Dan Szymborski's NL Central comments

[mikechamp]

These comments came from a chat with FanGraphs' writer Dan Szymborski that occurred on September 17. (If you like him, you can find him on Twitter @DSzymborski.)

It's been a while. Thankfully, we got more NL Central questions than last time. I also included 4 bonus Q&As: one about gambling and 3 about various stats. Enjoy!

The link to the entire chat can be found here: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/dan-szymbor ... t-9-17-26/
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What prospect has made the biggest ZIPs jump this season?

Dan Szymborski
Luis Lara, I believe.

If he had had a 2026 projection, Eric Hartman would be up there, too.
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What to make of the 2026 Bucs? Underperformed their base runs, they had a ton of hitter injuries and Skenes regression. For '27 they return just about everyone minus Lowe. Is there hope?

Dan Szymborski
I think there’s hope for the future, but they can’t do it entirely from within and cheap FAs.
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Pre-season ZIPS had Jordan Walker’s 80th percentile outcome as 256/321/415 with a 105 wRC+. Currently he’s at 278/336/482 with a 125 wRC+. Does ZIPS think the breakout is real? Is this season a building block for greater things? Or should we expect horrific regression back to his earlier seasons?

Dan Szymborski
To an extent, he’s real-ish. ZiPS is still seeing him as a 105-110 wRC+ guy now because there’s a lot of REALLY awful play in his history, as solid as he’s been this year.
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Dan, how does ZIPS see a player like Jake Bauer who at an older age has a full on break out season?

Dan Szymborski
I’m not sure there’s an easy answer to that. It weighs the new data more strongly than the older data, and it knows certain things are more predictive (fundamental changes in contact rate and stuff like that) than other things (BABIP).
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What does ZiPS thinks are the odds that PCA ends up the leader in both offensive and defensive runs created?

Dan Szymborski
Unfortunately, I don’t have ZiPS that specific.
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I was watching the recent Brewers-Reds series and I’ve never seen a middle infielder talk to baserunners (and the second base umpire if the bases were empty) as much as Elly de la Cruz. I mean at one point he walked over to first to chat with Cooper Pratt, then continued the conversation when Pratt reached second, then walked all the way over to third to keep it up when Pratt advanced. Crazy entertaining. He needs to be mic’ed up.

Dan Szymborski
If mic’ed up, he might be less talkative.

Get a lip reader!
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Elly de la Cruz is certainly on a real heater. Sad to say that the Reds will have to look at trading him for a haul in 2028. He was quoted as saying LA is my town. I love Elly, so explosive and fun. I hate the Dodgers though, but it makes too much sense.

Dan Szymborski
Yup, they’re going to trade him.
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Here’s a PCA question that ZiPS is built for: how much does this season change his projections going forward? Probably not a TON given the floor was high to begin with, but what a season!

Dan Szymborski
Oh, very much so!

I mean, ZiPS loved him plenty at the start of the year. He was sixth in five-year WAR among hitters coming into the season. Now he’s #1.
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Do you think Elly has a PCA-style leap to a 10-win season in him?

Dan Szymborski
I’m not sure he has the crazy defensive season that PCA needed. Because if you don’t have that, you have to hit like Aaron Judge.
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What are Elly’s updated career projections? Is it fair to say he’s on a hall of fame pace? Nearly 20 WAR through age 24.

Dan Szymborski
Right now, ZiPS has him in the 50-60 range.
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What would happen if the Miz magically learned great feel for a knuckleball that he threw with his standard arm speed?

Dan Szymborski
He’d easily be the most fun player in MLB the Show!
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Would it be feasible for MLB to either create their own sports book, or to tax the current ones to where a majority of the net profit the books make be spent towards youth leagues? If they’re going to allow gambling, they should at least redirect the funds to something moral to balance the scales. Instead of yelling at players for losing their parlay, they could say “hey, at least it’s for the kids!”

Dan Szymborski
Feasible? Yes, though it’s not that straightforward to “tax the current ones”.

They can’t really stop most of it. They can offer licensing arrangement to incentivize sports book partnerships and state regulators can throw a monkey wrench in the works for sports books.

Probably not really on MLB’s horizon as they have enough to worry about at the moment.
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Do contact rate and SwStr% measure different things? I know they literally do, but like, do you think they tell you meaningfully different things about a player?

Dan Szymborski
Not SO much. They’re correlated.
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How does ZiPS handle long lay-offs and unknown timelines. (It seems that pitchers not knowing when to ramp up and shortened “spring trainings” impact pitchers more than hitters. Mostly based on Covid and last CBA negotiations).

Dan Szymborski
Poorly! lol

ZiPS knows about layoffs and has a general idea about injuries, but there are a lot of unknowns. and honestly, that same question applies to non-projection based projections.

I’m not sure if the second sentence makes sense. But not everything needs to!
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Dan, sorry to be so dense, but how is xERA calculated? Seems like voodoo math to me, based on perceived defensive strengths? There are huge gaps for some pitchers between actual ERA and xERA.

Dan Szymborski
It’s basically just xwOBA, which is pitch-by-pitch exit velocity and launch angle and in grounders, sprint speed.
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