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B_Don and Donkey Teeth are back at it: grinding the sausage, stuffing the sausage, and inserting the sausage into various holes. This week they take a close look at two young arms off to very promising starts to the 2019 season: Yonny Chirinos and Spencer Turnbull.

The guys also discuss German Marquez’s first rocky 2019 outing in Coors, Max Fried’s emergence into relevance, and Baseball Savant’s fantastic new film review features. The show is rounded out with some rapid fire pickup options. Don’t miss out on this once in a lifetime opportunity to insert the sausage into your ear holes!

If there is anybody that you’d like for the guys to profile, throw it in the comments section or Tweet @DitkaSausagePod or @DonkeyTeeth87. Donkey Teeth and B_Don are also giving away a Rotowear Ditka, Sausage, and Fantasy Sports shirt for rate and reviews on podcast subscriptions. Tweet them a photo of your review to be entered for this sweet shirt!

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Thank goodness that first week of 2 start pitchers is over and done. Early season rain outs, 5th starters being skipped, 6th starters and openers being utilized, all played into the scheduling. It is important to remember early in the season that these 2 start guys may or may not make both starts due to any of these factors. However, the advantage of getting the extra start for the innings, strikeouts, and hopefully ratios, is generally to much to ignore. Plus, if they fail to be 2 start guys this week then you get them as 2 start guys the following week more than likely.

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B_Don and Donkey are back to profiling dudes who play with balls. This week they look at two young bucks as Donkey digs in on Blue Jay’s unknown rookie Trent Thornton and B_Don puts Matt Strahm’s shaky debut under the microscope. Is Trent Thornton the real deal? Will Matt Strahm rebound? How many times can Donkey Teeth say “spin rate in a 20 second clip? Tune in and find out!
The Ditka Degenerates also talk about some week one pickups including Kolten Wong, Sandy Alcantara, Freddy Peralta, Jon Duplantier, and many more. The show is rounded out by a quick discussion on strategic differences in OPS leagues versus standard 5×5 leagues. The regular season sausage is super moist and extra steamy, taste it for yourself!

P.S. Rate and review the podcast on iTunes and be entered into a drawing to win one of these sweet puppies:
Just Tweet a screenshot of your review to @DitkaSausagePod or @DonkeyTeeth87.

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After being left off of the last podcast, B_Don returns for this post Opening Day podcast with Ditka of Razzball, Grey Albright. We let Donkey Teeth jump in occasionally to make dick jokes, ask some questions, and provide commentary.

Yes, we say we are going to wrap up and talk for 20 more minutes.Start with some nonsense, finish with some division and World Series prediction, but in the middle there’s some solid information about opening day and some players that ended up on our teams or that we are looking at on the wire.

We never know if the show is actually recording or if anyone is listening, but it’s always fun talking shop with the boss. We get to some mutual love on German Marquez ($13, really?), Adalberto Mondesi, and Fernando Tatis Jr. We discuss some Opening Day surprises and busts with the likes of Chris Sale, Zack Greinke, Eric Lauer, Luis Castillo, Enrique Hernandez, and more.

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This is the worst week to try and figure out two-start pitchers. Nobody has rotations set with 5th starters being skipped in some places and swapped in other situations. Outside of that part of it, this may be the least affected article by overreaction to a few days. This is a streaming article at its heart anyway. You aren’t picking up Justin Verlander if you don’t already own him, so, let’s get to some early season streaming. As with wins in real baseball, or H2H leagues, every win counts and every stat counts towards that roto total.

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DT and B_Don are dipping back into the the sausage rankings this week on the world’s #1 fantasy sausage pod, this time discussing their overall rankings. Find out which players they each have ranked outrageously high or unacceptably low, and how you might want to utilized overall rankings in general.

The guys also talk about what actually matters when looking at spring training performance along with which players are rising or falling this spring. Some of the names thrown around include Alex Reyes, Ryan McMahon, Zack Wheeler and Nick Senzel. The show builds to a climax discussion of auction strategy and execution. Speaking of climax, insert the sausage in your ear-hole while it’s still fresh!

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As a Cubs fan in Braves country, I see a lot of similarities in the Braves to the 2015 Chicago Cubs team. They offensive pieces are falling in place as they have a couple MVP candidates. One being a veteran 1B in Freddie Freeman and the other is an exciting young player that is the future of the franchise, but the rotation may not be there yet. They have plenty of nice prospect arms coming from the minors, however, I’m not sure they are ready to carry the team yet. Atlanta does have the pieces in the farm system to make some trades if they need to as well.

The NL East is likely the most competitive division in baseball. It is the only division projected with 4 teams over 80 wins per the THOME projection system. Currently, the Braves are the front runner per THOME, the Nationals and Phillies are tied per PECOTA, and Vegas odds favor the Phillies. Regardless, it’s going to be a fun season for Braves fans and they have a lot to look forward to, not only in this season, but for the future.

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This time last year, the baseball world was predicting the downfall of Chase Field as a hitter’s haven to the tune of a 25%-50% drop in offensive production with an uptick in pitching expected to benefit from the new humidor. After a season of the new Chase Field, I wanted to review the data and see where the drop off landed.

If you’ve been following me, you know that I was a bit skeptical that we would be looking at that kind of change in production. From my Chase Field article last year, “Home runs across the league were down, away teams actually hit more home runs in Coors in 2002 than 2001, and the culture in baseball was starting to turn away from the steroid era.” Basically, Coors was used as the case study for what would happen in Arizona, but there were a number of factors that came into play outside of the raw numbers.

I’m not going to rehash that article, but will examine the numbers to see where Chase Field landed on the scale of hitter friendly to pitcher friendly parks. If we start with the basics, we can look at how Chase Field finished in park factors for 2018. I typically utilize FanGraphs for their park factors, but they have not updated for 2018 yet, so, I looked at ESPN. As you can see below, home runs were down in 2018 compared to 2016 and 2017, but not compared to 2015. However, runs and hits were both 4 year lows in 2018 with the humidor.

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The master of bots himself, Rudy Gamble, joins B_Don and Donkey Teeth on this episode of the Ditka Pod. Discover what forms of sorcery Rudy finds most useful in his utter domination of Tout Wars each year. Speaking of sorcery, you can subscribe to all of Rudy’s tools and dominate your fantasy leagues right here.

Mr. Gamble also pontificates on fantasy strategy for the coming season. These strategic conversations touch on the art of stashing relief pitchers, modern day SAGNOF as it relates to both saves & steals, drafting a fantasy ace, RCL approaches, and much more. Rudy then shares a few of his favorite targets have been this draft season before the crew discusses the results of his LABR and Tout drafts. Bring your own sausage to this special guest episode of the world’s foremost fantasy sausage fest.

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Drafting outfielders for the 2019 fantasy baseball season is a hot topic. There’s tons of outfielders, but the top couple tiers dry up quickly. On this show, B_Don and Donkey Teeth discuss several outfielders you might consider targeting once all the top OFs are off the board.

The first of those potential targets is Byron Buxton. The juicy fantasy sausage upside that oozes from every single one of Byron Buxton’s pores is both sweet and savory. Studies have also shown this ooze can cure cancer and other terminal diseases. Buxton is off to phenomenal start this spring, boasting added muscle and claims of, “The best shape of his life”. Which is always true.

The guys also discuss expectations for rising star Michael Conforto and relative unknown rookie, Christin Stewart. Then some late round outfield targets are thrown around to finish up the show. Opening day is coming, make sure you get your fill of sausage, sausage juices, and the Ditka, Sausage, and Fantasy Sports shirt before time runs out!

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Auction drafting reminds me of playing poker. Having a plan of attack, choosing the right hand to play, and then subsequently winning the hand while finding out that you could’ve made a lot more money if you had played it correctly. If you’re patient enough, play the rights hands and stick to the calculations, it’ll work out to your benefit more often than not, but are you that patient?

Can you let a player go under value because he’s not part of your plan? Can you avoid getting sucked into the auction and over paying for your guy? Can you avoid killing your budget faster than a college kid on spring break?

Hindsight is 20/20 and that is rarely more apparent than over the course of an auction. I don’t believe I’ve ever left an auction without regret. However, even if you don’t stick to your plan, there are ways to maneuver the auction to make your team build complete.

My plan coming into the auction was similar to my draft strategy for most of my leagues. I wanted to concentrate my bat spending on top of the order, high average, speed guys. Accomplished this with my combination of Ronald Acuna Jr. and Trea Turner. I balanced that speed with power in Edwin Encarnacion, Miguel Andujar, Justin Upton, and Max Muncy.

For my pitching, I took a more aggressive stance than normal and only wanted one ace and two established closers. I got Max Scherzer and then grabbed Edwin Diaz, Sean Doolittle, and Pedro Strop late.

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