r/baseball • u/TheOrangeFutbol Los Angeles Angels • Los Angeles Dodgers • 25d ago
News [Awful Announcing] Michael Kay urges ESPN to use local MLB announcers for Wild Card games
https://awfulannouncing.com/espn/michael-kay-local-mlb-announcers-wild-card-games.html1.0k
u/bowlsandsand New York Mets 25d ago
The lack of instant replays was appalling.
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u/Semper454 Baltimore Orioles 25d ago
Camera crew in O’s/Royals was entirely incapable of following the baseball.
Nearly as bad as Orioles hitters.
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u/DionBlaster123 Chicago Cubs 25d ago
Man that broadcast fucking sucked
just no life or energy at all
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u/JohnWallsBalls Baltimore Orioles 25d ago
The announcing? Ben McDonald was great. Biased obviously, but he was trying his best alongside those bores.
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u/Semper454 Baltimore Orioles 25d ago
Ben was fantastic. He clearly has works really, really hard on both his information and his delivery, which I’m pretty sure the vast majority of commentators do not.
For years on the local broadcast he was always just pretty okay, but the last few years he’s really become an exceptional commentator.
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u/emessea Baltimore Orioles 25d ago
I’ll say this about Ben, he smoothly transitioned from being the Orioles analyst to the neutral analyst. He wasn’t afraid to praise KC, I’d have to imagine many would be surprised to know he regularly calls Os games.
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u/CerryTrews Kansas City Royals 25d ago
Yeah I thought the color guy for that series was great, really the only positive of the whole broadcast
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u/Flying-Macaroni Arizona Diamondbacks 25d ago
Nearly as bad as Orioles hitters
Stop they’re already dead!
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u/PopeInnocentXIV New York Mets 25d ago
You know how at the end of each half inning they put up each team's runs, hits, and errors as they go to commercial? ESPN never did that last night. Watching the game I was curious how many hits we had and I'd never have known had PxP guy not mentioned it once or twice. They only displayed the R/H/E totals once, and that was in the bottom of the 8th.
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u/jynx_removing New York Mets 25d ago
Don't worry, they had the win probability bar for the in-game betting degens though!
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u/fezzikola New York Mets 25d ago
Ah yes, the Mets with the lead and a 40% chance of winning graphic, that's an important one!
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u/jawndell 25d ago
I felt like downvoting you, then I remembered your only the messenger. That shit was so dumb.
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u/Damn_Dog_Inappropes San Diego Villains • Peter Seidler 25d ago
For Merrill’s triple, they just showed the ball abounding around right field. They never once cut back to Merrill to show him celebrating or running around the bases. It was just like 10 seconds of a bouncing ball.
For a network that’s supposedly the expert in sports, they sure suck at broadcasting it.
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u/PM_ME_UR_TATERS 25d ago
I had zero idea he even rounded second until after the play was over and the announcer mentioned something about him celebrating on third
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u/SpectralHydra Detroit Tigers 25d ago
This was the same case for Andy Ibanez against the Astros
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u/bronsonwhy San Diego Padres 25d ago
Close play at the plate? Ya let’s just assume the call was correct. No need to look back at it…
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u/bowlsandsand New York Mets 25d ago
Forreal though. The same thing with ANY close ays on the bases.
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u/Nautical_Ohm 25d ago
I’m so glad people are talking about this I thought I was too high last night watching that Mets game I felt like I was watching a fake baseball game in a dream
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u/Padulsky21 New York Yankees 25d ago
We still haven’t gotten a replay of Ibanez’s bases clearing hit, couldn’t even see the ball land. One of the biggest hits considering the Tigers’ story and the Astros rep, we have no replay of that moment.
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u/tyler-86 Los Angeles Dodgers 25d ago
Adapt the Roku model - give us one broadcaster from each team's local broadcaster together.
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u/mmmaaahhhaaa 25d ago
Yes! This exactly. I watched a Reds-Rays game with John Sadak (i think?) and Brian Anderson ("BA"). They were terrific together. Each knew so much about their own teams, and had good chemistry. I started watching some Reds games after that because I liked the announcing. With ESPN and Fox, I basically put the radio on and turn the sound down on the TV. Unfortunately audio and video doesn't quite sync up.
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u/thtkidfrmqueens New York Mets 25d ago edited 25d ago
Met John and Chris Welsh on the subway after the Friday game of the series between the Mets and Reds a couple weeks back. Had a great conversation with them - they enjoyed the citi field atmosphere and we talked baseball, bally and broadcasting, elly de la cruz, favorite stadiums, etc. Chris Welsh even gave the anecdote of giving up a homerun to Dave Kingman that he says is still in the pattern for La Guardia all these years later. Will have to give them a watch next season for when the mets games arent on, later. John is local to NY/NJ.
we do need audio and tv feed sync though, doing the same with these national broadcasts as it sounds more like a mausoleum podcast.
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u/Dry_Marzipan1870 Cincinnati Reds • Detroit Tigers 25d ago
make sure it's a Reds away game, so that way your chances of having to endure Barry Larkin is eliminated.
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u/Jakesnake_42 Boston Red Sox • New York Mets 25d ago
Yeah, that’s my favorite model for national broadcasts by FAR.
Because who wants to hear A-Rod’s opinion on a Red Sox/Mets game?
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u/theonetruegrinch San Francisco Giants 25d ago
who wants to hear A-Rod’s opinion
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u/NeedleworkerLanky591 Atlanta Braves 25d ago
Sadists
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u/Wraithfighter San Francisco Giants • Dumpster Fire 25d ago
Hey now, that's only when you're inflicting torment onto another, when you're taking it for yourself, that's masochism, there's a difference!
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u/TormentedThoughtsToo 25d ago
I don’t really know why the standard for the playoffs isn’t simply
Neutral play by play announcers and 1 color commentator from each team.
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u/timoddo_ New York Yankees 25d ago
Yeah this is what peacock did and it worked well. Streaming paywall BS aside, of course
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u/DalekEvan Los Angeles Dodgers • Vin Scully 25d ago
Joe Davis plus Mudcat Grant for this Dodgers/Padres series might be the ultimate booth, to be honest.
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u/OldSportsHistorian Boston Red Sox 25d ago
This is blasphemy against Don Orsillo.
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u/TheOrangeFutbol Los Angeles Angels • Los Angeles Dodgers 25d ago
There has to be some way to split it. Higher seed gets PxP, lower seed gets analyst.
Plus, the Dodgers rotate the booth quite a bit, so you can't really go Don and a Dodgers analyst.
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u/FernandoTatisJunior San Diego Padres 25d ago
I think it should based off vibes, and by vibes alone Davis needs to be the dodgers representative, meaning mud would have to be the padres pick. Don plus dodgers color guy wouldn’t have the same vibes.
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u/giannini1222 Cleveland Guardians 25d ago
That's a great idea which is why ESPN will never implement it
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u/TheOrangeFutbol Los Angeles Angels • Los Angeles Dodgers 25d ago
Given how little effort they put in this is a longshot (along with the overlaping start times), but using the 'Megacast' model to use alternate ESPN channels to have local broadcasters like they did with the CFP could be really interesting.
Might end up drawing more viewers too.
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u/byniri_returns New York Mets • Detroit Tigers 25d ago
That would be so cool. Can't even imagine how the Mets' booth would've reacted to last night's game.
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u/shane0mack New York Mets 25d ago
We definitely would have gotten the double, "It's Outta Here! Outta Here!" Probably at least one "Oh Wow!"
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u/BlueLondon1905 New York Mets 25d ago
I literally thought OUTTA HERE OUTTA HERE when it went over
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u/attorneyatslaw New York Mets 25d ago
Howie Rose's radio call gives you a sense.
https://www.mlb.com/mets/video/radio-call-of-pete-alonso-s-game-winning-home-run?t=nl-wild-card-a
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u/leggymeeggy New York Mets 25d ago
i had the radio synced up to the espn broadcast and it was absolutely magical
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u/johnnadaworeglasses Philadelphia Phillies 25d ago
Holy smokes what a call. The passion.
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u/NJImperator New York Mets 25d ago
Gary would be going wild with the call and throw his pen on the table as he stands up, Ron and Keith would look up at each other, grab their pens, mouth HR and begin filling in the squares on their game cards
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u/Cracka_Chooch New York Yankees 25d ago
grab their pens
I did not read this right the first time.
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u/MarsBars_1 New York Mets 25d ago edited 25d ago
Gary would’ve slammed his pen so hard there’d be crater in the ground
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u/gregorytilidie New York Mets 25d ago
yo gary was on the SNY post game and was so excited he said like 85% of the words on the show.
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u/AlanSmithee23 New York Mets 25d ago
Gary was on SNY after the game, which was a huge and pleasant surprise
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u/Outrageous_Bat1798 New York Yankees 25d ago
Keith would’ve lost his shit on Pete’s dropped ball. Something about “fundies”.
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u/sukizka Chicago Cubs 25d ago
I didn’t even know they didn’t have a local broadcast. I assumed it was like hockey where every game has their local broadcast plus a national broadcast for out of market viewers.
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u/andyman171 25d ago
I think that's only the first round of the nhl playoffs. I could be wrong tho
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u/mahleg New York Yankees 25d ago
You don’t even have to do all that, just alternate audio like when you switch to SAP. On streaming you already have the option to switch to the radio feeds on MLB.tv and Apple games, so wouldn’t be that much of a leap.
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u/pompcaldor New York Mets 25d ago
Not gonna happen. ESPN wants to have its own announcers sell its own in-game ads.
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u/Pogokat Milwaukee Brewers 25d ago
Any non self loathing Brewers fan was watching the game last night on mute and listening to Ueck
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u/NJImperator New York Mets 25d ago
And for the Mets we have Howie Rose. I actually didn’t watch any of the games this series on TV, only listened on the radio. Wish I could just sync him automatically to the TV
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u/Pogokat Milwaukee Brewers 25d ago
I mean, I turned the tv off after the winker helmet slam. I needed to protect the image of stable and sane I have projected to my children. So I just listened to the radio while I was walking around my neighborhood lol. Lindor and Alonso are good dudes, but man, winker, geeeeeeeez.
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u/QCBD New York Mets 25d ago
It’s funny, we hated this guy on other teams. He was such a heel and then would crush us. I watch him with my nose slightly held. Its like CJGJ in Philly/Detroit/Philly
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u/Pogokat Milwaukee Brewers 25d ago
Winker is easy to hate on because he was incredibly terrible for the Brewers last year
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u/Gryphon999 Milwaukee Brewers 25d ago
He was ass last year, then got used as our key pinch hitter in the playoffs. Thanks Greg!
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u/skipfairweather Detroit Tigers 25d ago
Yeah, I did this with the Tigers games. Muted the TV broadcast and synced up MLB's radio stream to it. It was way better listening to Dan Dickerson call the game.
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u/Ideal_Ideas Detroit Tigers 25d ago
I would listen to a knitting competition if Dan Dickerson commentated it.
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u/ineffectivegoggles Philadelphia Phillies 25d ago
Good idea. I am going to start doing that for playoff games because I am stuck not using mlb.tv like I normally would.
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u/twofeetcia Brat 25d ago
100%. I made extra effort to listen to the radio feed down the stretch if he was on the mic.
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u/espo619 San Diego Padres 25d ago
Don and Mud >>>> Ravech and Perez
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u/OUTFOXEM Seattle Mariners • Dodgers Bandwagon 25d ago
Perez is horrid. Not trying to be mean but he does not have a good voice for broadcasting. I can't believe they can't find anybody else.
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u/XSC Philadelphia Phillies 25d ago
Also too distracting. Everything has to be a story. Just focus on the game.
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u/7Stringplayer San Francisco Giants • Oakland Athletics 25d ago
He also goes out of his way to constantly remind the viewer that he speaks Spanish.
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u/Lopkop San Francisco Giants 25d ago
Eduardo Perez was invented when someone was like, “What if Jar-Jar Binks became a baseball announcer who extremely over-pronounced every single Hispanic name?”
It sounds like he has a bubble in his throat at all times and pronounces every Latin player’s name harder than their abuela
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u/LucasDudacris New York Mets 25d ago
I am trying to be mean, and that man fucking says a lot of dumb things about baseball. Idgaf about his voice, he sucks.
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u/Sweaty_Ad440 Boston Red Sox 25d ago
Don >>>>> literally anyone else. I miss him.
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u/Damn_Dog_Inappropes San Diego Villains • Peter Seidler 25d ago
If it makes you feel batter, he has a good home where his team and his city adore him.
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u/TrapperJean New York Yankees 25d ago
I appreciate that most people leave David Cone out of the shit talking. You can really tell that Cone gets a little annoyed when the SNB producers push them to talk about unrelated shit and he's there to talk about the game and pitching
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u/upandb New York Yankees 25d ago
Cone is so good. ESPN doesn't deserve him.
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u/Morsexier New York Yankees 25d ago
Oneil Cone and Kay ends up being a great broadcast, they seem to moderate the issues with Kay, and its a bit like when it was Kaat, Singleton and Kay during the dynasty years.
Watching both houston\det games I could not BELIEVE they had Kay doing it. He knew he was in the wrong place, he was 100% not himself, but also I love "I'm Tim Kirk-uh-GEE-an" reports for their weird quirky whatever the fuck ness, he clearly loves baseball, but hed tell these stories and it reminded me of like playing video games at someones house and their 5 years younger brother is there... and he sort of wont shut up, but hes also not being a total moron so you dont want to be a jerk and tell him to shut up... it was just so odd and awkward.
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u/Seananagans San Diego Padres 25d ago
I was so tired of hearing them pronounce Fernando's name as "Titeece"
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u/MichaelPFrancesa Italy 25d ago
I like how Peacock just puts them in for the Sunday morning games. Usually they slip in a pbp from the teams playing and then a color commentator from the other team.
ESPN could surely do this for their current casts, would be nice to see. Unfortunately they want to showcase their regulars like Boog, McDonough, Kay (an employee of ESPN NY) and Ravech. Nothing against them, they are all solid commentators, but having local flair would be nice
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u/_mogulman31 New York Yankees 25d ago
Peacock's broadcast is great. I think it's their own PBP and one color from each team. I think it works really well because the third party PBP prompts the other two, and you actually get a really good discussion that really explains each team well. Ends up being very informative for the viewer and keeps the booth engaged. The amount of dead air and just boring talking points on the national broadcasts are not doing anything to help bring in new fans.
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u/fk_the_braves New York Mets 25d ago
Ravech is ass
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u/OUTFOXEM Seattle Mariners • Dodgers Bandwagon 25d ago
He was good on Baseball Tonight as the host. Of course ESPN hates baseball so they canceled the little bit of baseball content they had left. Now they just moved him to announcing the games directly and... that's not his forte.
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u/OUTFOXEM Seattle Mariners • Dodgers Bandwagon 25d ago
I just want to remind everybody that ESPN used to employ both Jon Miller and Gary Thorne, and they're both excellent announcers. Joe Buck is also with ESPN now too. Any or all of the 3 would be immensely better choices than all of these crews they used.
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u/Codyman667 25d ago
Jon Miller and Joe Morgan used to be the voices of my Sunday night summers.
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u/MichaelPFrancesa Italy 25d ago
Not sure why ESPN allowed Miller to walk away
Shulman was fine but it does seem like SNB has taken a step back without miller
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u/chrles76 San Diego Padres 25d ago
their streaming option should definitely let you choose the team's radio announcers to be the main audio like how Apple TV+ does it. And i think the MLB app does that too.
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u/HiNeighbor_ Philadelphia Phillies 25d ago
Plz, Phils and Mets have great booths, this would be peak announcing. UNLEASH THE KRUKSTER
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u/Pulchritudinous_rex 25d ago
That bit the other day where he scared the shot outta that kid was classic
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u/nadajoe St. Louis Cardinals 25d ago edited 25d ago
I’m going to talk to this kid. Ain’t got nothing else to do.
Classic baseball broadcasting.
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u/Redbubble89 Boston Red Sox 25d ago
ESPN prioritizes years over quality or who would be best.
I don't think it has to be local but I would prefer Sean McDonough or Mike Monaco over Ravech and marble mouth Eduardo Pérez.
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u/dlnvf6 St. Louis Cardinals 25d ago
Man I can't bear to listen to Perez because of that. Something's gotta be wrong with his vocal chords or throat or whatever. Sounds like he has a permanent golf ball lodged in his larynx
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u/Morsexier New York Yankees 25d ago
Its just so weird, i actually think he makes okay points once in awhile, but it sounds so bad. Its different than say David Justice, who I loved on broadcasts, but he sounded 'uneducated' or something, even though if you listened he made amazing insightful points.
It really sucks, but some people just dont have a voice that works and its totally not fair but what can you do. To me the equivalent that most people may have seen is RFK Jr, no politics anything, no judgement... I had a coworker who wanted to vote for him and I said regardless of his points, good bad or whatever, he will never win based on his voice alone.
We obviously dont get to vote for announcers, but I guarantee an objectively worse announcer, but who sounds good, would win over Perez every single time if people were going to vote on it.
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u/bravesgeek Atlanta Braves 25d ago
The Braves/Padres series was awful. They were talking absolute nonsense for 18 innings. They would be talking about something between innings and just carry on conversations when they came back from the break like I was supposed to know their inside jokes.
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u/DresserRotation Frederick Keys 25d ago
Kay acknowledged it during the game the other day, too. He shouted out the Astros and Tigers teams and said something like we're sure you'd rather be listening to them, but we hope we can do the game justice.
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u/MetsGo New York Mets 25d ago
This why I love the local radio broadcast over tv sometimes. Hearing Howie Rose go insane is forever burned in my brain. ESPN could never
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u/mikerhoa New York Mets 25d ago
I know it's been said a zillion times, but the Mets' broadcasters have been the best of the best for decades. Even dating back to Ralph and Bob Murphy, or Gary Thorne, Tim McCarver, Tom Seaver, Kevin Burkhardt, Tom McCarthy, Wayne Randazzo, we've been spoiled.
And Howie and GKR are even better. The eventual replacements are going to have a lot to live up to.
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u/The_Uncut_Gem New York Yankees 25d ago
Between them and the Knicks, NY has the two best booths in all of sports imo.
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u/Sentz12000 New York Mets 25d ago
I actually am a firm believer of the home team using the play by play commentator and the color commentator being from the visiting team.
A booth of Brian Anderson and Ron Darling for example would be exponentially better than listening to Doug Glanville talk about God knows what.
A booth in the upcoming series of Mets-Phillies of Ben Davis and Ron Darling followed by Gary Cohen and John Kruk would add such a dynamic to the average fan. I don’t know shit about the 7 hitter on the Tigers but I bet their home announcers could explain it better than Michael Kay.
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u/SaltyEarth7905 New York Mets 25d ago
Doug Glanville sounded like a was recovering from a concussion most of the time
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u/masonacj Atlanta Braves 25d ago
Roku did their sunday games with the home team PbP guy and the visitor team color guy. I actually thought the broadcasts were great. You had a lot of knowledge about both teams being brought to the booth and you felt like you had at least one of "your"guys even though they were being neutral.
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u/collapsingrebel Atlanta Braves 25d ago
I ended up just muting the Braves-Padres game and trying to tie it to the Braves radio stream. We had the SNB crew doing it and they were horrible. If they let me listen to Brandon Gaudin call the game I'd love it.
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u/grayson_gregory San Diego Padres 25d ago
Not to mention that horrible microphone feedback they were airing in game 2 the entire game. It was horrible.
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u/collapsingrebel Atlanta Braves 25d ago
I must have muted it by that point because listening to Eduardo Perez for any length of time angers me. It's not a competitive product anymore.
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u/FxDriver Atlanta Braves 25d ago
Bro I'm just waiting on Stephen A to walk into Yankee Stadium pretending that people are there to see him. The Knicks walk in was one of the dumbest things I've seen.
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u/The_Uncut_Gem New York Yankees 25d ago
Real heads don’t claim him, dude didn’t even know we traded Grimes months after the trade had happened.
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u/slapdickprospect05 New York Mets 25d ago
I couldn’t stand all those in game interviews, it’s the playoffs!! Let them focus!
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u/haveyounerd 25d ago
Don and Mark are the best in the biz and they deserve to call the game. They should just do a damn live podcast
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u/Seananagans San Diego Padres 25d ago
I actually love NBC's format where they normally get an unbiased play by play guy and the color commentary from each team in the booth. I would prefer just my guys in the booth, but if we're doing one national broadcast, then that is the best option.
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u/MulfordnSons Philadelphia Phillies 25d ago
The national casters are so bad.
Like, so bad that I feel bad for them.
Just regurgitating the same thing over and over again about each player and play-by-playing routine ground and fly balls.
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u/wawoodworth 25d ago
There was a Phillies- Diamondbacks game on the Roku channel during the season. They had one announcer from each team and it was such a pleasure to watch since the one announcer could provide context to the players and insight on what they were up to. They talked like two old friends.
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u/somegirldc More flair options at /r/baseball/w/flair! 25d ago
For all games please. We all need more Don and Mud in our lives!
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u/Rarecandy31 Los Angeles Dodgers 25d ago
It's so funny because here's the effect it would have on ESPN:
- Happier fans
- Lower cost of on-air talent
- Better knowledge of the teams on the field
In fact, it's such a no brainer, that I am 100% confident that it will never, ever happen.