We’re getting close to that time of the year where a sports fan’s attention will be taken up by baseball and counting the days until football season. Baseball has been in full swing for two months and the contenders are starting to separate from the pretenders. A good time to eavesdrop in on a podcast dedicated to covering the full landscape of the game while making you literally, laugh out loud – Talkin’ Baseball from Jomboy Media.
I chose the May 28 weekly recap episode, the 842nd overall podcast, because it had two juicy topics in the description. The first was the reaction to the news that Ronald Acuna Jr. was going to be out for the season with a torn ACL and the other was the retirement of longtime MLB umpire Angel Hernandez.
I didn’t know when I picked the episode that Jomboy himself, Jimmy O’Brien, wasn’t on this particular show, but he left it in the very capable hands of his co-hosts, Jake Storiale (also his partner in the business) and longtime Minnesota Twins infielder and Jomboy media investor Trevor Plouffe.
If you know anything about the 21 personalities and the 44 shows created by the Jomboy Media team, you can probably guess what I heard when I tuned in. In its simplest form, it is a very entertaining baseball podcast. But what it really is, is a well-paced, 60-to-90-minute joyride through the current happenings and top headlines in Major League Baseball.
The early part of the episode was a great preview of what was to come over the next hour and a half. There was talk about the NL Central division leading Milwaukee Brewers and their recent propensity to want to fight other teams, which led to the topic of their new manager Pat Murphy and how the team has taken on more of his demeanor. Then, Storiale says, “I think if Milwaukee came out with the ‘Top 25 Hottest Guys in Milwaukee’ right now, it’s obviously Yeli (Christian Yelich) one, but I think Pat Murphy is coming in like 21st now, his stock is flying.”
And that is a lot of what you get throughout the show. All of the information you want about what is going on in Major League baseball, with several side-topics or comments that keep you locked in looking for the next belly laugh.
Storiale runs through the highlights in the American League, hitting on the top teams and the ones who have made a bit of a move that week. He rapidly goes through getting the listener/viewer up to speed on the week and does it in a delivery that isn’t perfect, but it’s not supposed to be.
Plouffe then runs through the American League standings which leads Storiale to say, “Nobody is dead – well, the dead teams are dead, your Rockies, your Marlins, your White Sox, your Halos (Angels), your Athletics. Up until this point and even another week or two, if you put together that 10 game stretch with the expanded wild card, you’re in the mix.”
Some quick discussion on seeing “that blonde lettuce flying around” in regard to the hair of Baltimore Orioles outfielder Kyle Stowers led into one of the main topics of the day, the retirement of Angel Hernandez.
Storiale explains that the story is “big news in baseball,” and that a lot of people are “getting some of their final punches in,” on Hernandez. He adds, “We’ve lost on our end. If you’re in the baseball content game and you want some clicks, put Angel’s name in the mix.”
About Hernandez, Plouffe said, “I think it’s probably time.” He then says he thinks umpires should have to pass a test when they get to a certain age. “At a certain time, your eyesight goes,” he said. “…So now you’re doing an already very difficult job with less than efficient tools, that’s not a recipe for success. So, there needs to be some talk about those guys not going behind the plate…unless they pass the test.”
Plouffe said his interactions with Angel were all positive. “I know he has been controversial; I know there’s been bad calls,” he said. “I’m not going to sit on here and bash him, I’m not going to do that. Like I said, it was time, but you could probably say that about 10 umpires in the game.”
A conversation about Hernandez’s career and what his legacy will be turned into a quick side topic about what could have been had there been a game where it was known as his last game umpiring, and he was behind the plate. Storiale and Plouffe wondered if fans would have come out, perhaps just to boo Hernandez one more time. In predicting a big crowd, assuming a decent location, Storiale said, “Angel has juice.”
Plouffe replied, “People love to hate Angel, so I could see how the fans would rally around that and give him a standing ovation as code for ‘Thank goodness you’re gone.'”
From there, they reel it in and get right back into breaking down more of what is happening in baseball as the conversation circles all the way back around to the Milwaukee Brewers. Plouffe gives some great insight when he talks about an exchange he had with Christian Yelich where Yelich talked about still grinding after having been in professional baseball for as long as he has. And while the nugget of information was great, the accompanying conversation about whether Plouffe namedrops people (Yelich, for example) too often was also great. “Who am I supposed to talk about, these are my friends,” Plouffe asked.
The National League gets the same treatment as the American League with a full report from the week by Storiale followed by a rundown of the standings by Plouffe. That leads into main topic number two, last year’s NL MVP, Ronald Acuna Jr. being out for the season with a torn ACL.
“It was a historic season a year ago for Ronald Acuna Jr.,” Storiale said. “Out for the year, a torn ACL again. And if you are the Braves, the offense has kind of been struggling, at least to Braves standards…that’s a guy you really want in the lineup, and it changes the whole dynamic with the Braves.”
Plouffe challenges Storiale on this a bit saying, “The Braves offense hasn’t been bad just to their standards,” he said and then throws out the stat that since April 27, the Braves have scored the second fewest runs per game in baseball. He also talks about the Braves being the type of organization that will work to try and bring in reinforcements knowing how good of a team they still have.
Plouffe shines as he breaks down what the loss of Acuna means to the team. The conversation wasn’t just simply that the team lost its best offensive player. Plouffe looks ahead and talks about which of their current players could step up, using statistics and seeing how some players are off their career numbers, so step one would be to get those players to get back to form. Plouffe makes the case for Braves fans not to get too down, says that there is hope, before he does offer to be emotional support to any Braves fan that needs it.
As they move to other news within the NL, the Cincinnati Reds come up. While they sit in last place in their division, they did just come off sweeping a 3-game series over the Dodgers. “You need to have a series like this to remind you who you are,” Plouffe said about the Reds. “…Holding the Dodgers to two runs total over the last two games, that’s something to say ‘ok, here we go,’ I like that for the Reds, a lot.”
Later on, as each host selects a player to highlight, Storiale goes with Aaron Judge and sums up his play recently saying, “Have you seen what he’s doing?…First player in MLB history to have 11 homers and 12 doubles in 20 games. 20 games! The dude’s out of his dome right now. Sometimes it doesn’t seem real because he is a bigger than life human, but he’s out of this world.”
The rest of the time is filled hitting on some of the secondary stories from the week and an injury report Storiale called, “the worst segment of the show.” Again, the information is there, and the unique delivery and style keeps you wanting more.
Even the delivery of an ad read in the middle of the show was well-timed, it was tied in with programming and was done with the standard Jomboy personality.
Good, informative content, delivered with a humorous tone and a realization that this is sports, and it is supposed to be fun. That is what this 90-minute show delivered. You sort of forget that at its core it is a hardcore baseball show and when it’s over you realize you are a much smarter fan on the current events going on in the game and you were entertained.
It isn’t easy to have knowledge of and keep up with the entire league and it is another thing entirely to deliver it with wit and not get too far off the rails. Storiale and Plouffe do it with ease and succeed in pulling off good, solid baseball talk mixed with a lot of laughs.
Dave Greene is a former Editor and Columnist for Barrett Media. His background includes over 25 years in media and content creation. A former sports talk host and play-by-play broadcaster, Dave transitioned to station and sales management, co-founded and created a monthly sports publication and led an ownership group as the operating partner. He has managed stations and sales teams for Townsquare Media, Cumulus Media and Audacy. Upon leaving broadcast media he co-founded Podcast Heat, a sports and entertainment podcasting network specializing in pro wrestling nostalgia. To interact, find him on Twitter @mr_podcasting.
