whenever I have Cubs questions, I always turn to Sarah Sanchez.

She's going to help us decide who the Cubs close or is.

It's nobody.

But how Sayas Suzuki is going to do this year, how Dansby Swanson is going to do all that and more on the Roto

Wire Fantasy Baseball podcast, brought to you by the good folks at FanTracks and Underdog. We'll hear more from their offerings coming up in a mere minute. But right now,

I want to introduce my guest. She is the great Sarah Sanchez. I have her every year on this

podcast. I think this is the third year running now, Sarah. Welcome. How are you? I'm doing well.

Thank you so much for having me back. And I always love chatting with y'all over here at

Roto Wire. On the eve of baseball.

We are like mere days away from the first spring training games. So super stoked to talk Cubs baseball today with you. I am too. And you know what? I'm looking forward to Major League Baseball telling us what to refocus on next. We just found out today it's the sticky stuff. Last week it was the Bok rule. next week I'm sure it's going to be like wind chimes or something like that but

Jeff I just wrote about this box situation. And I don't know what you think, but it is driving me crazy that the powers that be at MLB think the way to infuse energy into this game and to inspire Gen Z to watch it is to increase the number of box. Like Dusty Baker doesn't know what a box is. You think you're going to get a 22-year-old kid excited about this? Yeah, let's have reviews on that too while we're at it there. And lengthy, you know, sticky stuff, investigations, things of that nature. It's changed the ball three times. And, you know, to try to disprove Meredith Wills just because she's had them nailed over the years. I mean, it's crazy. Yeah, that's exactly a way to bring in new fans into the game. A lot more action there. Yeah, right. I mean, Meredith Wills has been doing awesome work with the baseball. And it is unfortunate that she can't even get her hands on enough baseballs to get a good sample of them because MLB does not want her studying the ball, right? Like that was one of the takeaways from that business insider piece that came out about maybe a month or a month and a half ago now. For me is that they have to go through all this cloak and dagger just to get baseballs to study because MLB wants us to believe there's nothing going on there. And every time she studies them, she finds something else going on with the literal baseball. It's like Casablanca. You know, or it's, you know, I'm shocked, shocked that they're messing with the baseball. But, you know, hey, they do everything else like that. So anyhow, let's talk cubs. But first, let's talk about where we can find your work.

Yeah. So my writing is at bleedcubbyblue.com, which is the SB Nation Chicago Cubs site. I also

was the podcast host there at the Cup of Cubby Blue podcast. If you follow any of the SB

Nation team sites, you know that most of those podcasts got asked. But we are in the

process of forming an independent network for a handful of us. So if you like the MLB content

and other sport content that you were getting on SB Nation, it is still going to exist. Give us a

couple of weeks while we work on that announcement. But I'm happy to say that the Cubs podcast,

Cup a Cuppie Blue that I host, will continue on that announcement, but I'm happy to say that the Cubs podcast, Cup a Cubby Blue that I host will

continue on that new independent network. And I'm going to get my first fantasy baseball show. So

stay tuned for that because I'll be announcing that as well. And you're in Tout Wars. You'll be in

the 12 team mixed league draft. I'm broadcasting that on Tuesday. It's going to be live on

Sirius XM Fantasy. So looking forward to that. So, hey, we'll talk about that a little bit later in the show. Let's jump right into it, though. The Cubs actually had some reason for optimism this offseason. They spent some money. They went out and got Danesbysonson. I mean, last year they got Sayas Suzuki, but they also spun off guys at the same time.

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