Best Podcast in Baseball

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 restrictions kept one from happening in 2020 -- the Los Angeles Dodgers claimed their eighth World Series championship, their seventh since moving from New York. That ties them with the San Francisco Giants for the second-most titles by a National League club. For 80 years, it has been the Cardinals' brand and their claim to fame that they have the most World Series titles of any National League club, and since 2006, the Cardinals have had the second-most World Series championships in MLB history.

Yet, the gap between the Dodgers' eight titles and the Cardinals' cherished 11 feels a lot closer.

Post-Dispatch sports columnist Ben Frederickson wrote about the Dodgers' blitz on the Cardinals' history in Friday's newspaper and online at StlToday.com.

That same question offers a thread around which Best Podcast in Baseball host and baseball writer Derrick Goold talks with Hernandez about the Dodgers, their formidable team, their outrageous ability to outspend any other team, the innovation machine they have behind the scenes, and the ambitious global superstar at the center of their world, Shohei Ohtani. During the champagne celebration Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium following the Dodgers' clinching victory in Game 5, Ohtani sprayed bubbles in executive Andrew Friedman's face and shouted his intention to win nine more World Series titles.

Believe him, Hernandez said.

All of this comes just weeks after the Dodgers were on the brink of elimination in the division series. So, how real are the Dodgers' and Ohtani's ambitions to join the Cardinals and Yankees in the double-digit club, and what are the biggest threats to slow them down. Hernandez details how the Dodgers got here, how they intend to stay a contend, and what could undermine everything they've built. He also gives great insight in Ohtani's drive -- and the power of inspiration from comic books. Two former Cardinals, NLCS MVP Tommy Edman and Game 5 starter Jack Flaherty, were key contributors to the Dodgers' championship run, and within Edman's play specifically Hernandez saw something he has derided in the past.

He saw what he believes is the Cardinal Way and it gave the Dodgers an edge the Yankees, like the baseball, lost their grip on. 

Hernandez also agrees to visit St. Louis and enjoy an excellent meal and walk to a neighborhood comic book shop.

Bonus: no traffic.

The Best Podcast in Baseball, sponsored by Closets by Design of St. Louis, is a production of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, StlToday.com, and baseball writer Derrick Goold.

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 to a forthcoming streaming service. What happens next, well ... stay tuned.

To explain how Major League Baseball (and other sports), Bally Sports Midwest/FanDuel Sports Network Midwest (and its parent company), and the Cardinals (and almost every other baseball club), got into this bind, the Best Podcast in Baseball brings Dan Caesar into the conversation. The Media Views columnist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch since 1988, Caesar could only think of one bigger story on the sports broadcast beat in his four decades than the one currently playing out in a Texas bankruptcy court. Diamond Sports Group, the parent company of many of the regional sports networks, filed for bankruptcy protection in spring 2023, and since then the entire industry as convulsed with confusion and concern.

Look no further than the Texas Rangers, who did not know where they would broadcast games for sure a year after winning the World Series and have had their ability to spend handcuffed by the uncertainty of their rights fees.

The Cardinals have advertised that they intend to trim payroll this winter, and a driving reason for this isn't just a shift to spending more on the farm system and its infrastructure. The Cardinals cannot be sure how much of their $78 million they're owed to broadcast their games in 2025 they'll be paid. The Post-Dispatch previously reported that Diamond Sports Group has approached the Cardinals about renegotiating their $1.1-billion rights deal, and Diamond Sports has threatened in court to drop all of its contracts for 2025 except for the Atlanta Braves.

How did this happen? What's next? What does it mean for the Cardinals? And where will fans watch games in 2025?

All of those questions are answered in this brand new Best Podcast in Baseball.

Short answer: It's going to get better for fans, eventually. It's going to take awhile and it's going to cost fans more, but access to games and the control fans will have over how they watch games will get better. But first, it could get worse.

The Best Podcast in Baseball, sponsored by Closets by Design of St. Louis, is a production of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, StlToday.com, and baseball writer Derrick Goold. 

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 whether a clash between high-spending baseball royalty, the Dodgers of Los Angeles and the Yankees of New York, is great for marketing the game, good for the fans, great for the history buffs, potentially grand for TV ratings, and yet is it a positive for the industry?

The 2024 World Series is the culmination of several years with a consolidation of talents.

On the field will be two handfuls of future Hall of Famers, two 50-homer players, and the favorites to win this year's MVPs in each league. In fact, no World Series has featured this many past MVP winners.

And all of them have either been traded or, in the case of homegrown Yankee slugger Aaron Judge, reached free agency.

The billion-dollar constellation of superstars in this World Series are all players who have hit the jackpot of free agency or extensions, with the exception of Juan Soto, who is days away from doing so. If such players collect on the same teams, like the Dodgers or primed-to-spend Mets, what does that mean for how other teams contend, especially those in the middle markets? That is something else to watch in the wake of this World Series.

But the podcast resumes its discussion of the current Cardinals and how president of baseball operations is taking a franchise that is also part of baseball royalty and like a vintage muscle car sprucing it up before passing it along to a new owner, who is tasked with turning it into a lean, mean, more full-efficient machine.

Within the next two weeks, Paul Goldschmidt will become a free agent for the first time in his career, and the Cardinals must decide whether to present him with a qualifying offer to secure a draft pick if he signs elsewhere. Such a move would give Goldschmidt the choice to accept a one-year, $21-million contract for 2025 or see if he could better in the marketplace. As the Cardinals look to cut costs, their decision seems clear -- but in this brand new podcast, Wheeler and Post-Dispatch baseball writer Derrick Goold discuss another motivation in play for the Cardinals and their "reset."

Are they better creating an inventory of players to trade in 2025 or picks, and what does that mean for bringing back pitchers at the end of their contracts like Steven Matz, Erick Fedde, and Kyle Gibson, who has a team option for 2025.

Could they be trade pieces?

If so, when would be the best time to maximize the return on them -- the offseason or the trade deadline.

BPIB discuss the benefits of setting an asking price and sticking to it versus the risk of injury and performance that comes with waiting for the urgent market of July.

The Best Podcast in Baseball, sponsored by Closets by Design of St. Louis, is a production of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, StlToday.com, and baseball writer Derrick Goold.

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 discuss with Post-Dispatch baseball writer Derrick Goold the moves the Cardinals have made, the names involved -- and some of the motivations and goals driving them.

From there the conversation expands into an audit of the Cardinals strategy and financial position.

The team has advertised as cut in payroll as it bends young and reinvests in an eroded player development program, but there's more going on than just a shifting of dollars and sense. There is the potential for a huge cut in revenue that is driving some of their decisions, and is not their plan to increase spending on minor-league coaches and technology, nor the $100-million project to upgrade the Roger Dean Stadium complex in Jupter, Florida, with new player development facilities. Looming on the horizon is the possibility the Cardinals will not get some or all of the $78 million owed them from their broadcast partner for 2025 and the reality that the jackpot years ahead in their billion-dollar broadcast rights deal aren't going to come to fruition.

That shift in revenue prompts the questions that direct this podcast -- how much must the Cardinals cut, and how soon?

The answer may not be as simple as just shedding salaries.

There is a way for the Cardinals to chase their goal of accumulating young talent, clearing opportunity for in-house talent, and still cleave dollars off the payroll. And that is where this brand new podcast ends with Part 1 and will continue with Part 2.

Part 2 will drop Friday.

The Best Podcast in Baseball, sponsored by Closets by Design of St. Louis, is a production of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, StlToday.com, and baseball writer Derrick Goold. 

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 galore and probably a Cardinals Hall of Fame red jacket in his future that tell how that story ended, but Carpenter shares with the Best Podcast in Baseball how close he came to moving to a role in the game that he might eventually also have. A three-time All-Star who returned to the Cardinals for the 2024 season, Carpenter joins the Best Podcast in Baseball and baseball writer Derrick Goold for a conversation many months in the making. The two spoke this past week near the batting cage at Coors Field, just ahead of the Cardinals' season finale in San Francisco.

From his early days with the Cardinals as a spring-training standout and favorite of manager Tony La Russa, Carpenter's career had to constantly evolve.

He became a second baseman. He became a leadoff hitter. He broke a doubles record long held by Stan Musial, and then his changed his swing and late in one season led the National League in homers and slugging on his way to MVP considerations. And through it all, a coach's kid out of Texas who judged his production by how high above .300 his average was had to learn in real time as the game shifted to take that away from him, quite literally. He had to embrace slugging. He had to reinvent his swing. He had to reclaim his career.

And over the course of this season, Goold asked Carpenter if he would talke about all he learned about Major League Baseball's modern offense and how difficult it has become to be a hitter in a game when failure, already abundant, is increasing.

Consider the math.

As batting average has grown less important, hitters are being told they can do more with a .270 average and slugging than singling their way to a .330 average, and still that difference is six outs, six fewer times succeeding.

Carpenter has some thoughts and offers lots of insight.

This brand-new BPIB begins as all good stories do on a road trip with Matt Holliday and Carpenter and the trouble they encountered somewhere between Stillwater, Oklahoma, and Memphis, Tennessee. The conversation also touches on what went sideways for the Cardinals' offense during a season that will finish with a winning record but nowhere close to the team's stated goal of contending for the NL Central title and returning to the playoffs. Carpenter also discusses his immediate and longterm future, which brings up the story about the phone call he received while playing Class A baseball for the Cardinals with an offer he wasn't sure he could refuse.

The Best Podcast in Baseball, sponsored by Closets by Design, is a production of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, StlToday.com, and Derrick Goold.

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-to-back losing seasons in a full schedule since Stan Musial played for the team in the late 1950s. Crowds, like wins and playoff appearances, have dwindled, and the one-off season the Cardinals promised after 2023 has become something more problematic for the club: a trend.

Grimsley, co-host of The Opening Drive at ESPN 101.1 FM/WXOS in St. Louis, said the feedback they've received from listeners and fans suggest that fans are moving from anger to acceptance to something more alarming for any club -- apathy.

With BPIB host and St. Louis Post-Dispatch baseball writer Derrick Goold, Grimsley discusses what messages and actions the Cardinals could take in the coming weeks and months to reanimate and engage the fan base. They discuss not just player movement and moves but how important comments, direction, and transparency from the front office could be, and what the role media plays in gathering that info and relaying it to fans.

The Best Podcast in Baseball, sponsored by Closets by Design of St. Louis, is a production of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, StlToday.com, and Derrick Goold.

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 McCalvy joins the Best Podcast in Baseball to talk about Milwaukee's rise within the division and reign atop. McCalvy talks with Best Podcast in Baseball host and baseball writer Derrick Goold about the "culture" the Brewers have created, one that seems to benefit from the team's business model, strong development infrastructure, and something the Cardinals have not shown, and may not be able to show.

Patience.

The Brewers appear to have hit Yatzhee on almost every move. They waited out the market to land Christian Yelich from Miami via trade, ending up with the best fit of the three Marlins outfielders available at the time and an MVP-caliber player. While the Cardinals were also shopping for a catcher, they joined in a trade to help Atlanta land catcher Sean Murphy from the Oakland Athletics  and may have ended up with the  best catcher in the deal, William Contreras. They fended off interest in Corbin Burnes to watch him become a Cy Young Award ace, and then traded him ahead of him leaving for free agency to then nourish a roster that again is contending.

McCalvy details the Brewers' business model and also how much they've invested in development, and how it continues successful at the major-league level, even as players move out or move out.

The two baseball writers also share some thoughts on Wisconsin-accurate accents and wax nostalgic about legendary slugger Joey Meyer the 1990s Denver Zephyrs.

The Best Podcast in Baseball, sponsored by Closets by Design of St. Louis, is a production of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, StlToday.com, and Derrick Goold.

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 defining question for the current era of Cardinals baseball, the Best Podcast in Baseball turns to a Hall of Famer. BPIB co-founder and former Post-Dispatch sports columnist Bernie Miklasz joins podcast host Derrick Goold to discuss a week that featured Nolan Gorman and Jordan Walker returning to Class AAA Memphis just a few months after they were supposed to emerge as the next core contributors in the Cardinals' lineup. Urgency rules as the Cardinals try to capture magic from a series win against Milwaukee and turn it into a last-gasp run for a playoff spot. But is that same urgency, that same pressure to produce and perform and contend every day also contributing to a cycle the Cardinals cannot escape? The opportunity gap persists and now two of the most highly prized young prospects the Cardinals have had in the past decade are caught in the conversation on whether they must go elsewhere to thrive. Young hitters arrive. Some young hitters struggle. Some young hitters are traded. Those young hitters thrive elsewhere. Miklasz describes the conversations he's had with MLB sources about where and how the Cardinals' infrastructure is lacking, and Goold details where the answers might come from the young hitters, like Masyn Winn or Alec Burleson, who have thrived after alterations to their approach or swing encouraged by the Cardinals. The Best Podcast in Baseball, sponsored by Closets by Design of St. Louis, is a production of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, StlToday.com, and Derrick Goold.

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 Best Podcast in Baseball hosted by baseball writer Derrick Goold returns with guest Kevin Wheeler of KMOX/1120 AM to discuss the Cardinals as they emerge from a disastrous series in Cincinnati and begin the most grueling stretch of their season. They are, once again, balanced around .500 -- waiting for the wind of change to knock this turtle into one direction or the other. And that becomes the crux of the conversation. If the Cardinals are able to put together a 41-game sprint for October and a playoff berth, does such a run risk masking or misleading the direction the franchise is really headed. Look to the most recent World Series championship teams for examples. Will the 2024 Cardinals be like the surprise 83-win team of 2006 that won a World Series but prefaced a signficiant shift for the franchise when it tried to repeat that flawed roster in 2007, or are the 2024 Cardinals the Happy Flight-era 2011 Cardinals who buzzsawed to a World Series title and hinted at a successful run of pennant-contenders that even withstood the departure of a Hall of Fame manager and a three-time MVP and Hall of Fame player? One team gave off a false impression of the future. The other hinted at a future fueled by pitching development and some savvy outside additions. The '24 Cardinals have to overcome their run differential and an offensive deficit to contend, and even if they do what they had to overcome and how far they had to go should offer a lesson, even a reckoning, on where the franchise is going.

Thanks to all the listeners of BPIB for the patience as the podcast experienced one planned break as the host took some time off and another unplanned pause as the host had a few episodes experience hiccups of various types. The BPIB is back, ready to regain some of those lost episodes and sprint to the finish of the regular season.

The Best Podcast in Baseball, brought to you by Closets by Design of St. Louis, is a production of the Post-Dispatch, StlToday.com, and Derrick Goold.  

It's Flag Day? Have you checked the standings yet? Following closely behind the Cardinals' 3-0 victory against the Cubs at Wrigley Field and each team's 49th game this season decided by three or fewer runs, a question was presented to KMOX/1120 AM's Kevin Wheeler.

What are the traits necessary for a team to do well in so many slim-margin games?

As a guest on a brand-new edition of the Best Podcast in Baseball with Derrick Goold, Wheeler outlines two necessities for every team to thrive in close games and how doing one will help the other survive. It is vital Wheeler illustrates for a team to get more innings from the rotation so that it's asking less of the bullpen in close games, and that will help keep the bullpen fresh to turn those close games into victories. This is how teams can get friendly with the confines of close games.

During a 4-3 home stand and again as they opened a Father's Day weekend series at Wrigley, the Cardinals showcased some of the developing depth in the bullpen that is helping them hold leads and secure slim victory. Ryan Fernandez has emerged with holds in consecutive games; Matthew Liberatore's return to the bullpen gives the Cardinals a third setup lefty and one with strikeout stuff at his best; and Chris Roycroft, only a few years removed from independent ball, has intrigued the Cardinals with his power stuff and movement. Or, as one teammate put it, "filth."

The Cardinals returned to .500 with the victory and should they spillover for the first time in more than a year, they'll be one of the few teams in the National League with a winning record.

Wheeler and Goold discuss if that's fallout from the consolidation of spending and power at only a few NL spots, such as Dodger Stadium and South Philadelphia. If those teams are collecting the highest-dollar stars in the NL what does that mean for the remainder of the standings and how do teams keep up as that spending gap grows into a standings gap. Wheeler suggests that a lot can be learned from NL Central-leader Milwaukee and how the Brewers have kept ahead without spending too much. It's an example of how the division, bunched-up and sometimes confusing mediocrity for parity, will be decided.

What team gets its stars to shine the brightest the soonest?

That list would include Cubs Dansby Swanson just as it could be asked of the Cardinals' cornerstones Paul Goldschmidt, Nolan Arenado, and Willson Contreras, who is on the injured list with a fractured arm. That list would also include Cardinals starter Sonny Gray, whose bounce-back start helped Cardinals to a winning home stand. And all of that brings the conversation back around to one way for a team to thrive in so many close games.

Play fewer of them.

Score more runs to avoid them.

Also discussed in this episode of BPIB is the Cardinals' visit to Rickwood Field later this month for the first National League regular-season game at the nation's oldest ballpark.

The Best Podcast in Baseball, sponsored by Closets by Design of St. Louis, is a production of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, StlToday.com, and baseball writer Derrick Goold.