Big News: Gerrit Cole Throws 97 MPH; Did the Red Sox Have an Underrated Offseason?; Shortstop Draft

Baseball Tonight with Buster Olney

ESPN Radio

Sports

3.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2026

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The podcast is available for viewing on ESPN's MLB YouTube page! The Yankees’ Gerrit Cole is showing off his stuff at Spring Training. How soon will he return to the rotation? Buster Olney, Tim Kurkjian and David Schoenfield discuss. Plus, Major League Baseball is in a golden age of shortstops, Dave and Tim draft who they think are the top eight shortstops in the league, Dave thinks the Red Sox had an underrated offseason, remembering Bill Mazeroski and his World Series Game 7 walk-off home run, and everyone is all-in on the World Baseball Classic. Then, Buster previews the 2026 Toronto Blue Jays. Later, Buster answers your questions during Bleacher Tweets. CALL THE SHOW: 406-404-8460 EMAIL THE SHOW: BleacherTweets@gmail.com REACH OUT ON X: #BLEACHERTWEETS 2:28 Gerrit Cole, Yankees' pitching 7:02 Red Sox offseason 8:42 Gold age of shortstops 14:07 Shortstop draft 21:42 Remembering Bill Mazeroski 25:03 Buy-in for the World Baseball Classic 28:09 Headlines: Rhys Hoskins signs with Cleveland, Jordan Westburg injured, Pay Murphy extended 29:13 Toronto Blue Jays 2026 preview 30:32 Bleacher Tweets Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	300 years of expertise in every twining sleep blend.
0:06.0	100 hours of craft in every cup.
0:10.0	Eight natural ingredients in every sip.
0:14.0	One night of winding down in every drop.
0:18.0	Your moment of serenity.
0:23.8	Brought to you by twining sleep.
0:25.1	Twinings.
0:27.8	Alive in every drop.
0:34.4	This is the baseball tonight podcast for Monday, February 23rd, 2006, and today will be better than yesterday.
0:38.0	I'm Buster only. Taylor Shink. He's working in the Shwink studios.
0:41.4	Taylor, you got big news right at the top of the show.
0:43.8	Buster, if you are hearing my voice, you can also see me speaking these words out loud.
0:49.4	We are on YouTube, baby. The uphill battle is over.
0:53.0	Dolly is barged into the office to celebrate my dog. Yeah, all of our episodes are going to be on YouTube baby. The uphill battle is over. Dolly is barged into the office to celebrate my dog.
0:56.3	Yeah, all of our episodes are going to be on YouTube now. So this is pretty exciting stuff, Buster.
1:00.0	We've been asking for a long time. Our listeners have been asking for it. So please go on over to ESPN's
1:05.9	MLB YouTube page. Subscribe to the page. We'll have a playlist up there that you can also follow as well.
1:11.1	This is big news for the show. Big news for the show. It's always big news if you can have Dolly in the show or in my house, Quinty. You'll be able to see them. You'll be able to see Taylor. I'm really excited about it. We are going to change up the structure a little bit with this new format and we're going to go to what we're going to call the top of the first and introduce
1:30.9	Tim Kirchin, David Chonfield, who cover baseball for ESPN. Guys, welcome. Well, thanks, Buster. Good to see you, Dave. Everybody good? YouTube. So we're actually on television now. Is that right? That's kind of,
1:46.1	kind of where we're headed there, Tim. Is that good for all of us? Dave, are you have
1:49.8	calluses from all the snow shubbling? Oh, it's snowing now, Buster. We're getting ready for the
1:55.4	blizzard of all blizzards here in Connecticut, right? Right. Well, to the point that we were all supposed to see each other in person in Bristol this week,
	...

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