Dan Szymborski's NL Central comments

[mikechamp]

These comments came from a chat with FanGraphs' writer Dan Szymborski that occurred on August 20. (If you like him, you can find him on Twitter @DSzymborski.)

Fewer NL Central questions than last week. I included 1 bonus Q&A about a new stat. Enjoy!

The link to the entire chat can be found here: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/dan-szymbor ... t-8-20-26/
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Not going to lie I expected Baez 2.0 with PCA. Are there any examples of players that dramatically improved their plate discipline and increased their walk rates like PCA has?

Dan Szymborski
Morandini
Votto wasn’t born the plate discipline god either.
Jose Bautista too, but it could also be the rushed nature of being rule 5.
I would suspect Sosa too, but we don’t really have out-of-zone data for him. (Of course, we don’t for Morandini either.) It’s kinda weird that Morandini was the first name I thought of.
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Better to hold Singer and Manaea in an NL 5×5 or drop and get relievers to protect WRA/WHIP?

Dan Szymborski
In most situations I’d look at the relievers available, especially with Singer.
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I was at the Brewers game Tuesday night. Quite the evening. The 8th got out of hand though. If we can walk a batter without pitching to him can’t we just concede a game without playing the final innings? It almost wasn’t even fun (after awhile) watching them lob balls into home plate.

Dan Szymborski
I mean, teams can choose to forfeit if they want, though with forfeits, you run into an issue telling very highly trained athletes to just give up. But if not for that very big problem, plus the message it sends to fan, forfeits are kinda interesting.

Like if you’re down 12-0 in the fifth, it probably makes sense from a game theory standpoint, to forfeit. But to have forfeits be in baseball culture, you have to go back to 1885 and make it a normal part of the game. Like resignations in chess. But I’d be pissed about that as a player.

Hell, as a little leaguer, I'd complain loudly about the mercy rule, even on the losing side of it.
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Yhoiker Fajardo seems like a guy a model would think very highly of? Is my assumption correct for ZIPs? Very young for his level while posting great K%, BB%, ans SwStr% numbers and the First Strike % is trending upwards.

Dan Szymborski
I think he’ll do decently.
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In a forefeit isn’t it recorded as 5-0 or something? So if you’re down 10-0 in the eighth couldn’t you just tell your guys “we’re competing for run differential tiebreakers in the playoffs?”

Dan Szymborski
I thought 9-0.
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Is this new “First Base Receiving” data going to change how we look at anyone? It seems to me everyone is in a very narrow band so there’s not much separation.

Dan Szymborski
Interesting stuff (and I’ve seen raw-er data for several years now), but I don’t believe it’s going to be a real difference maker. I have it as pretty erratic year to year, more so than other defensive data. And the magnitude is small. Volatile data of small magnitude is usually going to be stuff in the margins.

Like ZiPS usually gives Alonso 2-3 runs for 1B scooping, but it’s not like that changes stuff.
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