I need some recommendations for baseball podcasts to listen to while at work. My self imposed layoff from baseball since October 5 is over, and I'm itching to hear/read "pitchers and catchers report" again next month. What are some good podcasts out there? I'm looking for national ones (ie not Rangers only - I love my Rangers but even I can't listen to hours and hour so only that). I used to listen to Parks but he stopped that when the Astros took the other half of that one. Figured some of you all on here can help me out; thanks in advance.

I listen to the Baseball America podcast. I've really enjoyed it a lot. I've only been in on it for about 2 months or so, but they tend to talk almost exclusively baseball stuff. I tried listening to the Fangraphs podcast but it just seemed like they would have a guest on and BS for a while about stuff I really didn't care about. But plenty of people seem to like the Fangraphs podcast, so there's that.

Baseball Today on ESPN.com -- usually once a week during the offseason I think there may be one today. Karabell/Law are a great listen.

http://espn.go.com/espnradio/show?showId=baseballtoday

Baseball Today (aka Karabell interviews Law) is the only one I listen to and would be interested to hear what everyone else downloads. An iTunes search has garnered some abysmal results. If there is a decent Rangers podcast that anyone could recommend, that'd be great.

Baseball Do (Rangers podcast) is decent about half the time but I can only take nasal-y voices for so long. Also I don't think it goes but once a month.

My friend has an up and coming podcast, which combines sports and pop culture. I join for baseball related purposes. Lockerroomshow.com

Effectively wild is a decent short daily from BP. Baseball Today, in season, is a good daily for about half of it. I personally don't listen that hard to the parts that are basically recapping the previous day. Sounds like BP is going to start up another prospects podcast in the spring with the Professor and a mystery host. When its actually being done the Johan Keri Podcast from Grantland is good, but it basically vanished once he got hired by Grantland. The Baseball Show with Rany and Joe is solid from the saber angle but some what inconsistent. Rangers Podcast in Arlington is good when it shows up though I do miss AJM on it. Another infrequent but pretty good one is the PosCast with Joe Posnanski.

Another good piece of advice as to finding podcasts would be this. If you are on Twitter and a baseball person you like mentions they are on a podcast download it. I'll download podcasts that the names I follow say they are on. Downloaded one the other day with Parks on it even though it was a Royals podcast.

The problem with a lot of podcasts, the non professional ones, is that its some guys having fun. It can easily mean they go wildly off topic at the drop of a hat.

Baseball Today is good, but I'm only listening it's Keith Law. Mark Simon and Dave Schoenfield are fine, but they don't hold any water to Law. Karabell is good as well, but he's the constant. They go every Thursday during the offseason.

The Baseball Show with Randy and Joe is also fun to listen to, but they go on long hiatuses from time to time. The last show they did was 24 October. I assume they go weekly once the regular season gets under way.

I'm curious what it takes to start a podcast. Do you just record yourself on a microphone and add your own samples, or is there a special software for it? I'm curious because it would be fun to stream conversations, even if it was with some of you guys from time to time. I'm looking for new features for my site.

I believe you usually need a secondary piece of software to overlay on something like Skype to do the actual recording, balancing and packaging. But that information is honestly something that I'm pulling out of memory from having heard it discussed on podcasts. Definitely makes sense though since one of the biggest problems on podcasts, in my opinion, are poorly done mike levels.