Leadoff Grand Slam
32 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 14 ratingsA podcast about what we love about baseball. Hosted by Jordan Ryan Pedersen and Nick Lerangis - and sometimes Bill Porter or Coach Dave. Theme song by Nick Lerangis. Art by the great @drawawalk.
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Episodes
#31: The Fifth Guy Who Looks like Macklemore: Kim Ng, Steve Cohen, and a Giant KBO Sword
December 01, 2020 14:00 - 50 minutes - 34.4 MBThis week, for our surprise return - the first episode of season 2, which is a preview for season 3?? - the thing Jordan and Nick love about baseball is Kim Ng! Also no we don't think recording an episode a month after the season ended after not recording any episodes during the regular season is weird at all, why do you ask? We also do a very brief free agent roundup - because there isn't much to talk about because it's a #ColeWorld - discuss whether we think the COVID-shortened plague seas...
#30 | Spatula Wrist: Basketball, The Blockbuster BRUSDAR GRATEROL Trade, and Bookie Mets
February 07, 2020 22:00 - 55 minutes - 38 MBThis week, for our second offseason episode, the thing Jordan and Nick love about baseball is basketball! Because being a baseball fan this offseason was rather depressing, and mostly Jordan and Nick prefer to enjoy basketball rather than behold the objective awfulness of Rob Manfred and Major League Baseball. Fun fact though, we recorded the afternoon of Tuesday the 4th, and on Tuesday evening they announced the Brusdar Graterol trade - aka the Mookie Betts trade if you're pedestrian like ...
#29 | The Astros are a Deepfake: Blake Snell's Twitch Stream, MLBeards, and Rob Manfred is a Cartoon Villain
December 17, 2019 12:00 - 41 minutes - 28.4 MBThis week, for their first offseason episode, the thing Jordan and Nick love about baseball is Blake Snell's Twitch Stream! We also talk about bad photoshopping, how deepfaking is the future of baseball, and why Rob Manfred is bad this week. He's bad every week, but there's a new reason this week. We also spend a good five minutes complimenting each other. (Also, Jordan here: I realized I said I took Rachel to see her favorite band but never said what the band is. it's Nathaniel Rateliff an...
#28 | Senior Soup Latives: Bandwagons, LoGS End of Year Awards, and the Nats are Cancelled
November 05, 2019 12:00 - 56 minutes - 38.5 MBThis week, for their final episode of the 2019 season *sob* the thing Jordan and Nick love about baseball is bandwagons! We spend the first part of the ep gushing about the Nats, the bandwagon we jumped on for the World Series. (Except we found out just after we recorded the episode that the Nats are MAGA hat-ers, which completely yucked our yum. So the Nats are actually cancelled, but we didn't know that when we recorded most of this episode. Woof.) The rest of the show is devoted to our L...
#27 | Calma: Federal Baseball, Arguing with Robots, and Frankenstein & Jesus
October 22, 2019 20:00 - 21 minutes - 14.8 MBThis week, the thing Jordan loves about baseball is federal baseball! Baseball in Washington, D.C. (This is a solo ep for Jordan, as everybody else was busy. Accordingly, it's a shortie aka a Leadoff Grand Slam Short Porch, which is something we're determined to make happen.) In addition to giving you a brief history of baseball in our nation's capital, I'll also thoroughly meh the ALCS, get very mad about that dickhead Yankees fan, and talk about robots, Frankenstein, and Jesus. It's a Jor...
#26 | Eck "Pitch" Tinkering: Pitch Tinkering, We Hate Baseball (Again), and Nick goes Papa Bear
October 15, 2019 11:00 - 33 minutes - 22.9 MBThis week, the thing Nick and Jordan love about baseball is pitch tinkering! You'd think we'd love the various CSes but nope, ALL our teams got knocked out, so we love something evergreen and theoretical rather than timely. (Though Kyle Boddy got hired by the Reds a few weeks ago so it's sorta timely.) We also talk a bit about the Braves tomahawk thing and why that organization so richly deserved to lose after engaing in the most perfunctory kind of course correction that actually did more h...
#25 | The MLB's Pacific Rim: Being Healthy, Pete Alonso's Wholesome Tweets, and some Yoff Analysis
October 08, 2019 11:00 - 1 hour - 42.5 MBHappy Belated Birthday, Jordan! We got you a podcast episode! On this week's, our 25th, episode of Leadoff Grand Slam, we have a long-awaited Threedoff Grand Slam! The thing we love about baseball is the nebulous concept of players being "healthy," especially when compared with our own civilan relative good health. We get grossed out by a picture of Anthony Rizzo's destroyed ankle (it looks like a bag of grapes thrown against a wall), talk about Max Scherzer's shoulder, and gripe about how...
#24 | This is Howie Kendrick: Depth, Pete Alonso’s 53rd HR, and Soto(menor) y Sotomayor
October 01, 2019 11:00 - 31 minutes - 21.3 MBToday, on this solo episode, the thing Nick loves about baseball is depth. Who is the 5th best player on your favorite team? He dug a bit into the WAR leaderboards and analyzed the differences between teams like the Astros and Dodgers, the A’s, and baseball’s least deep team, the LA Angels. Sorry. Nick might like it if Joe Maddon ended up managing the Mets. Not sure. In the season’s second to last game, Pete Alonso hit dong number 53, placing him in the top spot in baseball’s history for r...
#23 | Pepé Le Pew at the Dish: Second Half Stars, CC Sabathia and Dellin Betances, and Horrible, Horrible Men
September 24, 2019 20:00 - 1 hour - 47.5 MBThis week, the thing Nick, Jordan, and Bill love about baseball is second half stars! This is a serious one, y'all! We talk a lot about Felipe Vazquez, Domingo German, and Joe Torre sputtering moronic, incoherent banalities about why MLB wouldn't let the Mets honor 9/11 first responders - banalities that turn out, we decide, to be cynical in a deeply depressing way. Eventually we climb our way out of the darkness and have some fun: Amir Garrett sprinting away from Kyle Schwarber - our Beef ...
#22 | The Next Bad Boy of the Chicagoland Organ Scene: *Nothing*, The G Beard, and Howie Rose is a god
September 17, 2019 11:00 - 50 minutes - 34.5 MBThis week, the thing Nick and Jordan love about baseball is...nothing? We love nothing about baseball? That can't be right, can it? Yes, our theme for this week is *nothing,* because both Nick and Jordan are of the opinion that despite the on-paper chances for the Mets and the Cubs, it's just not going to happen for them. (Just listen, it'll make sense.) We also do an injury update, we talk about Mike Fiers' G Beard, and we mehhhhh our way through a discussion of the single-season home run ...
#21 | Justin Verlander's Third Birthday Party: No-Hitters, An Old Player Check-in, and PARRAAAAAA
September 10, 2019 11:00 - 50 minutes - 34.6 MBThis week, the thing Nick and Jordan love about baseball is no-hitters! Because come on, Justin Verlander. (Coach Dave is off this week.) We also talk about the firing of Dave Dombrowski, we do an old player check-in - did you know Justin Turner is 34??? - and we come to the unanimous and thoroughly scientific conclusion that Enemy of the Pod™️ Gerardo Parra is responsible for the resurgence of the Washington Nationals. Our other baseball podcast is The Drew Goodman Podcast with Julie Br...
#20 | Where Have All The Jamie Moyers Gone: September Callups, Altagracia Alvino, and Dave has a conspiracy theory
September 03, 2019 11:00 - 51 minutes - 35.3 MBThis week, the thing Nick and Coach Dave love about baseball is September Callups! They're the pumpkin spice of callups. They're not Pete Alonso. They're not Vladdy Jr. They're not even Aristedes Aquino. But they're fun, sometimes. We talk about the amazing NYT profile of Altagracia Alvino, the woman who begat both Vlads Guerrero and cooks for hundreds of Latin ballplayers. We are sad that nobody is Jamie Moyer, and nobody will be until Steven Matz goes to Korea, develops a slurve, and pit...
#19 | It’s Important Not to Get Too Excited About Things: "The Switch," Derek Holland, and September Predictions
August 20, 2019 11:00 - 54 minutes - 37.8 MBThis week, the thing Jordan and guest host Bill Porter love about baseball is "the switch!" (Coach Dave and Nick Lerangis are off this week.) "The switch" is moment in August when we go from the doldrums of summer baseball to the excitement of the stretch before the playoffs. (Don't worry if you haven't heard of the switch before; Bill made it up.) We also talk about Derek Holland's noble and most likely misguided butthurtedness on Twitter, why PECOTA is always right and you should never be...
#18 | ASMR Mets Fan: Defensive Highlights, NL Wild Card Madness, and The Orioles Got Beef
August 13, 2019 18:00 - 47 minutes - 32.9 MBThis week, the thing Nick and Coach Dave love about baseball is defensive highlights! Jordan is off this week, and sorely missed. Nick and Dave agree that home run highlights are boring. Who wants a two-camera-angle-needing dinger highlight that needs much context when you could have a silky smooth barehanded catch and throw across the diamond? We talk about the crazyballs NL Wild Card, decide that position player pitching is broke and pitcher position play is woke, and recap the Beef of th...
#17 | Until The Wilpons Trade Themselves into The Sun: The Cubs Radio Booth, The Trade Deadline, The Reds and Pirates’ Slobberknocker
August 06, 2019 11:00 - 37 minutes - 25.9 MBThis week, the thing Jordan (yes, valiant, solo Jordan) loves about baseball is the Cubs radio broadcast team. He does an incredible improvised version of Pat Hughes' ad lead-in, and waxes poetical about Hughes and Rons Coomer and Santo. We/Jordan also do/does a Trade Deadline Recap (tl;dr: the "big" trades broke late but were big, holy crap the Astros are tight, the Mets are confusing, the Reds are that pathetic person who starts dating the toxic ex of a friend, the "medium" trades were m...
#16 | Bad Dates at First Base: First Base Chats, Mike Minor's WAR, and The Worst Nicknames
July 30, 2019 11:00 - 1 hour - 46.7 MBThis week, the thing Jordan and Bill - who??? - love about baseball is first base chats! We also do MORE trade deadline check-in - because that's basically the only thing going on - we posit a theory about why there's such a big gap between Mike Minor's Baseball Reference WAR and his Fangraphs WAR, and we throw out a simple, harmless idea - maybe there should be ties in baseball? - that will surely see us burnt at the stake as witches. Oh also, "we" this week is Jordan and Bill Porter. Bill...
#15 | Scholars in that Box: 3 Outs, Trade Deadline Check-In, and Coach Drake
July 23, 2019 00:00 - 1 hour - 42.4 MBThis week, the thing Nick and Jordan - Coach Dave is in Norway! - love about baseball is 3 outs! We'll explain, we promise. It's kind of abstract but it's Leadoff Grand Slam, and it's just Nick and Jordan this week, so. We also do a check-in in advance of the trade deadline on July 31st - spoiler alert, Nick meh's a lot of it - we talk about some simmering Kenley Jansen/Dave Roberts beef, and we exult in the fiery cuteness that is Coach Drake. We talk savages too, because we're a baseball p...
#14 | Arbitrary Bowel Syndrome: The Disco Demolition, All-Star Week Recap, and ROBOTS
July 16, 2019 15:00 - 56 minutes - 38.5 MBThis week, the thing Coach Dave, Nick, and Jordan love about baseball is the Disco Demolition! You remember, that thing where a rock DJ blew up a crate of disco records in center field at Comiskey Park? Yeah, it does sound pretty dumb. (Fun fact: this thing we love may actually be a thing we hate.) We also do an All-Star Week Recap (tl;dr: Home Run Derby amazing, All-Star Game boring - we talk about the Rob Manfred/Justin Verlander kerfuffle over the space balls, and we ruminate over the im...
#13 | The All-Star Game Should Be Mario Party: Little Brother Teams, All-Star Week, and Odon de Pins, Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller
July 09, 2019 11:00 - 1 hour - 49.3 MBThis week, the thing Coach Dave, Jordan, and Nick love about baseball is little brother teams! You know, the White Sox to the Cubs, the Mets to the Yankees, the Angels to the Dodgers. We also babble - I am running out of synonyms for "talk about" - about why All-Star Week could be so much more fun - short answer, the All-Star Game is stupid and should be replaced with goofy skills tests - and make some predictions now that we've arrived at the break. Coach Dave also enlightens us about Odon...
#12-ish | Sexy Take Me Out to the Ball Game: Random Dudes from the 90s and Early Aughts, TRAITORS, and Back Tattoos
July 02, 2019 11:00 - 21 minutes - 14.8 MBThis week, the thing Dave, Jordan, and Nick - but really just Nick; we'll explain - love about baseball is random dudes from the 90s and early aughts! Strap in, Leadoff Grand Slam Pieces, because this is a weird 'un. Jordan was gone this week because he and his wife bought a house and then moved into it. Also, the day they bought the house, their dog got out, was missing for seven hours, and then randomly showed up at the front door of the house she ran off from. Worst day ever, then best d...
#11 | The Pitcher Got the Better of the Batter: Pitcher Relief, Eloy's Dunkachino, and the Crazy Baseball Idea of the Week
June 25, 2019 11:00 - 1 hour - 52.2 MBThis week, the thing Dave, Jordan, and Nick love about baseball is pitcher relief! Not relief pitchers. Like, that look on the pitcher's face when an outfielder makes a diving catch to save their no-hitter. We'll explain! We also chew the fat about the Rays' dumb idea to be a two-city team, Marcus Stroman's POSITIVE heckling of Mike Trout - very LGS - and some crazy baseball ideas that would be super fun but entirely untenable. And Nick shares his Fathers Day experience in some amazing seat...
#10 | Jordan is Tony Wolters’ Godfather: Rivalries, Buyers and Sellers, and the Noble Failure of the Week
June 18, 2019 12:00 - 1 hour - 49.6 MBThis week for their TENTH EPISODE CUE THE CONFETTI/PARADES/PIÑATAS STUFFED WITH CHECKS TO PAY OFF OUR STUDENT LOANS, the thing Jordan and Nick love about baseball is rivalries! Dave’s off this week because the thing he loves is his dad and he wanted to hang out with him for Father’s Day or whatever. We also jaw about Hyun-Jin Ryu’s training routine or lack thereof between starts, why Adam Jones is the best person in the world, and we debut “‘Of the Week’ Of the Week,” a segment where we try...
#9 | The Marlins Drafted a Drum Fill: “They Know Each Other So Well,” The Draft, and a Brand New Theme Song!
June 11, 2019 12:00 - 1 hour - 31.5 MBThis week, the thing Dave, Jordan, and Nick love about baseball is that annoying platitude, “they know each other so well.” Sample size, people!!! We also slog our way through a draft recap, largely trying not to mispronounce Adley Rutschman’s name, we talk MLB Pride, and we debut our brand new Leadoff Grand Slam theme song. The other baseball podcast we shout out this week is 7Innings, ESPN’s weekly Softball Podcast chronicling the Road to the Women's College World Series and beyond. Sub...
#8 | The Cy Hyun Award: Weird Baseball Injuries, The Twins, and The World’s Greatest Cup Story
June 04, 2019 15:00 - 1 hour - 32.2 MBContent Warning: Please note that we briefly discuss Odubel Herrera’s arrest on suspicion of domestic violence. Click here to donate to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. This week, the thing Dave, Jordan, and Nick love about baseball is weird baseball injuries! We also ponder whether the Twins will stay as good as they’ve been, we delight in Oklahoma University softball player Samantha Show’s one-of-a-kind bat flip, and we pull out our goddamn hair about why, especially in the wake of...
#7 | Corner Infielder Cuadran Gular : Home Run Lingo, The Phillies, and Toe Tappin' Sean Doolittle
May 28, 2019 11:00 - 1 hour - 31.5 MBThis week, the thing Nick, Jordan, and Dave love about baseball is home run lingo! We also talk Daniel Desclaso's [sic] little league home run, whether Sean Doolittle's toe tap/graze/mound reiki constitutes a balk, and when it's time to finally give up on a player (I will never abandon you, Jason Heyward). The other baseball podcast we shout out this week is Resting Pitchface, the Nats podcast hosted by Kay, Laura, and Syd. Thanks as always to the great @drawawalk for our artwork. Stuff w...
#6 | HALF (Heckles Acknowledge by Left Fielder): Hecklers, An Epic Mets Gripe, and Chris Sale's 12 K(haki Poopy)s
May 21, 2019 11:00 - 1 hour - 29 MBThis week, the thing Nick, Jordan, and Dave love about baseball is hecklers! We talk Carlos Zambrano the Designated Hitter, Edwin Jackson making it to his 15th team, and Enemy of the Pod Gerardo Parra on this week's Love/Hate/Meh. We also do mostly entirely subjective NBA to MLB comparisons, and we give the mic over to Nick for a Mets rant so epic it makes us wonder if we shouldn't have just been a Mets podcast. The other baseball podcast we shout out this week is The Ravine Report, the bra...
#5 | Adam Dunn Thinks a Taco Salad is a Salad: Grand Slams, BEES, and an Interview with Acceptably Drawn Baseball (@drawawalk)
May 14, 2019 17:00 - 1 hour - 39.1 MBThis week, the thing Nick, Jordan, and Dave love about baseball is grand slams - though you probably already knew that. We also discuss whether Joey Gallo is a stud or scrub, the time BEES interrupted a Giants Reds game, and we have our first ever interview with Ang, the creator of both the cover art for Leadoff Grand Slam and the mind behind the marvelous Acceptably Drawn Baseball Twitter account (@drawawalk). The other baseball podcast we shout out this week is The Infinite Inning, the ab...
#4 | Madduces and Starbices: Complete Games, The Scourge of Addison Russell, and Bryce Harper is Howard Schultz
May 07, 2019 15:00 - 1 hour - 30.1 MBContent Warning: We discuss domestic violence during this week's pod. Discretion advised. This week, the thing Nick, Jordan, and Dave love about baseball is complete games! We also discuss why the Rays are so good - spoiler alert: it's not just because the Red Sox suck and the Yankees are injured - Addison Russell's return to baseball and why that sucks major ass for anyone who cares about the rights of abuse victims, we field the All “About to Declare their Candidacy for 2020” Team, and w...
#3| Monster Energy Energy: Call Ups, Vladito, and the The Worst Walkup Music
May 01, 2019 04:00 - 1 hour - 33.2 MBThis week, the thing Dave, Jordan, and Nick love about baseball is call ups! We exult in the arrival of our dreadlocked lord and savior, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., dream on the infinite potential of call ups for young prospects - and the noble chance for an old timer to get one more major league hit - and try to decide who has the worst walkup music. We also field the All Dads team - two teams actually, old dads and young cool dads. The other baseball podcast we shout out this week is the Purpl...
#2 | Sign Caig Kringel: Ejections, Tim Anderson, and Should Third Basemen Shave Broadcasters?
May 01, 2019 03:00 - 1 hour - 28.3 MBThis week, the thing Nick, Jordan, and Dave love about baseball is ejections! We talk about Tim Anderson and Brad Keller's ejections - bulls**t and a different kind of bulls**t, respectively - whether the Red Sox are actually bad, if the White Sox are cool - and what even makes a team cool? We also wonder whether Pete Alonso is a Large Adult Son® and ask Dave what made Manny Machado's bare-handed play at third so great because Dave was a real-life baseball player. We also wonder whether the ...
#1 | Jacob deGrom is American Psycho: The First Week of Baseball Season, BARPs, and The All Heels Team
May 01, 2019 02:00 - 58 minutes - 26.8 MBOur first episode! Well actually our second, we recorded a test episode with like iPhone headphones to confirm that we actually wanted to do a podcast - *narrator voice* they did - and then we had to rename THAT episode episode 0, and it was a whole thing. ANYWAY. For their inaugural episode, the thing Jordan, Nick, and Dave love about baseball is the first week of baseball season! We dream on what would happen if the playoffs were tomorrow, we do our first All-Team with the All-Heels and A...
Introducing Leadoff Grand Slam, the podcast about what we love about baseball
May 01, 2019 01:00 - 2 minutes - 1.05 MBJordan Ryan Pedersen is a freak who got into baseball at the age of 31 and lives for Sabermetrics, Dave played third base all the way into college and is a hyper-traditionalist, and Nick Lerangis is a perpetually disappointed Mets fan who's somewhere in between. And they want to tell you all the things they love about baseball, in a time when people are oh-so-eager to tell you why baseball sucks. This is Leadoff Grand Slam.