FanGraphs Audio: Buster Olney and Jay Jaffe on Election Season Suspense

Episode 958

On this week’s episode, we sit down with a veteran baseball writer to talk about the Hall of Fame before hearing from a minor league outfielder with plenty under his belt already.

• To begin the show, Jay Jaffe welcomes Buster Olney, senior writer at ESPN and host of the Baseball Tonight podcast. Earlier this month, Buster wrote a piece about the upcoming Hall of Fame election and the effects of ballot-tracking, and he and Jay were eager to dive into the nuances of the issue. The duo discuss why Buster no longer participates in voting, the hypocrisy involved in the creation of the character clause, how important accountability and transparency have been among voters, how the industry covered the steroid era, and the current labor lockout. [3:03]
• In the second half, David Laurila welcomes free-agent outfielder Rhett Wiseman. The pair first talked a decade ago, and since then Wiseman has been drafted twice, won a championship with Vanderbilt in 2014, played in the Nationals system, and recently reached free agency. We hear about that journey and the challenges of the minor league experience, as well as the pros and cons of the CBA, the need for a minor league players union, and how impressive it was to play with Juan Soto. [42:22]

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Audio after the jump. (Approximate 73 minutes play time.)

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