:02

I've always assumed that hitters with large platoon splits would age more poorly than those with more balanced splits, but recently realized that my evidence was entirely anecdotal. Is there significant statistical evidence that supports this? Thanks.

Dan Szymborski

12:03

I have not found this. It's possible simply that they're more exploitable, that the general declines makes them more obviously platoonable than a similarly talented player with small splits

Like the 350/500 guy an ages to be a 330/450 guy and still hits 310/430 and 340/460

12:04

But maybe the PLATOONY 350/500 guys is suddenly now a 280/350 and 390/550 guy where he once awas a 300/400 and 420/600 guy

Guest

12:04

How long does it take for a guy to shed the "injury risk" label, either according to you or ZiPS? Carlos Rodon has been completely healthy 3 of the last 4 seasons, yet I feel like every time you write about him you mention his injury history/how ZiPS is really worried about him getting injured

Dan Szymborski

12:05

I've actually found they never ENTIRELY shed it, even if it fades away. Generally speaking, offensive players tend to regress toward mostly healthy and pitchers tend to regress toward mostly healthy-ish

Jeremy

12:05

Question inspired by Ben's recent piece on predicting second-half record from first-half record or first-half run differential: how do you feel about the fact that it's hard to beat a really simple forecasting model like the ones Ben looked at, and apparently impossible to beat those simple models by all that much? Does it frustrate you? Or does it give you a sense of self-satisfaction, like when you finally defeat a really tough final boss in a video game? Or what?

Dan Szymborski

12:06

Predicting the future is hard. Also, I spend comparable little time worry about those middle projections; it's calibrating the highs and lows that's the most interesting!

But predicting the future is always hard, and always will be. Life, and baseball, are uncertain

Guest

12:06

Judge's 3-run homer last night was his second of the year and ended a streak of 44 straight homers he had hit with either one man on or no one on. Is this some sort of record?

Dan Szymborski

12:06

Honestly, I have no idea!

Dave Shutton

12:07

Who are you? Where are you going?

Dan Szymborski

12:07

DO YOUR HOMEWORK SHUTTON

Billy

12:07

For what position have aging curves traditionally been the steepest? 1B and 2B? And has that begun to change at all in recent decades?

Dan Szymborski

12:07

C tends to be the weirdest, 2B/SS the most

I haven't found any huge recent changes

Adam

12:07

Should the Dodgers just piggyback starters for the whole playoffs?

Dan Szymborski

12:07

I'm not sure; with the Dodgers, I have no idea what their healthy staff will amount to a week from now!

12:08

Which makes it frustrating

Mr.Incredible

12:08

Will the tiger break my fucking heart Daniel?

Dan Szymborski

12:08

They mended it last year, so it's only fair they break it now!

Lars

12:08

What are the most likely reasons a player vastly outperforms expectations? For example, retrospectively, do you think there’s anything you could have done to better predict Cal Raleigh’s year?

Dan Szymborski

12:08

BABIP is usually a big clue, even for hitters

then it's generally simply having an unexplainable good season that doesn't stick

then an explainable one that does

12:09

I don't think so. Here's the thing with projections: you don't actually even know if you were right AFTER the season.

12:10

Like, say Raleigh ends with 60. Should that have *actually* been the median projection? Should we have said coming into the season that he was as likely to hit 73 homers as, say, when considering skewness, 25 homers? Becasue that's what you're saying when you project someone to hit 60

Cal Raleigh

12:10

Is the explanation for Mariners WS odds dropping from 21% to 16.5% because they're inching closer to the 1 seed and therefor the tougher path?

Dan Szymborski

12:10

Some of it is that, some of it that there's been a little bug for a few days that was giving AL teams too much home field advantage in WS

Lars

12:11

People talk about teams that are “built for the playoffs” a lot. Has this been studied/proven?

Dan Szymborski

12:12

No. Other than being top heavy and to a smaller extent, be more home run-reliant than average, the Venn diagram of building a team for the playoffs and building a good team is a circle

Your humble host wrote about this!

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/yes-the-playoffs-are-still-a-crapshoot/

Billy

12:13

At what point in a player’s career does zips think minor league stats are no longer relevant? Or are they always relevant to some degree?

Dan Szymborski

12:13

THey stay relevant about as long as past MLB stats do

Once you get past four years of stats (and a bit fewer for very young and very old players), the older data quickly loses relevance

Adam

12:13

Will we ever see something like the '97 Marlins, in terms of signing a bunch of free agents to accelerate their timeline, winning a World Series, and immediately blowing it up? What's to stop a smaller market team from making a big splash with the intention of selling off soon thereafter if it doesn't work?

Dan Szymborski

12:14

I think the thing is, that small market teams aren't wild financial gamblers

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