Dan Szymborski's NL Central comments

[mikechamp]

These comments came from a chat with FanGraphs' writer Dan Szymborski that occurred on August 27. (If you like him, you can find him on Twitter @DSzymborski.)

More NL Central questions than last week. I also included 2 bonus Q&As: one about forecasting and one about muses. Enjoy!

The link to the entire chat can be found here: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/dan-szymbor ... t-8-27-26/
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Do you see any team claiming Suarez or Friedl?

Dan Szymborski
I can see someone wanting Friedl for a very specific role.

You’d have to be crazy or desperate to claim Suarez and pay like $2.5 million for him.
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Is there any hope for Noelvi Marte?

Dan Szymborski
Some, but I don't think a team can count on him.
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Are we really going to let 1930s baseball Sal Stewart take away hardware from a 5 WAR 2B?

Dan Szymborski
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. (Like the hair on my head, my facial hair is too fine to ever have much heft.)

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+. 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. 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.) Five-man ballot, just like Cy and the updated ROY ballots.
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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
Both, plus RBI.
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Stewart!!? How’s about Carson Benge and Nolan McLean? Could they steal some hardware from that dude in St. Louis?

Dan Szymborski
The thing about Benge is that if you appreciate Benge’s season, you probably are of a certain frame of mind that also has you appreciating Wetherholt. Like yeah, if you’re using WAR, you’ll prefer Benge to Stewart, but if you’re the person doing that, you’ll prefer Wetherholt to Benge too.

McLean is the most interesting thief.
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Regarding Tommy McCarthy, why does his HoF plaque say he stole 108 bases in 1888 but his FG stats say 93?

Dan Szymborski
Because, frankly, record-keeping of early baseball sucks. Even well into 20th century.

Hack Wilson’s plaque says 190 RBI, but we’re pretty sure it’s 191. And ty cobb 4189 hits.
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If you were given a seat behind home plate, but a few rows up at Great American Ballpark, but had to call balls and strikes, what % do you think you’d get correct? I bet I could get above 60%.

Dan Szymborski
That sounds about right. I have pretty good vision, but you don’t really have a perfect angle for that.
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Are pitchers with very unusual mechanics or pitch mixes harder to forecast? I’m thinking of submariners and knuckleballers.

Dan Szymborski
It’s knuckleballers that seem to be the problem.
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Who have been your biggest baseball resources or gave you the most food for thought or inspiration over the past few years? Teams? Writers?

Dan Szymborski
Honestly, the biggest food for thought I’ve gotten is questions people ASK me. Because the population of people not me is much larger than the population of me.
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