SABRcast with Rob Neyer

Baseball fans, tune in this season to SABRcast with Rob Neyer, a weekly podcast hosted by award-winning author and longtime SABR member Rob Neyer. SABRcast features insights and analysis of what’s happening in modern baseball on and off the field, plus compelling interviews with figures from around the game — and music from The Baseball Project.

Subscribe to SABRcast on your favorite podcast networks, including Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, or Stitcher, and listen to each episode as soon as it’s released.

Neyer is a longtime baseball writer and editor for ESPN.com, SB Nation, and FoxSports.com. He began his career as a research assistant for groundbreaking baseball author Bill James and later worked for STATS, Inc. He has also written or co-written seven baseball books, including The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers (with Bill James), winner of the Sporting News/SABR Baseball Research Award, and most recently Power Ball: Anatomy of a Modern Baseball Game, winner of the 2019 CASEY Award.

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Current Episode

Episode #165: June 6, 2022

Grassroots Baseball: Route 66, by Jean FruthThis week’s guests are Jean Fruth and Jeff Idelson, co-founders of Grassroots Baseball, an organization that celebrates the amateur game around the world and encourages kids to play ball. Fruth is the author of the new Grassroots Baseball: Route 66, along with Grassroots Baseball: Where Legends Begin in 2020. She is also the traveling photographer for La Vida Baseball. She has been a baseball photographer for nearly two decades with the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Idelson served as the Baseball Hall of Fame President from 2008 to 2019, and he has spent more than three decades working in baseball. Fruth and Idelson were guests on SABRcast #84 in November 2020.

Click here or press play below to listen to Episode #165:

What’s Rob Reading?

Screenshot of Apple TV's probability of reaching base in a recent game

“How Good Are Those Probabilities on the Apple TV+ Broadcasts?”
By Ben Clemens, FanGraphs

“As you’re probably aware, Apple TV+ has stepped onto the baseball broadcasting scene this year, airing two games every Friday. They’re stylistically different from your average baseball broadcast, even at a glance. The colors look different, more muted to my eyes than the average broadcast. The score bugs are sleek, the fonts understated. The announcers are mostly new faces. And most interestingly, to me at least, the broadcast displays probabilities on nearly every pitch. As a big old math nerd, I love probabilities. They appeal to something that feels almost elemental. Every time I watch a baseball game, I wonder how likely the next hitter up is to get a hit – or to reach base, or strike out, or drive in a run. It’s not so much that I want to know the future – probabilities can’t tell you that – but I would like to know whether the outcome I’m hoping for is an uphill battle or a near-certainty, and how the ongoing struggle of pitcher against hitter changes that. The Apple TV+ broadcasts gets those probability numbers from nVenue, a tech startup that got its start in an NBC tech accelerator.”

Archived Episodes

Episode #164: Emma Baccellieri (May 30, 2022)

Episode #163: Bill Nowlin (May 23, 2022)

Episode #162: James Brunson III (May 16, 2022)

Episode #161: Rich Waltz (May 9, 2022)

Episode #160: Kostya Kennedy (May 2, 2022)

Episode #159: Jim Kaat (April 25, 2022)

Episode #158: Jim Allen (April 18, 2022)

Episode #157: Tyler Kepner (April 11, 2022)

Episode #156: Andy McCue (April 4, 2022)

Episode #155: Dale Scott (March 28, 2022)

Episode #154: Alan Nathan (March 21, 2022)

Episode #153: Pedro Moura (March 14, 2022)

Episode #152: Jeff Katz (March 7, 2022)

Episode #151: Will Carroll (February 28, 2022)

Episode #150: Gary Cieradkowski (February 21, 2022)

Episode #149: Allen Barra (February 14, 2022)

Episode #148: Katherine Walden (February 7, 2022)

Episode #147: Jake Stone (January 31, 2022)

Episode #146: Terry Pluto (January 24, 2022)

Episode #145: Zack Hample (January 17, 2022)

Episode #144: Eno Sarris (January 10, 2022)

Episode #143: Jeff Neuman (January 3, 2022)