Ignition switch: From sparking lineups with 'Leadoff Man' author to thawing a chilly Hot Stove
Best Podcast in Baseball
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
4.6 • 690 Ratings
🗓️ 8 January 2026
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A discussion the Cardinals and a chilly Hot Stove eventually ignites with this completely unrelated question: How far into your list of the best players in the history of Major League Baseball do you get before mentioning Rickey Henderson?
He's the all-time leader in runs, he's the greatest leadoff hitter in the game's history, and he almost lapped everyone but Lou Brock when it comes to career stolen bases.
The name of the game is scoring runs, and few (if any) did it better than Henderson.
That's part of the discussion with Matt Snyder, CBS sports writer and author of the new book, "The Leadoff Man: The history of, the evolution of, and fun with the greatest catalyst in sports." (The book is available here.) In his book, Snyder chronicles the changing nature of the leadoff spot, from the speedy contact hitters of yore to the bashers and mashers of the modern game, from the tradition of putting infielder there regardless of their ability to get on base to the analytics of prioritizing the most at-bats for the player who makes the fewest outs. Henderson leads the way with a style of play that was both ahead of his peers and ahead of its time.
At about the 23-minute mark, the conversation speeds from leading men to discussing the current offseason and the Cardinals' willingness to trade their leadoff man, Brendan Donovan. The Hot Stove has been sluggish, even stagnant. And that prompts an impromptu suggestion for how to spur deals during the winter meetings with tools already present in the current Collective Bargaining Agreement. No cap needed.
Although talk about a cap is going to dominate the next 11 months, and that is where the podcast hurries toward its conclusion by describing how it's not the tycoon-like Dodgers that signal the lack of competitive balance and economic concerns about the game. The Cardinals could be the canary.
To which, Snyder flips the question: How deep into a list of the most recognizable baseball teams does one get before naming the Cardinals?
In its 13th season as one of the first and most widely heard podcasts on baseball and the Cardinals, the Best Podcast in Baseball has reached a new season-high with 30 episodes. Each episode is sponsored weekly by Closets by Design of St. Louis, is a production of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, StlToday.com, and lead baseball writer Derrick Goold.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's a brand new best podcast in baseball. |
| 0:02.4 | Matt Snyder, author of The Leadoff Man, History, Evolution, Fun, and Greatest Ever. |
| 0:07.6 | And a baseball writer there at CBS Sports, he joins me to talk about his new book, |
| 0:11.7 | The Art of Being a Leadoff Man, the history of how the Cardinals maybe helped influence the leadoff role. |
| 0:17.8 | That might be my part there. |
| 0:19.0 | We can talk about it. |
| 0:20.0 | But also just the game in general as we both wait for the hot stove to actually become hot and the |
| 0:27.1 | Cardinals and Major League Baseball's off season to thaw. Cue the music. |
| 0:35.0 | Hello, everybody, and welcome to the best podcast in baseball, brought to you by Closet by Design of St. Louis. |
| 0:39.2 | I'm St. Louis Post-Dispatch baseball writer Derek Gould. |
| 0:41.4 | Join this week by CBS Sports Matt Snyder, author of the leadoff man. |
| 0:47.1 | Matt, to talk with you, you do so much work nationally, and now you have this book. |
| 0:52.5 | I'm thrilled to have you on. |
| 0:56.6 | Let's just start. Let's lead off with lead off, if you will. Tell me about your book. Yeah. So I'd always wanted to write a book. And |
| 1:02.7 | heading into the 2024 postseason, we had like a wide array of different types of leadoff men. |
| 1:09.0 | The Padres had Luis Arise, who's an all average guy, |
| 1:12.5 | doesn't even walk, doesn't steal bases, just all batting average. So he's a throwback to like the |
| 1:16.4 | early 1900s. And then you had Kyle Schwerber, a very low average guy, strikes out a ton. |
| 1:21.6 | If you would have gone back even to like the 1980s and 90s and said this guy was going to be |
| 1:25.9 | leading off, people would have freaked out and said, you cannot bat him lead off. And then I thought it was funny that heading into 2025, the Padres elected to replace a rise at the top of the order for Fernando Tatis Jr. because they wanted more power there. Meanwhile, the Phillies drop Schwerver down because, hey, we're wasting his power at the top. Let's drop him down and put him in an |
| 1:44.4 | RBI spot. I think that so much of the evolution of the leadoff man, the past 20 years or so, |
| 1:52.1 | maybe starting with Alfonso Soriano, going back a little bit to Ricky Henderson, although he is |
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