The Marlins won 47% of their games and 2 WS when they were the Florida Marlins. Once they changed their name to the Miami Marlins they win at a 43% pace and have only made the playoffs once in the pandemic season of 2020. This week we dive into the…
Babe Ruth & Barry Bonds. They are two of the greatest hitters who ever played and that cannot be argued. Who was better? That depends on your point of view so we decided to argue - Mark mostly for Ruth, Gordon mostly for Bonds. The more we talked about their…
What was the signature moment of the past week in #MLB? Was it Alex Cobb's near no-hitter? Bryce Harper's 300th HR? Ronald Acuna's 121.2 MPH home run - the hardest hit ball in 5 years? We talked about all of those and the state of the races in all the…
Thankfully bloodying a fellow MLB player is no longer something of which to be proud. That was the case in the earlier days of baseball. Baseball is still played hard and sometimes it still can get dirty but on the field dirty play happens much less frequently. With the advent…
Which was the bigger story this week - Shohei Ohtani's UCL injury ending his pitching for 2023 and into 2024, or Stephen Strasburg's retirement? Strasburg's story is one of what could have been. Ohtani is THE story of this season and what will happen given that he is due for…
Are players less weird today than they used to be? Surely today's players with their understanding of social media are more sensitive to public opinion. We already had episode 106 'Baseball Oddballs' https://www.buzzsprout.com/1066072/4412837 in which we talked about Bill 'Spaceman' Lee and Bill Veeck to name a couple. No midgets…
We often discuss historical aspects of baseball and we love doing that, but we're fans and we watch what's going on in baseball at the moment. So this week we're starting a weekly Monday wrap-up show on what happened in MLB last week. We will try to keep it to…
Kind of a loaded question isn't it? In this episode we start with a short run through what's interesting in MLB this past week. Then we discuss the history of baseball commissioners before current commissioner Rob Manfred. Manfred truly raises the ire of so many baseball fans. Is he the…
Entering the AL East in 1977 the Blue Jays did not always play inside. Like most expansion teams they started slowly but won a World Series (actually 2 back to back) 16 years after their founding. The Jays have had some HOFers and also some bizarre incidents in their history.…
The trading deadline has passed and for some teams making bold moves has brought their fans hope for the rest of the season and the playoffs. We talk about baseball mascots - the history, the oddity, and a few bizarre events involving well-known mascots. But we had to let our…
We admit that we're already addicted to the Immaculate Grid MLB. Now there's NFL, NBA and soon NHL! It's hard and that's the cool thing! We had a great time talking again with Sean Forman founder of Baseball Reference and Sports Reference who joined the podcast to talk about the…
When your team is having a less than great season you start thinking about fall and winter sports earlier than when your team is doing well. With the Mets moribund season coming up on 2/3 thru, we're already looking ahead to what we will watch other than baseball while the…
We're joined by HOF expert & baseball historian David Metter - @CooperstownDave if you follow him as we do. One can gain entrance to the Hall of Fame by combining different aspects of their baseball contribution. For some it could be as a player and manager (Lou Piniella and Davey…
In a season full of changes there also have been a bunch of surprises. Like the Cincinnati Reds, Texas Rangers, and Arizona Diamondbacks. Not to mention the Mets, Padres, and Cardinals. The Braves continue to dominate and the Rays just find new ways to win. https://www.buzzsprout.com/1066072/13148115 Please subscribe to our…
Met fans like us are still smarting from the 2015 loss in the World Series to those overachieving Royals. Entering the AL as one of 2 expansion teams in the league in 1969 (the Seattle Pilots now Milwaukee Brewers was the other), the Royals got good fast with a winning…
We recorded on Father's Day weekend & hope all the Dads had a great day! It's interesting that MLB player father's almost always outperform their MLB player sons. Except for Barry Bonds & Roberto Alomar at least! It must be both amazing and challenging to grow up the son of…
The 1st MLB All-Star game was played 90 years ago in 1933. As it is today the American League played the National League. The players really wanted to win the game since they were paid more if they did win and league supremacy was much more important than it is…
With more than a third of the 2023 MLB season played there's still hope for most of the teams to claim at least a Wild Card slot. Is being in 1st place June 1st a key to a guaranteed playoff spot? Well mostly yes. But as we've seen teams can…
A question was posed from a listener - Nile A. What does a baseball manager actually do? Besides sit and watch the game? Baseball has managers, Soccer has team managers, but football, basketball, and ice hockey all have coaches. Why are baseball team leaders called coaches until the players turn…
When it comes to doing a deep dive on our favorite team we could have spent hours. But we kept in mind that listeners may not love the Amazin's as much as we do. We didn't even talk about the greatest managers in NY Met history. (Gil Hodges and Davey…
HOFer 'Candy' Cummings is credited with 'inventing' the curveball. But as you'd expect a pitcher's fastball has almost always been the #1 pitch. Pitchers throw more varieties of pitches today than ever before. They have to because hitters are so good! We talk about how different the average pitcher arsenals…
As long as baseball has been played people have bet on the game and events during the playing of games. Today we see updated betting lines posted during coverage of the games! A far cry from when bets were made through a casino or a bookie! We ask the question…
We start with the obvious 4 - Miguel Cabrera, Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander. But Mike Trout is already in HOFer in our book. But how about Joey Votto? Zach Greinke? Evan Longoria? Evan Longoria!!!? Since Cabrera is retiring after this year and playing beyond this season is…
Let's talk about catchers! We spent the entire episode calling him I-Rod without ever mentioning Ivan Rodriguez by name! We didn't mention a few catchers like Carlton Fisk and Gary Carter who were close. We also did not talk about Josh Gibson who may have been the best of all…