The series is based on a screenplay by Lee Shin-hwa, which was one of the winners in the second half of 2016 MBC Drama Screenplay Contest in the Miniseries Category.

Namkoong Min and Park Eun-bin had previously worked together as second leads in the drama Hur Jun, The Original Story (2013), before reuniting as the lead pair in Hot Stove League.

Munhak Baseball Stadium, the home stadium of the real South Korean professional baseball team SK Wyverns, served as a filming location and was even used in one of the show's teaser posters; scenes set in California were actually filmed in Hawaii.

The baseball stadium scenes were filmed at Incheon SSG Landers Field, located in Michuhol District, Incheon.

The players' in-drama statistics were not fabricated but were drawn from real KBO League player performances, with dramatic elements added on top.

After episodes 10 and 11 were split into three broadcast parts instead of the usual two, viewers expressed discontent over the extra advertisements this caused on the program's website.

The drama achieved an overwhelming rating of around 17%, considered the second-highest record after KBS 2TV's Wednesday-Thursday drama When the Camellia Blooms, after a long drought of hit dramas.

Following the drama's success, real Lotte Giants new general manager Sung Min-kyu earned the nickname 'Namkoong Min-kyu', combining his name with that of lead actor Namkoong Min, showing how the show resonated with actual baseball figures.

To celebrate the show's success, the cast and crew went on a four-day reward vacation to Saipan on February 17, 2020.

The drama was originally scheduled to begin airing on November 29, 2019, but was delayed by two weeks to December 13 because a network anniversary documentary was scheduled first to fill a programming gap.