Kansas City Baseball Vault (2/18/15)- Talking About ZiPS with Dan Szymborski

This week, we welcomed ESPN writer and Fangraphs contributor Dan Szymborski to the show. Szymborski is the creator of the ZiPS projection system geared towards projected each player on each team during the winter. We talked to Dan about what ZiPS is trying to do and the nature of statistical evaluation and its pitfalls and successes, including long-term trends, different WAR calculations, and those who may dismiss such tomfoolery. We also talked about the prognosis for this year, and what may be in store for the Royals including his most likely choice to breakout and to bust. There was also some nonsense in the outtakes and a dynamite Lee Judge impersonation. You can (and should) follow Dan on Twitter at @DSyzmborski. (Editor's note: Some technical problems cut out about three minutes in the beginning, so let me summarize Dan's explanation of ZiPS: it's a computer program geared towards projecting the future with multiple factors in play and multiple simulations, trying to get as close as possible with information available.)