Jeff Passan is the latest ESPN commentator to get a new podcast as part of the network’s partnership with Omaha Productions, and it sounds as if the show is just about ready to roll out.
In a new interview on The Varsity podcast, the MLB insider revealed that the debut episode will drop in mid-April, and that he has big plans to craft a very unique show.
“I’m really excited for this. I know, everybody’s got a podcast these days, but I’d like to believe that this one is going to be different,” Passan said. “I feel incredibly invigorated by just doing something new, and putting this show together and trying to make it different, and worthy of all the new baseball fans and accessible to them while still capturing the audience that loves the game and will consume anything related to it.”
Passan launched the new podcast as part of his latest contract extension with ESPN last month.
Baseball is riding a high, as rule changes, new broadcast partners, and a hit international competition in the World Baseball Classic have combined to catapult MLB into the mainstream sports conversation once again.
That could be why ESPN and Omaha gave Jeff Passan the green light, but he clearly wants to do more than just sit in front of a microphone and talk about the biggest stories of the week. Passan said that his new show will be part longform interview, part explainer, with the goal being for Passan to operate as a “baseball professor” who does a deep dive into one particular aspect of America’s pastime in each episode.
“I don’t know what this show’s going to be in a year. I know what it is right now, and right now, the entire idea behind it is every episode has a subject, and I’m going to talk with the people who are the best in the world at explaining it,” he said.
“I don’t want to call it an interview podcast, I don’t want to call it an explainer podcast. The way that I tried to approach this is I want to be a baseball professor, and I want you to walk away from the show feeling like you understand the game a little better and that you understand the people who are in it.”
Passan teased a couple of forthcoming episodes, including an exploration of modern pitching through interviews with the best in the game, as well as a video dictionary of all the “arcane phrases in the baseball lexicon” (think: can of corn).
“We are not going to take ourselves too seriously, but we take the game very seriously,” he said. “And that’s the balance that, trying to strike that, is the challenge.”
Expect the show to have visual elements specifically for the video audience, which Passan said he hopes include a slot in ESPN’s television slate.
Honestly, this sounds a whole heck of a lot like Pablo Torre Finds Out, the investigative sports talk show from Meadowlark Media and the former ESPN host that dominated headlines in 2025. But it does not sound much like the typical fare from ESPN and Omaha, which are largely in the sit-down-at-a-microphone-and-talk mold.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.