Best Podcast in Baseball returns to ask: Does closure help spur Cardinals' new beginning?

Best Podcast in Baseball

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Sports, Baseball

4.6 • 690 Ratings

🗓️ 17 October 2025

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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It's been a minute since a brand-new Best Podcast in Baseball and there's a lot to catch up on. For the first time in 18 years, the Cardinals have a new president of baseball operations, and for the first time in even longer they're talking about a team-building plan that doesn't include promises of aiming to contend for a World Series championship. That will likely mean an active winter of trades. At the same time, two prominent former Cardinals, Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina, are throwing their names in the ring for manager vacancies elsewhere, with at least two teams (and likely a third soon) entertaining Pujols as a strong candidate for their open position. And, in the past week, a former Cardinals manager Mike Shildt retired from the position with San Diego, spurring conversation about why he left both jobs abruptly and resurfacing reasons reported in the Post-Dispatch and elsewhere after his sudden firing in 2021.

Former players and old conversations all swirl together to invite the question on whether to truly move in a fresh direction did the Cardinals need a stretch like this that brings closure to the past and signals the new era.

Kevin Wheeler, of KMOX/104.1 FM, joins Derrick Goold for a (long overdue) new episode of BPIB to discuss that and more.

The "just hanging on" kitten plays a prominent role in the conversation.

In its 13th season as one of the first and most widely heard podcasts on baseball and the Cardinals, the Best Podcast in Baseball, sponsored weekly by Closets by Design of St. Louis, is a production of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, StlToday.com, and Derrick Goold.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's the long overdue return of the best podcast in baseball.
0:03.4	It's been too long since we chatted.
0:05.1	So much has happened.
0:06.5	There's a new president of baseball operations.
0:09.2	There's this whole whirlwind of managerial talk elsewhere in the majors.
0:13.4	Not just who could be hired as a new manager, but who's retiring as a manager.
0:18.8	There's just a lot going on in Cardinals world.
0:21.9	And it's time that we talked about it.
0:23.8	I'm joined by Kevin Wheeler of Cam OX.
0:26.7	And one of the things Kevin that we're going to get into is a question I have for you,
0:31.2	is the real beginning of a new Cardinals direction.
0:35.7	Did it need the closure of the past week to be new?
0:40.4	Did the Cardinals have to see the old go elsewhere?
0:44.8	I think there's a good argument for it.
0:46.6	I don't know if I would say need, but I think that might be the proper way to look at it, right?
0:51.3	The more you lean on the recent past, the more you're bound by it.
0:56.1	All of that in a brand new best podcast in baseball, including Kevin Wheeler's description of the
1:02.4	cardinals like that kitten in the poster, just hanging on. That's great. That's great. Hello, everybody, and welcome to the best podcast in baseball.
1:22.6	The long overdue best podcast in baseball.
1:26.3	It's brought to you by Closified Design of St. Louis,
1:28.4	and I'm St. Louis Post-Dispatch baseball writer Derek Gould.
1:31.7	So anything happened in the past few weeks?
	...

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