Ben Lindbergh talks to Will Leitch about the Cardinals’ horrendous start, their baffling decision to bar big free-agent addition Willson Contreras from catching, how Yadier Molina’s legacy looms over the franchise, how Oli Marmol and John Mozeliak have handled the team’s struggles, how the rest of the season might go, and more, along with the Effectively Wild connection in Will’s new novel, The Time Has Come. Then (54:51) Ben talks to David Hrusovsky about wearing a SpongeBob costume to Guardians games and David’s ongoing effort to map every high school baseball field in the country and document the weirdest ones. After that (1:19:58), Ben brings on frequent Stat Blast consultant Ryan Nelson to deliver several Stat Blasts, followed by (1:51:35) a Past Blast from 2004 and a few follow-ups.

Audio interstitial: Dave Armstrong and Mike Murray, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Audio outro: Tom Rhoads, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Katie Woo on Contreras

Link to Katie on Contreras again

Link to Rosenthal on Contreras

Link to playoff odds changes

Link to Marmol-Bucknor feud

Link to Marmol on Contreras

Link to Marmol on booing

Link to more Marmol on booing

Link to Posnanski on Marmol

Link to Jay Jaffe on the Cardinals

Link to Will’s Cardinals podcast

Link to Will’s newsletter

Link to The Time Has Come

Link to EW wiki on weird fields

Link to David/SpongeBob video

Link to David/SpongeBob article

Link to Gonzalez/SpongeBob article

Link to David’s HS fields site

Link to weird field % by state

Link to Uni Watch on David

Link to MLB field sizes

Link to ballpark homogenization info

Link to Topps NOW cards

Link to Ryan’s first EW episode

Link to EW guest data

Link to Stat Blast results/data

Link to Santander Reddit thread

Link to Russell on fouls

Link to 2004 Past Blast source

Link to David Lewis’s Twitter

Link to David Lewis’s Substack

Link to Royals Pasquatch ad

Link to Pasquatch footage

Link to MLBTR on Greiner

Link to tall-catchers EW episode

Link to Anton’s MLB birthday data

Link to relative age effect wiki

Link to article on MLB RAE

Link to Shane on M’s broadcast

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