The SIS Baseball Podcast

On this episode, Mark Simon is joined by national baseball writer Hannah Keyser and SIS operations analyst Brandon Tew. Hannah, who formerly wrote for Yahoo Sports, introduced us to her thrice-weekly baseball newsletter, The Bandwagon, which she co-authors with Zach Crizer. She shared what early-season baseball happenings surprised her and 'confirmed her priors.' Then she played along and guessed at the members of 'The All-Scrapes Team' (or 'The All-Ouch Team') - players who have dove f...

On this episode, Mark Simon welcomes Washington Post national baseball writer Chelsea Janes, Cleveland Guardians minor league assistant hitting coach Amanda Kamekona, and children’s book author Myra Faye Turner, who gave us a Women’s History month baseball lesson. Mark and Chelsea discussed the best defensive teams entering 2025, underachievers in 2024 who could be in for big years this season, players with injury concerns, sleeper MVP and Cy Young picks, and predicted LCS and World Series ma...

We close out 2024 by asking two people what they'll remember. First we ask recently-retired (and new father) Kevin Kiermaier about the defensive plays he'll most remember from his career. He's the overall leader in Defensive Runs Saved by a center fielder. We also talked to Kevin about what it was like to play for the Dodgers and got a specific example on how their advance scouting paid off. Then we talked to baseball writer Sam Miller about the most memorable things from the 2024 season (s...

On this episode, Mark Simon takes a break from talking defense (mostly) by welcoming in Sean Smith. Sean, a former consultant for the Blue Jays, is the inventor of the WAR you see on Baseball-Reference.com and the author of the new book, War In Pieces, a documenting of how he put it together and an explanation of how it works. The book's chapters are short and not hard to understand, with lots of pertinent historical examples. Sean talked about the impact the stat has had within baseball, hi...

On this episode, Mark Simon is joined by one of the top defensive players in the minor leagues, A's outfield prospect Colby Thomas, to talk about how he does what he does in the outfield. Mark also talked to Chelsea Janes of The Washington Post and Tyler Kepner of The Athletic for our 4th annual look at the surprises of the 2024 season. These included the Jose Iglesias, Ronel Blanco, Christopher Sánchez, as well as the Tigers, Guardians, and Blue Jays, plus others as well. Mark also coaxes ...