Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a Shohei Ohtani survey, early WBC action, Andrew McCutchen’s new team, Payton Tolle’s triple-digits t-shirt, ABS-driven changes to Alex Bregman’s and Bo Naylor’s listed heights, wonky player cards, why teams start spring training days so early, Dodgers pitching problems, and the prevalence of inventive slides, then preview the 2026 Seattle Mariners (50:22) with The Seattle Times’ Ryan Divish, and the 2026 Miami Marlins (1:34:43) with MLB.com’s Christina De Nicola, plus a few postscript updates (2:17:42).

2026 EW Season Preview Series

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Audio interstitial 1: Cory Brent, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Audio interstitial 2: Tom Rhoads, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Audio outro: Alex Glossman and Ali Breneman, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to YouGov survey

Link to Team USA vs. Rockies recap

Link to WBC soundtrack story

Link to MLBTR on McCutchen

Link to Speier on Tolle

Link to Tolle max velos

Link to in-season velo data 1

Link to in-season velo data 2

Link to in-season velo article

Link to 2025 info on height changes

Link to 2025 Naylor page

Link to 2026 Naylor page

Link to 2024 Bregman page

Link to 2025 Bregman page

Link to 2026 Bregman page

Link to 2024 Lux page

Link to 2025 Lux page

Link to wonky Ohtani card

Link to wonky Judge card

Link to wonky Bregman card

Link to wonky Naylor card

Link to email about giant player

Link to early starts post

Link to Baumann on Sasaki

Link to FG World Series odds

Link to Crizer on slides

Link to Sam on slides

Link to Naylor’s inclusiveness comments

Link to team payrolls page

Link to Mariners offseason tracker

Link to Mariners depth chart

Link to “Boys Podcast” SNL skit

Link to Ryan’s author archive

Link to Marlins offseason tracker

Link to Marlins depth chart

Link to Christina on Marlins’ elimination

Link to Christina on Alcantara’s outing

Link to “catcher’s balk”

Link to Christina on pitch-calling

Link to 2025 Marlins Pythag/BaseRuns

Link to 2025 team RP WAR

Link to 2025 team RP WPA

Link to Pérez nickname article

Link to grievance avoidance article

Link to Lauren’s NL East post

Link to Christina’s author archive

Link to ball/strike ejections article

Link to Brewers challenges tweet

Link to Tango’s challenges tweet

Link to Brewers challenges article

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