Ben Lindbergh, Sam Miller, and senior writer for The Athletic Andy McCullough banter about the people they would be (or have been) most nervous about interviewing and two new noteworthy articles, then discuss Andy’s and Rustin Dodd’s highly controversial ranking of the 30 greatest baseball songs of all time, the dispute about John Fogerty’s “Centerfield,” the best and worst baseball songs, what qualifies a song as a baseball song, why baseball music isn’t better, and more.

Audio intro: The Magnolia Electric Co., "31 Seasons in the Minor Leagues"
Audio outro: Matt the Electrician, "Baseball Song"

Link to Sam’s Mattingly article
Link to Pedro’s rooster reveal
Link to Andy’s and Rustin’s ranking
Link to Ben on baseball sheet music
Link to Sam on baseball rap
Link to Sam on baseball rap again
Link to EW music folder
Link to Ben and Travis Q&A
Link to order The MVP Machine

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Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about Johnny Vander Meer’s ear boils and the surprisingly ancient origins of the phrase, “A walk is as good as a hit,” then answer listener emails about why some players prove to be flashes in the pan, whether a home run derby would work under current conditions, whether the pandemic makes MLB expansion more or less likely, what one would learn from watching every game from an MLB season (and how one would do it), why some prospects skip Triple-A, and why we don’t talk more about the brief baseball career of Chris Saenz, plus a Stat Blast about the highest Championship Leverage Index.

Audio intro: Paul McCartney, "Boil Crisis"
Audio outro: Paul McCartney, "Boil Crisis"

Link to free Baseball Digest archive
Link to history of “A walk is as good as a hit”
Link to study on OBP vs. batting average
Link to Sam on the home run derby
Link to Joel Sherman on the Home Run Derby
Link to first episode of 1960 home run derby
Link to Stat Blast song covers thread
Link to Theodor Bierhoff’s Stat Blast song cover
Link to list of highest-CLI plays
Link to video of highest-CLI play
Link to article on Willie McCovey and Peanuts
Link to Peanuts strips on Willie McCovey
Link to Maury Brown on expansion
Link to Ben on minor league difficulty
Link to 2013 article on skipping Triple-A
Link to 2015 article on skipping Triple-A
Link to 2016 article on skipping Triple-A
Link to order The MVP Machine

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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about beverage consumption, foreign baseball leagues’ potential for popularity in the U.S., and the life and death of legendary flamethrower Steve Dalkowski, who passed away this week. Then they talk to Rob Liu of CPBLStats.com (25:48) and Dan Kurtz of MyKBO.net (58:22) about two leagues that have beaten MLB back to action, Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) and South Korea’s Korea Baseball Organization (KBO), touching on how their seasons have started, the best ways for American baseball fans to follow them, the players and teams to know, the aesthetic and stylistic differences between them and MLB, the histories and evolutions of the leagues, their fluctuating home run rates, their foreign-player presences, their embraces of sabermetrics, their engaging ballpark atmospheres, the CPBL’s playoff format, and the KBO’s bat flips.

Audio intro: Alec Benjamin, "Steve"
Audio interstitial 1: Sturgill Simpson, "Fastest Horse in Town"
Audio interstitial 2: James Chen, "Summer in Taiwan"
Audio outro: Nadan, "Play Ball"

Link to Pat Jordan on Dalkowski
Link to John Eisenberg on Dalkowski
Link to Joe Posnanski on Dalkowski
Link to Posnanski on Dalkowski again
Link to Steve Treder on Dalkowski
Link to Dom Amore on Dalkowski
Link to Dalkowski obit
Link to CPBL Stats
Link to info on CPBL home run rates
Link to Chin-hui Tsao’s Wikipedia page
Link to story about Tsao as a prospect
Link to Eleven Sports Taiwan
Link to CPBL streaming guide
Link to Jay Jaffe on the CPBL
Link to Marc Carig on CPBL broadcasts
Link to MyKBO
Link to MyKBO Stats
Link to bat flips feature
Link to Sung Min Kim on KBO ball de-juicing
Link to story about ESPN and KBO
Link to KBO streaming instructions
Link to Jaffe on the KBO
Link to order The MVP Machine

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Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller discuss the results of MLB’s investigation into Boston Red Sox sign stealing, touching on Boston’s lighter penalties and seemingly lesser offenses compared to the Astros’, whether Boston’s front office and coaches deserved to be absolved, the moral hazard of the advance scout who doubles as a replay-room operator, and more. Then they answer listener emails about firing managers based on one egregious in-game decision, transporting a modern coach to an earlier era of baseball, and properly appreciating Mike Trout, plus a Stat Blast about how many would-be big leaguers will miss out on making the majors because of a canceled or shortened season, and a postscript on trainers, trampolines, and an advance scout.

Audio intro: The Walkmen, "Lost in Boston"
Audio outro: Earlimart, "First Instant Last Report"

Link to MLB report
Link to Sam on Trout and WAR
Link to Stat Blast song covers thread
Link to Mike Conte’s Stat Blast song cover
Link to trampoline study 1
Link to trampoline study 2
Link to trampoline study 3
Link to Stubbs interview episode
Link to Pages from Baseball’s Past
Link to trainer story 1
Link to trainer story 2
Link to trainer story 3
Link to order The MVP Machine

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Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the Effectively Wild community’s least-disliked MLB teams and two unjust Cy Young/MVP snubs, then discuss what Michael Jordan’s brief baseball career taught us about Jordan and about baseball.

Audio intro: Willie Nelson, "Why Do I Have to Choose"
Audio outro: Emmylou Harris, "Jordan"

Link to EW MLB Survivor game recap
Link to EW MLB Survivor game data
Link to Ben on peak Pedro
Link to Jordan oral history
Link to episode about Jordan oral history
Link to Steve Wulf on Jordan and baseball
Link to Neil Paine on Jordan’s career
Link to list of significant minor league seasons
Link to order The MVP Machine

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With MLB in limbo, Ben Lindbergh investigates virtual baseball, talking to the designers of three new baseball video games—Ramone Russell of Sony San Diego, makers of MLB The Show 20, Markus Heinsohn of Out of the Park Developments, makers of Out of the Park Baseball 21 (37:56), and Scott Drader of Metalhead Software, makers of Super Mega Baseball 3 (1:21:50)—about the histories of their respective franchises, how their games differ stylistically, their different development plans, balancing realism and fun, how their games are helping fans and players cope with the absence of actual baseball, and much more (plus postscripts on Baseball Mogul 2020 and minor leaguers’ likenesses in MLB The Show).

Audio intro: The Alan Parsons Project, "Games People Play"
Audio interstitial 1: Jim Noir, "Do You Like Games"
Audio interstitial 2: Shout Out Louds, "Play the Game"
Audio outro: Drive-By Truckers, "Play it All Night Long"

Link to Episode 427 with Owen Good
Link to MLB The Show 20 trailer
Link to MLB The Show 20 website
Link to MLB The Show Players League
Link to MLB Network on Twitch
Link to FanGraphs on Twitch
Link to Ben on the ball in MLB The Show
Link to Mets broadcasters calling MLB The Show
Link to Ben on esports
Link to Out of the Park Baseball 21 trailer
Link to OOTP 21 website
Link to B-Ref’s OOTP 21 season sim
Link to MLB Dream Bracket
Link to Super Mega Baseball 3 trailer
Link to Super Mega Baseball 3 website
Link to Baseball Mogul 2020 website
Link to story about minor leaguers in MLB The Show
Link to Advocates for Minor Leaguers
Link to More Than Baseball
Link to order The MVP Machine

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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley speak to FanGraphs’ Eric Longenhagen and ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel about their new book, Future Value: The Battle for Baseball’s Soul and How Teams Will Find the Next Superstar, touching on topics including the best kinds of scouting stories, how technology and data have confirmed or overturned traditional scouting beliefs, how smart teams are spending, how to make a miserly owner invest in scouting and development, whether scouts should have access to data, whether scouts can accurately assess makeup, introverted vs. extroverted scouts, whether it’s good or bad for teams to have a “type,” how teams will train prospects if there isn’t a minor league season, whether it’s possible to predict injuries, Eric and Kiley’s scouting strengths and weaknesses, and much more.

Audio intro: The Weakerthans, "Relative Surplus Value"
Audio outro: Erick Dayz, "Scouting Report"

Link to order Future Value
Link to Future Value excerpt
Link to Eric and Kiley’s scouting primer
Link to Ben on Scout School
Link to Kiley on the Yankees signing minor league free agents
Link to Russell Carleton on adolescent cognitive development
Link to Brandon Martin story
Link to Toe Nash story
Link to Ebert’s John Prine review
Link to article about serial athlete impersonator
Link to article about Joba impersonator
Link to article about Pasqua impersonator
Link to article about Mets/Marlins con man
Link to Stark on Molina’s home run
Link to order The Only Rule Is It Has to Work
Link to order The MVP Machine

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Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the strange story of a man named Bill Henry who impersonated former major league reliever Bill Henry for decades, then answer listener emails about seasons with an ERA+ or OPS+ of 420, teams from the past that they would most want to cover as time-traveling beat writers, and the difference between being fans of teams and being fans of particular players, plus two Stat Blasts about all-time head-to-head franchise records and how good a starting rotation would have to be to make up for a replacement-level rest of the roster.

Audio intro: First Aid Kit, "Master Pretender"
Audio outro: Roy Orbison, "The Great Pretender"

Link to AP story about the Bill Henrys
Link to impostor’s obituary
Link to local story about the Bill Henrys
Link to story about exposing the fake Bill
Link to SI story about the Bill Henrys
Link to Bill Henry’s SABR bio
Link to de Kooning theft story
Link to false memory story
Link to Stat Blast song covers thread
Link to Tess Taruskin’s cover video
Link to order The Only Rule Is It Has to Work
Link to order The MVP Machine

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Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about how runs, hits, and errors became baseball’s standard scoreboard stats and the piecemeal way in which baseball evolves, then reminisce about and reevaluate the 2015 experiment that led to their 2016 book about running the independent league Sonoma Stompers, The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team.

Audio intro: Wishbone Ash, "Errors of My Way"
Audio outro: Splinter, "After Five Years"

Link to Sam on Runs/Hits/Errors
Link to article about modern box scores
Link to first 2016 book companion podcast
Link to second 2016 book companion podcast
Link to third 2016 book companion podcast
Link to The Only Rule website
Link to order The Only Rule Is It Has to Work
Link to order The MVP Machine

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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about new options for supporting FanGraphs and a potential plan to play the 2020 season with a radically realigned league structure, then talk to FanGraphs writer and ZiPS projection system proprietor Dan Szymborski about how a shortened or canceled season would affect projections for 2021, whether players would exceed or fall short of their projections after a long layoff, how a canceled season could impair player development, how returns from injuries, strength of schedule, and fewer games could help or hurt certain teams in 2020, tactics and roster strategies that could be beneficial in a shortened season, whether Statcast has improved projections, doing away with divisions, the appeal of streaming/esports in the absence of traditional sports, the MLB The Show players tournament, and how projecting baseball is different from projecting pandemics.

Audio intro: The Mountain Goats, "This Year"
Audio outro: The Strokes, "Ode to the Mets"

Link to FanGraphs financial update
Link to FanGraphs membership page
Link to FanGraphs gift membership page
Link to FanGraphs donation page
Link to realignment report
Link to Rob Arthur on uncertainty
Like to Matt Trueblood on shortened-season tactics
Link to Dan on playoff odds changes
Link to Dan on healing teams
Link to Dan on embracing weirdness
Link to Ben on esports
Link to Hannah on simulated seasons
Link to MLB The Show league
Link to Mets broadcasters calling MLB The Show
Link to FiveThirtyEight on modeling COVID-19
Link to Dan’s COVID-19 Twitter thread
Link to order The MVP Machine

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