Best Podcast in Baseball

JUPITER, Fla. -- With three weeks of spring training remaining before opening day at Busch Stadium and three weeks to make decisions on the bullpen, three weeks to explore any last-minute trades, three weeks to stir the offense, and three weeks to make that first free-agent move of the offseason, the Best Podcast in Baseball considers camp with a pair of threes. Three up. Three down. Post-Dispatch...

Find more podcasts from the Post-Dispatch . Subscribe to the Post-Dispatch . JUPITER, Fla. -- Cardinals third baseman Nolan Arenado created buzz within the Yankees' social media greenhouse for driving to visit a couple of close friends and, oh, playing six or so innings in an exhibition baseball game. That is where the discussion begins in a brand new Best Podcast in Baseball featuring host and ba...

JUPITER, Fla. -- There is a sense around the Cardinals that one of the reasons for reducing expectations, seesawing between the words "reset" and "transition" but never once using the world "rebuild," is that the club is trying to create a valve to release some of the pressure that greats young players when they arrive in the greenhouse of October demands. It's as if the Cardinals front office is...

JUPITER, Fla. -- The 13th season of the Best Podcast in Baseball begins as it traditionally does with a gathering of the Post-Dispatch writers covering the Cardinals spring training and an answering of the 10 questions facing the club as it begins a new season. And what a new season. For the first time in the span of the podcast, the Cardinals have dropped the pretense of contending for a World Se...

On the eve of his first major-league spring training with the St. Louis Cardinals, top prospect JJ Wetherholt joins the Best Podcast in Baseball for a discussion about his preparation, his health, his strides as a pro, his goals at shortstop, and his of a new technology to learn more about reaction time. He also details the trouble with the water temp in Florida. Wetherholt is a "brand ambassador"...

The Hot Stove needs a spark, and the Best Podcast in Baseball has flint ready to strike steel. The forecast calls for a flurry of moves in Major League Baseball before next month's arrival of spring training, and big reason for that isn't market cooling. After the brief, jubilant sparks of signings around the annual winter meetings, the free-agent market has gone cold, and the Cardinals have had d...

Fresh off the ice after covering the St. Louis Blues for a few days, St. Louis Post-Dispatch sports columnist Jeff Gordon is greeted with this question to begin his weekly appearance on the Best Podcast in Baseball: Which was chillier -- the Blues game, the frigid temperatures in St. Louis, or the reception the Cardinals got at their annual Winter Warm-Up? While the Los Angeles Dodgers continued t...

Is it easier to get 400 baseball writers to all agree on who is a Hall of Famer or 30 Major League Baseball owners to agree on ways to address skyrocketing payroll disparity? That's the question that begins a brand new episode of the Best Podcast in Baseball. Esteemed baseball writer Tyler Kepner, of The Athletic and formerly with the New York Times, joins host Derrick Goold to discuss Ichiro Suzu...

At the end of year press conference where the Cardinals announced a pivot toward youth and debuted their buzzword "reset" to describe a reduction in payroll and commitment to development, St. Louis' veteran sportscaster Randy Karraker asked what has changed for the club. It was just six years ago that ownership said a .500 team was acceptable in other markets, but just a winning record wasn't enou...

"Empty seats are empty seats; no-shows are no-shows," says St. Louis Post-Dispatch sports columnist Jeff Gordon. "When you’re just accepting reduced attendance and you’re pointing to that for reduced payroll, now you’re setting yourself up for a spiral." Yet to spend a cent this offseason on a major-league free agent, the Cardinals are banking big on breakthrough seasons from the...

The 13th year of the Best Podcast in Baseball begins with a conversation about something new for the Cardinals and their fan base, something that hasn't been discussed around Busch Stadium in decades, and something some might argue was overdue. "For the first time in forever, (they're) trying to sell hope," says Post-Dispatch sports columnist Jeff Gordon. The first BPIB episode of 2025 welcomes Go...

A revealing moment for the Cardinals and all who evaluate or rank their prospects came in the first round of the 2021 MLB Draft. With the 18th pick, the Cardinals went straight back to their sweet spot and chose Michael McGreevy, a right-handed pitcher out of UC-Santa Barbara and straight from central casting. He fit the profile of the pitcher the Cardinals had taken many times before. McGreevy ha...

"There should be three expectations in life," MLB Network Radio host and noted baseball pundit Mike Ferrin says in a brand new episode of the Best Pocast in Baseball. "Death, taxes, and the Cardinals competing evry year. That's National League baseball." That may be the Cardinals' brand, but that is not entirely their plan this coming season. At Major League Baseball's Winter Meetings in Dallas, F...

While discussing how Major League Baseball could proactively move to help smaller-market clubs remain competitive, KMOX/1120 AM host and frequent Best Podcast in Baseball guest Kevin Wheeler strikes upon a model the Cardinals could aspire to emulate during their self-imposed reset. "The Atlanta Braves," Wheeler suggests. A team that develops, acquires, and keeps young impact players, Atlanta is cl...

During the past two decades in Major League Baseball, only the Houston Astros have won pennants and appeared in more World Series than the Cardinals and Boston. Two of baseball's most accomplished and celebrated franchises have won four pennants each and faced each other twice in the World Series, both of them won by the BoSox. The ties that bind go beyond shared Octobers these days as both clubs,...

After a brief discussion about a shared fondness for a recent, deeply moving and haunting collection of linked short stories, Sequioa Nagamatsu's 'How High We Got in the Dark,' two baseball writers focus on another work of speculative fiction. What to make of the 2025 St. Louis Cardinals. CBS Sports baseball writer Dayn Perry joins the Best Podcast in Baseball to discuss his lifelong fondness and...

While awaiting the parade's arrival at Dodger Stadium,  Los Angeles Times sports columnist Dylan Hernandez  veers into nostalgia as he wonders whether the Dodgers' run of success and appetite for more might spur the Cardinals to defend their place in the National League and re-spark one of his favorite rivalries. Hosting a parade in Los Angeles for the first time since 1988 -- COVID rest...

As much as the standings and missteps of their player development system will shape the Cardinals' offseason, arguably the most significant factor in any of their decisions will be when the broadcast sports sinkhole reaches them, and how deep it goes. The consternation will be televised. This much is certain: The Cardinals games will be available to cable subscribers in 2025 and also subscribers t...

Continuing  the conversation that began in the Best Podcast in Baseball episode 21, season 12 , KMOX/1120 AM's Kevin Wheeler considers the question on how the Cardinals can accumulate younger talent, draft picks, or both. The answer begins at first base. The questions continue from there in this brand new Best Podcast in Baseball that ultimately reaches a discussion about the World Series and...

The official changes to some Cardinals' leadership roles, from the front office to the dugout, as they approach their "reset" winter continued on the eve of the World Series with the first new addition to the front office, a new coach, and a new role for an all-time great. Kevin Wheeler, co-host of the drive-time show and baseball coverage at KMOX/1120 AM, joins the Best Podcast in Baseball to dis...

Toward the end of his first professional season, not too long after he told a roommate Oliver Marmol about his personal and accelerated timetable to reach the majors, Matt Carpenter got a phone call that could have forever changed his career in baseball. He was approached about being a coach, and he was tempted to take it. The next summer his playing career took off. There are baseball cards galor...

A year after "pitching, pitching, pitching" dictated the Cardinals' approach to the offseason, the club faces a far broader challenge this winter. PR, PR, PR. Or, as Best Podcast in Baseball guest Brooke Grimsley, noted: "Change, change, change." The 2024 Cardinals' season comes to a close with the club trying ot break the hold of .500 and avoid a second losing season, what would be the first back...

Despite the smallest market in Major League Baseball, the Milwaukee Brewers have become a marvel of what it means to be a modern contender. The organization the Cardinals used to be and the Cubs wanted to be , the Brewers now are, complete with the 10-game lead in the division standings ahead of the former kings with a month of the season remaining. MLB.com's longtime Brewers beat writer Adam McCa...

Within the span of only a few hours, the Cardinals demoted two of their top prospects from the past decade, sending in separate moves their top left-handed slugging prospect and one of the top right-handed hitting prospects in all of the minors. What gives and what does it mean for the Cardinals ongoing, completely confounding "riddle" when it comes to developing young hitters? To explore this def...

The proverbial turtle on a fencepost that clearly did not get there by itself is also an apt metaphor for the trouble a Major League Baseball club finds itself in when trying to balance between the hedge-fund tycoons and the heavy tankers. Stuck in the middle is a tough place to be as the Cardinals have shown -- and, as with the turtle, it can take looking beyond the shell for a way out of it. The...