BYB Podcast 73: Dreaming of baseball with the quarantine blues

Welcome back! It’s been tough finding topics to talk about that aren’t completely up in the air along with the rest of the game right now. Our solution is a strong pair of special guests on tap for this one.

Note that we recorded on Sunday night, before the full release of MLB’s new tentative plans for a partial season based in Arizona on Monday the sixth of April. As it turns out we anticipated many of the issues involved, but release of the podcast was delayed by the passing of Tigers’ legend Al Kaline. Mr. Kaline will no doubt be the subject of many podcasts on his own in the weeks to come.

Cody Stavenhagen, Tigers beat writer for The Athletic Detroit joins us on the podcast to talk about his impressions of spring training and hopes for the season prior to the COVID-19 delay.

We’re also joined by friend of the pod Mark Gorosh, host of the Don’t Call it a Rebuild, It’s a Team Build podcast (we need to shorten this moniker btw) over on the Tigers Minor League Report network of pods. A monthly podcast summit with each other may be in the offing.

Discussion ranged from MLB’s contingency plans for a partial season and the problems and possible opportunities at hand as a result. We looked into the potential impact of the Tigers revamped player development department, but it’s still going to be some time until their impact, for good or ill, becomes tangible. We talked to Cody about Casey Mize and some of the other standouts he observed down in Lakeland a few weeks ago, though it now feels like it’s been months since we saw any action.

Finally, the last half hour or so is largely a quick discussion of some of the music, books, movies, and tv shows getting us through the lockdown.

Intro: “Motor City 2” - J. Dilla