FanGraphs Audio: John Sadak Joins the Booth

by
February 11, 2021

Episode 909

On this week’s episode of FanGraphs Audio, we talk to a new major league broadcaster, an astrophysicist about the deadened baseball, and a true journeyman southpaw.

  • To begin the show, David Laurila welcomes John Sadak, the new play-by-play announcer for the Cincinnati Reds. They talk about how John went to college thinking he wanted to do something with math — such as astrophysics — before deciding to pursue a career in sports. He also shares his thoughts about his great opportunity in the TV booth, how he hopes to reach a fanbase as storied as Cincinnati’s, and remembers the late Pedro Gomez. [2:47]
  • Following that, Dan Szymborski welcomes Dr. Meredith Wills to the program. With news that MLB plans to change the baseball, Wills’ extensive research on baseball physics is once again top of mind — and was recently featured in a piece at Sports Illustrated. The pair discuss the history, nebulousness, and many ramifications of the issue, as well as mathematical knitting, Mark Twain, and a fun nickname for this new ball. [30:40]
  • In the final segment, David returns to talk to left-hander Derrick Loop. The 37-year-old recently pitched in the Caribbean Series, and he shares stories about his experiences playing across the globe, including a few funky playing environments. Loop also gives a little insight into his stellar pick-off move that helped him nab 17 baserunners in a single season in the minors. [1:05:56]

To purchase a FanGraphs membership for yourself or as a gift, click here.

To donate to FanGraphs and help us keep things running, click here.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @dhhiggins on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.

Audio after the jump. (Approximate 1 hour 23 minutes play time.)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS





 

Dylan assists in producingFanGraphs Audio, Effectively Wild, and the FanGraphs Live Twitch channel. He also enjoys the Waxahachie Swap (RIP), the Air Bud principle, and the Oxford comma. You can Tweet him about any of those things @dhhiggins.

Comments are closed.