Baseball Tonight with Buster Olney - Podcast Rankings and reviews

Rays fan here. Been listening for years love all the hard work Buster does with great interviews and insightful analysis. Taylor’s a great producer too. Also love that Busters heart is in the right place. I really admire his sign-off. The call to action to fight racism is a great note to end on. Really a class act. I haven’t been able to discern any political commentary that other reviews reference but maybe those episodes were before I started listening? Also, love Sarah Langs’ research and the good natured teasing Buster and Tim give her for being the biggest baseball fan in the world. Sarah Abbott is also super funny I appreciate her perspective and the degree of normalcy she adds to the conversation. Definitely a great baseball podcast.

Love Buster, Timmy and Sarah Langs’ takes and banter but there’s a consistent and frustrating focus on the biggest-market teams in SoCal and NYC/BOS/PHI. I get that this focus is just part of the deal with ESPN content in general, but there are a couple dozen other MLB teams out there with interesting stories and players - and many thousands (millions?) of fans following those teams.

Baseball tonight was my favorite nightly show to get my baseball fix. Love all the stats and guests. Also still love listening to Sarah Langs, still working with ALS. Shows how much she loves baseball. The only reason why this rating isn’t a 5 is the number of ads.

Any baseball podcast that has the great Tim Kurkjian as a regular guest is worth listening to. Todd Radom’s weekly appearances are always entertaining and informative but no one can match Tim’s obvious passion and love for the game. Huge congrats on the well deserved honor that he will be receiving in Cooperstown on July 24.

I enjoyed this podcast for many years and never missed an episode. But honestly, sometimes I think Buster hates baseball. Everything has such a negative spin on it. Either that or he attempts to get everyone to agree with his negative line of thinking…”wouldn’t you agree that blah blah blah.” I just feel like I’m constantly being lectured or preached to by Buster. And why oh why is the co-host a guy that admits that he doesn’t know much about baseball??? And then Buster constantly asks his opinion about baseball related topics. He doesn’t know anything about the sport…why are you asking him?!?!? One minute Buster is citing every obscure baseball stat that only super hardcore baseball fans know…and the next minute he is getting feedback from a guy with zero baseball knowledge?? What kind of sense does that make?? Don’t get me wrong. They all seem like good humans. But more & more I question why I listen. It just isn’t fun anymore and I honestly get stressed from all the negativity and pompous lectures. More often than not I find myself wondering why I just invested 50 minutes of my life into listening.

I started listening to this podcast over a decade ago when it was Baseball Today hosted by Eric Karabell with co-hosts Mark Simon and Keith Law. That was a great podcast. This version took a downward turn right off the bat and it has been downhill ever since. I found the last couple of years pretty unbearable and I’m finally ready to leave. I’m not sure who the audience for this podcast is but maybe if you are a very casual fan and want to hear about big market teams and the game’s top stars you might find this show informative (but likely too long if you are that casual a fan). But I think it is more likely that this is somebody at ESPN’s idea of how to showcase their own baseball reporters and broadcasters. Those broadcasters seem to think very highly of themselves and each other, but they are actually pretty boring in a very self-congratulatory way. The only feature of this podcast I find interesting are the segments with researcher Paul Hembekides who uses advanced metrics in an interesting and insightful way. I have switched to the Windup series of podcasts from The Athletic. They cover the game broadly (not just stars and big market teams), they have different types of coverage with a wide range of reporters, the coverage is smart and funny, and it’s just an all around better experience. Goodbye Baseball Tonight.