Baseball Podcast: Every Rose Has Its Thornton

April 4, 2019 | Ditka, Razzball Podcast | 2 Comments

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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OBP Leagues: Pre-Draft Percentages and Strategy

March 27, 2015 | OPS Leagues | 11 Comments

by: Blues

It is about that time…you’re checking Grey’s daily updates, dreaming about your draft position, and in need of those last minute tips. As high-profile fantasy leagues like Tout Wars and broadcasts begin to infuse OBP an advanced way to look at player productivity, this is an effort to provide you with more data for your OBP drafts this year. First, a few notes to consider while reading…

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OPS Leagues: A Jose Ramirez Hunch

July 30, 2014 | OPS Leagues | 2 Comments

by: Dano

Which Jose Ramirez am I discussing, you ask? No, not the other eight professional Jose Ramirez’s… but the Cleveland Indians stopgap between Asdrubal Cabrera and Francisco Lindor.

FranLind has been extremely impressive– he’s already got 2 successful Double-A go-rounds under his belt at 19 and 20 totaling 400+ at-bats (.280+ AVG and 30 SB). While the historical HR/Isolated-Slugging isn’t ideal, currently (and briefly) at Triple-A, he’s mashing to the point where it’s not even worth presenting his stats. And still he’s only 20.

So the Francisco Lindor contingency is out of the way. Next up: Asdrubal Cabrera. Supposedly the Blue Jays are showing interest in acquiring Asdrubal and he makes sense for their 2b-slot. While we’ve seen the best of him, his 80+% contact rate and 15/10 HR/SB at middle infield is an asset to many teams.

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OBP and OPS Leagues: Taking Advantage

July 26, 2014 | OPS Leagues | 31 Comments

by: Dano

I don’t know about you, but even I get hung up on the individual site rankings for my leagues’ player pages, even though they have little to do with the categories that we use. For example, in my CBS dynasty league, we use Runs Produced (RBI+R-HR), net Stolen Bases (SB-CS), Slugging, On-base Percentage, and Plate Appearances [Jay’s Note: We use OBP, TB, W+QS, 2*Sv+H in a couple of my dynasty’s], yet I am still at times impulsive to pick-up whomever sits at top of the sites’ rankings, which is based off standard 5×5 formats. Well, you’re welcome– This post is to help you distinguish the value differential for OBP and OPS leagues relative to the ESPN player rater rankings. It should give you targets to trade for or trade away.

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OPS Leagues: OPS Decliners and Improvers

July 19, 2014 | OPS Leagues | 19 Comments

by: Dano

As I mentioned in my first/intro OPS post, we’re looking at OPS differential by using expected (x)Homerun and expected (x)BABIP differentials. If you like Captain Planet or laser beams, or want to understand my general approach, then I recommend a gander. If you provide your email below, I can furnish the full list that you can sort. Wordpress doesn’t allow me to copy and paste it all pretty for you.

Let’s start with my xHR formula (PA*Ct%*OFFB%*HR/OFFB%). Here are the top 10 guys likely to drop off from a HR perspective: Albert Pujols, Adam Jones, Justin Morneau, Alexei Ramirez, Mark Reynolds, Charlie Blackmon, Ian Desmond, Brett Lawrie, Hunter Pence and Salvador Perez.

Here are the top 35 guys likely to drop off from a BABIP perspective that you actually might own (meaning I’m excluding the Martin Maldonados of the world): Josh Rutledge, Justin Ruggiano, A.J. Pollock, Josh Hamilton, Stephen Vogt, J.D. Martinez, J.J. Hardy, Eugenio Suarez, Hunter Pence and Matt Adams.

Looking at both xHR and xBABIP differentials, here are guys you might own that I would consider selling in OPS leagues based on their expected vs. actual OPS (the differential is in parenthesis just like this statement. See what I did here?):

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Summoning OPS and OBP Leagues

July 12, 2014 | OPS Leagues | 37 Comments

by: Dano

Jay(Wrong) sent presentation rights over to me with the departure/hiatus of Tom Jacks. Tom passed the torch to me by way of a Captain Planet quote: “The Power is Yourz.”

You all seemed to appreciate his content, and I hope to fill your passion-buckets with the same sense of quality. I will offer some value in my next post through OPS differential and possible pick-ups, but I wanted to take this time to summarize a few thoughts from Mr. Jacks’ last post, while sharing my general approach. Hopefully Jay(Wrong) strategically publishes this in a slot where you all aren’t salivating for immediate pick-ups! That’s right. In my very first OPS post, I wrote Jay, slot and salivate in one sentence. [Jay’s Note: Go easy on the ladies my friend.]

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2012 Point Shares V2 & Addition of NL-Only + OBP/OPS/SLG

March 12, 2012 | 2012 Fantasy Baseball Draft | 35 Comments

by: Rudy Gamble

Point Shares for 10/12/14/15/16-team MLB were updated on Sunday night (March 11th) to reflect the latest available playing time projections. There will be some movement in the rankings based on the playing time changes. I also took a deeper look into relievers possibly converting to starters (Sale, Crow, Bard, Aroldis) to make sure their projections […]

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Shuffling Values: The Shifting Landscapes in OPS Leagues

March 6, 2012 | 2012 Fantasy Baseball Draft | 30 Comments

by: Albert Lang

Traditional, smarishional, am I right? I mean, long gone are the days when your soon-to-be father-in-law would actually pay you (in sheep, no less) to take his wretched daughter off his hands. Similarly, Razzballers are becoming masters of their own domains and kicking the traditional 5×5 fantasy baseball game to the curb. According to this […]

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