2016 Broadcaster Rankings (Radio): #20 – #11
Roughly four years ago now, the present author facilitated a crowdsourcing project designed to place a “grade” on each of the league’s television and radio broadcast teams. The results weren’t intended to represent the objective quality or skill of the relevant announcers, but rather to provide a clue as to which broadcast teams are likely to appeal most (or least) to the readers of this site.
The results of that original exercise have been useful as a complement to the dumb NERD scores published by the author in these pages. Four years later, however, they’ve become much less useful. In the meantime, a number of the broadcast teams cited in that original effort have changed personnel. It’s possible that the tastes of this site’s readers have changed, also.
Recently, the author published an updated version of the television rankings according to the site’s readership. This week: the results of that same exercise, but for radio broadcasts.
Below are the 20th- through 11th-ranked radio-broadcast teams, per the FanGraphs readership.
But first, three notes:
- Teams are ranked in ascending order of Overall rating. Overall ratings are not merely averages of Charisma and Analysis.
- The author has attempted to choose reader comments that are either (a) illustrative of the team’s place in the rankings or (b) conspicuously amusing.
- A complete table of ratings will appear in these pages on Thursday, unless they appear later than that.
20. Baltimore Orioles
Main Broadcasters: Joe Angel and Fred Manfra (and Jim Hunter)
Ratings (Charisma/Analysis/Overall): 3.8, 3.3, 3.6
Representative Reader Comment
“Angel… [d]oesn’t really offer any in-depth analysis or anything but he’s witty, natural, always ready to go. Never at a loss for words.”
Notes
There appears to be something like a consensus that Joe Angel is the real draw of the Orioles’ radio broadcast. There’s also something like a consensus that the author ought to be clear about the various broadcasters’ roles — namely, how Angel and Manfra serve as the main radio personnel, handling play-by-play duties in alternating fashion over the course of a game, and that Hunter periodically substitutes for one or the other of them.
19. San Diego Padres
Main Broadcasters: Ted Leitner and Jesse Agler
Ratings (Charisma/Analysis/Overall): 3.8, 3.6, 3.7
Representative Reader Comment
“Sometimes Leitner grates, but it might just be the fact he’s calling a Padres game.”
Notes
There’s a lot of enthusiasm present among respondents regarding Jesse Agler, both for the interest he seems to exhibit in analystics and also for his youth — which latter quality has multiple readers optimistic that he’ll develop into the longtime radio voice of the club.
18. Seattle Mariners
Main Broadcasters: Rick Rizzs and Aaron Goldsmith/Dave Sims
Ratings (Charisma/Analysis/Overall): 3.7, 3.4, 3.7
Representative Reader Comment
“Goldsmith brings a nice level of statistical analysis to the broadcast and is a great play-by-play man in his own right.”
Notes
If the reader’s comments are any indication, Rizzs and Goldsmith seem to complement each other well, the former having become (in the words of one respondent) a “local institution,” the latter possessing a working knowledge of analytics that lends itself to reasoned commentary.
17. St. Louis Cardinals
Main Broadcasters: Mike Shannon and John Rooney
Ratings (Charisma/Analysis/Overall): 3.9, 3.1, 3.7
Representative Reader Comment
“Mike Shannon has to be the worst way to find out what is going on in a baseball game. He also has to be the most entertaining way to listen to a baseball game.”
Notes
When this exercise was conducted four years ago, the Cardinals’ radio broadcast placed ninth in the league. They’ve fallen to 17th now, as one sees here. The major difference in the interim? The reduction of an aging Mike Shannon’s responsibilities (predominantly? exclusively?) to home games. There’s considerable anxiety among respondents regarding how KMOX intends to handle Shannon’s retirement. For, whatever his limitations as a broadcaster, he appears to compensate for them by force of personality.
16. Atlanta Baseball Club
Main Broadcasters: Jim Powell and Don Sutton
Ratings (Charisma/Analysis/Overall): 3.8, 3.2, 3.8
Representative Reader Comment
“Don and Jim are greater than the sum of their persons. Several years ago when someone said that they’d listen to Jim Powell broadcast paint drying, I’m not convinced that they were being hyperbolic. He has such an enthusiasm for the game, a seamless way of introducing advanced stats into the broadcast, and just an amazing rapport with Don Sutton. Some of his dry wit has been mentioned before, [such as] ‘Right down the middle for ball 1’ or ‘It’s that kind of [curveball] that led to a combined total of 3574 strikeouts between me and Don.’ Perhaps my favorite Jim Powell-ism is whenever he announces the umpires and Sam Holbrook is an umpire. Normally upbeat with an enthusiastic cadence, Powell drops his voice and grunts out ‘Sam. Holbrook.’ as a reminder of The Great Infield Fly of 2012. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I want to play catch with Jim Powell in a yard and have him tell me he’s proud of me.”
Notes
The team of Powell and Sutton appeared eighth among the league’s 30 radio broadcasts the last time this exercise was conducted. Now? Sixteenth. What could explain the decline? First, possibly just margin of error. The pair received an overall score of 4.3 last time, which is only half a point higher than the rating they’ve received here. That’s not much. It’s also possible that the rest of the league has just improved. That’s less likely, but still not entirely incroyable.
Finally — and there’s some reason to entertain this explanation, given reader comments — finally, it’s possible that FanGraphs readers are a bit less forgiving of (in particular) Sutton’s lack of interest in newer sorts of analysis. Is this fair? I don’t know. I’m just an idiot typing these words at a cafe somewhere.
15. Arizona Diamondbacks
Main Broadcasters: Greg Schulte and Tom Candiotti
Ratings (Charisma/Analysis/Overall): 3.6 3.7, 3.9
Representative Reader Comment
“Schulte has vastly improved over his years as the play-by-play voice of the Diamondbacks.”
Notes
During an appearance on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, comedian Anthony Jeselnik discussed the early days of writing for Jimmy Fallon’s first late-night show. Some of Jeselnik’s monologue jokes were rejected — not on the grounds that they’d get no laughs, but that they’d harm Fallon’s affability. Addressing the show’s writers, producer Lorne Michaels impressed upon them that it was necessary merely for the show to survive for the first couple years, that eventually audiences would come back for Fallon himself, not necessarily the quality of this or that specific joke.
Is this relevant to the reader comment above, regarding Schulte? Regarding any broadcaster, perhaps? It’s difficult for a broadcaster to debut excellently. The relationship between a radio voice and his or her audience is one that grows with time. Has Schulte vastly improved? It’s possible. What else is possible, though — even likely — is that listeners have developed a natural affection for Schulte which is merely the product of time.
14. Boston Red Sox
Main Broadcasters: Joe Castiglione and Tim Neverett
Ratings (Charisma/Analysis/Overall): 3.8, 3.4, 3.9
Representative Reader Comment
“I would trade my grandfather for Joe Castiglione — he can talk to me all night long.”
Notes
Since the last edition of these rankings, Dave O’Brien has moved from the radio to television side (which personnel change also prompted the departure of Don Orsillo from Boston to San Diego). Regardless, the score here is largely similar to the one produced from that previous round of balloting. Which is logical: Castiglione is the main attraction, both for the length of his tenure and understanding of regional concerns.
13. Toronto Blue Jays
Main Broadcasters: Jerry Howarth and Joe Siddall
Ratings (Charisma/Analysis/Overall): 3.9, 3.5, 3.9
Representative Reader Comment
“Jerry Howarth is an institution — he’ll never be one of the all-time greats, but he’s that familiar voice you instinctively associate with Blue Jays baseball.”
Notes
FanGraphs readers ranked Howarth and then-partner Alan Ashby fifth overall among the league’s radio broadcast in 2012. Ashby, however, has since assumed television duties for the Astros. It’s notable that the reviews of Siddall’s work are generally positive. It merely seems that he doesn’t (yet?) possess Ashby’s gravitas.
12. Cleveland Baseball Club
Main Broadcasters: Tom Hamilton and Jim Rosenhaus
Ratings (Charisma/Analysis/Overall): 4.1, 3.4, 4.0
Representative Reader Comment
“Tom Hamilton’s apocalyptic enthusiasm is quite literally the most exciting thing about the Cleveland Sports Ball Club Team. I could do without some of his mainstream Americana moralizing from time to time, although it surely plays well with the local crowd.”
Notes
There’s almost uniform praise from respondents for Tom Hamilton’s call of the game — and, specifically, for the exuberance with which he delivers it. This is largely beyond criticism. Where the praise is less uniform — and perhaps counts actively as a negative — is the broadcast’s relationship with analysis, where Hamilton and Rosenhaus seem not only to ignore newer analytics, but to actively discount them.
11. Tampa Bay Rays
Main Broadcasters: Andy Freed and Dave Wills
Ratings (Charisma/Analysis/Overall): 3.9, 4.0, 4.0
Representative Reader Comment
“I would have given them a 4 but the audio always sounds like Freed is a DJ at a strip club with [the] combination of his voice cadence and the audio inside the Trop.”
Notes
For those of us who harbor suspicions about Florida and the tastes of those who willingly inhabit it, it’s not surprising to find that a reader is compelled to reference a strip club when attempting to characterize the audio quality of Tampa Bay’s radio broadcasts. Indeed, the strip club would appear to represent a particularly flexible and widely applicable metaphor wherein Florida and its residents are concerned.
Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.
Serious question… is Mike Shannon like a better version of Hawk Harrelson?
Yes and no…Think a charming version of Hawk that has a tendency to get lost while telling an old Tony La Russa story and forgets to tell the listeners what is actually happening in the game. There’s also been a number of occasions where I honestly don’t know who’s pitching until the 3rd or 4th inning.
That almost sounds like an older Harry Caray. Ron Santo had his moments as well.
I would agree, except that to me, Shannon’s voice itself is too grating. And, alas, voice quality looms large on radio.
Joe Angel is a top 3 radio play-by-play, and has been for a long time. His chemisty with Manfra is great. True the analysis is a bit limited, but Orioles radio should certainly be in the top half of the league.
BTW, it is the Atlanta Braves and the Cleveland Indians.
It is the author’s right not to use racist names. Just like it’s your right to use them. He’s not telling you what to do, so show him the same courtesy.
Thank goodness he remembered the Tampa Rays’ middle name. No telling how much trouble THAT would have caused.
It is the author’s right not to use those nicknames. Just like it’s your right to use them. He’s not telling you what to do, so show him the same courtesy – FTFY.
I’m sympathetic to your sensitivity, regarding the names, by the way. So long as you’ll be sensitive to the notion that another commentator is probably not attempting to use a name they believe is racist.
To be clear, I think the DC football team should change the name, possibly to the Warriors. Logo’s fine: Pittsburgh can have a white Pirate; DC can have a Native American Warrior.
I don’t love the Cleveland Baseball team name, but the logo is the real issue. Just thoroughly ridiculous. It’s not even decent art, honestly, and it belongs in a cartoon from the 30’s.
But I’m loathe to lump the Braves in, even as a Met fan. They cleaned up the logo and changed the mascot, and I don’t really buy the argument that the name is intrinsically problematic.
Carson’s right to do as he likes, as are you, and I, and we’re all racist, because no one escapes subconscious societal indoctrination. Hopefully, we’re all fighting that indoctrination in the best ways we all know how, and we can work together to do so in ways we each think are most important.
In general, I think this is a complicated subject. I live in Illinois where two local teams, Chicago Blackhawks and U of I Fighting Illini have nicknames meant to honor Native Americans, so I totally get what you’re saying. I don’t think all of the nicknames a slurs… but I also know that the days of a lot of these team names are numbered. Someone else mentioned the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the Yankees were mentioned as well…
I’m not sure if I agree that we’re all racist, but I do think we all have our prejudices. I think mine is more related to class than color.
I think for me in general, it’s about respect, and I wish respecting others was more of a priority… and I’m guilty of it too.
Yeah, I mean, I’m on the behavioral side of econ, so I’m referring more to the Freakonomics/Gladwell research into subconscious biases, as opposed to “we all actively cultivate prejudice.” We all retain cultural prejudices, which is the reason why transforming culture as a whole is important.
This whole line of argument, telling someone that they shouldn’t tell someone else something because the someone else has the right to say something is just a useless, endless circle. The only point of your post is to say that ghs33uga in fact does not have the right to use those terms. But of course now my comment is essentially telling you that you don’t have the right to tell him that he doesn’t have the right to tell the author that he doesn’t have a right to use those names. As you might be able to tell by now, it really goes nowhere.
It’s true, he has the right not to use racist names. OTOH, here he’s refusing to use non-racist names for reasons that are unclear
Wow, didn’t notice that as I read through. What a jackass if he can’t use those names. More liberal agenda BS. Braves, Indians, Redskins, not a damn thing wrong with any of those names. Hell, just ask the Native Americans who were recently survived that a large majority approved of it.
Yay! We are only insulting a minority!
Not being racist is now a Liberal Agenda? I grew up in a Republican family going to a Christian school and was taught racism was wrong. Jesus told us to love everyone. It’s crazy how the Redneck Agenda likes to cherrypick from the Bible and cloak their bigotry with religion.
Atlanta Braves is not insulting a minority. The name was originally referencing a political movement in Boston (where the team was based). It is only in the past couple decades that native american imagery has been attached to the name. So using the name should not be offensive to native americans, just the mascot and iconography.
“The team adopted an official name, the Braves, for the first time in 1912. Their owner, James Gaffney, was a member of New York City’s political machine, Tammany Hall, which used an Indian chief as their symbol.”
Redskins is understandably insulting, but Braves and Indians? I wouldn’t identify a term for a solider from a time period and specific culture as inherently insulting. We have the Charlotte Knights in AAA? Similarly to the Kansas City Royals – the term Indians references a culture of people largely from the past. If anything, the Phillies AA team – the Fighting Phils, whose logo includes a fist – is more directly offensive as it appears to make a joke of the Philadelphia fan’s history for low brow behavior (JD Drew batteries, snowballs at Santa, and more recently beer bottle at Howard).
Only a small number of Native Americans were survived.
I wish he’d done the same for San Diego – I’m a firm believer in the Separation of Church and Stats.
Seriously? What Orioles fan isn’t giving Joe and Fred top ratings? There’s literally no play-by-play announcer I’d want to listen to more than Joe Angel.
Ranking Toronto’s radio is tough; Jerry Howarth IS an institution, he calls a good game and even decades later his anecdotes are very entertaining. My biggest negative may not be against him since guessing it is to the producer or the network – but they recap the game so far Too frequently and that is when I know I can tune out for a while. In today’s modern world where many just care about watching highlights I don’t listen to the radio he hear you describe the game highlights over and over = give me insights, not instant replays!
Joe Sidall was an amazing find, his colour-play is good and a very likeable character. Best they have had since Asby by far. And I would put him as #3 for the Jays since we cannot forget the legendary Tom Cheek. My beef is that somebody decided to have the announcers take turns, and Joe is a 10/10 for analysis but in his young career a 4 or 5/10 as a play-by-play guy.
So the third person in the booth is Mile Wilner. Mike has been doing post game for many years. There are a large number that hate him – thinking he is too much of a contrarian, or arrogant. I think he is incredible and often I will skip the game but want to listen to his post game rebuttals where he silences listeners with stats and facts. I highly recommend subscribing to Blue Jays Talk! A few years ago they tried an experiment and had Mike do the play-by-play some innings. I wasn’t sure if he could do the job but was pleasantly surprised. People thought he’d be too monotone but when a big play happens his voice beams and his enthusiasm is very contagious. Well above average work!
FanGraphs, for such a great website that I am happy to support, shame on your editor(s) for allowing this “Cleveland/Atlanta Baseball Club” political correctness crap to infiltrate this site. It is certainly policed and shamed by commenters whenever it is brought up Below The Line.
Just referring to the market name “Cleveland”, “Atlanta”, “Minnesota”, is an acceptable compromise, if one is needed. For what’s it’s worth, I own a business and work in NE Ohio, and I get no sense that “Indians”/”Tribe”/”Chief Wahoo” or anything else “Cleveland Baseball Club” related offends 90% of the regional population.
I respect your rights to feel that way and voice your opinion.
Fine if people want to use the appalling names that Atlanta and Cleveland stick with, and Carson deals with them sensitively. As I’m not a writer for the site and below the line, let me say as a fan, reader and baseball player on the other side of the Atlantic that the Redskins, Braves and Indians nicknames are embarrassing and put a little stain on the sports they’re associated with and it won’t be a day too soon when they’re changed.
Still, nothing like a conservative feeling oppressed when we choose not to use the racist names. So much worse than poverty, war, climate change, jobs…. All that liberal, lefty crap.
I laugh at the part of 90% of the regional population not being offended… dude, it’s the Native Americans who are being offended, not Clevelanders.
Dude, 9 of 10 Native Americans are not in fact offended. You’re on fangraphs, I thought you would like facts/data. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/new-poll-finds-9-in-10-native-americans-arent-offended-by-redskins-name/2016/05/18/3ea11cfa-161a-11e6-924d-838753295f9a_story.html
From the article you linked:
“Native Americans are resilient and have not allowed the NFL’s decades-long denigration of us to define our own self-image,” wrote Oneida Nation Representative Ray Halbritter and National Congress of American Indians Executive Director Jacqueline Pata. “However, that proud resilience does not give the NFL a license to continue marketing, promoting, and profiting off of a dictionary-defined racial slur — one that tells people outside of our community to view us as mascots.”
Yeah, that sounds about right.
Oh, the dude who’s part of the 10% “sounds about right”? Doesn’t change the facts though, does it?
No, the fact remains that sports teams with names based on racism or racial stereotypes offend many people.
Wait, did he say he was feeling oppressed? 90% of the Native American population is not offended by the term Redskins. But please, lily-white liberal, whitesplain to all of us as to why we should be offended.
So exactly what percentage of the Native American population is it OK to offend before it’s too much?
So I guess it’s “none” to you? Should we have no names for teams? Maybe just colors? Because, being Irish, I’m offended by the Notre Dame Fightin’ Irish, a stereotype of the drunk Irish in the early 1900s. Will you please call them the Notre Dame College Football Club from here on out so as to not hurt my feelings? I’m sensitive. Thanks.
Well we kind of didn’t take all of Ireland’s land and then lead them on a trail of tears.
Oh got it. Can someone please post a rule book on who we can and cannot offend? I sometimes get confused.
By the way when you say “we” who do you mean? Because you or I didn’t do that. And neither did my ancestors.
As a general rule try to avoid offending people by using race-based attributes or stereotypes. Take extra care when the group has recently been oppressed and/or persecuted. Easy.
That doesn’t seem to fit the standard, considering Fightin Irish is based on a racial stereotype and, if you’ve ever read a history book, you know they have been oppressed/persecuted.
Wanna give it another try?
Why do you want to offend the Irish?!
I don’t. Haven’t you read the thread? I’m wondering why no one is calling the the Notre Dame College Football Club.
Perhaps people should and perhaps people will. …in any case, the fact that there are other race based names employed is not a strong argument in favour of them.
Also, you are ignoring all the negative data (all the names that do not exist, but could). For example, do you understand why the “Minneapolis Chinamen” are a team that will never exist? If so, you are halfway there.
Instead of the Minnesota Vikings? Which portray a people as an “animal” type with a mascot? Outrage!!
They have been oppressed and persecuted, but not by the u.s where these teams are based. If they had a fighting Irish anywhere in great Britain that argument might hold more weight.
Incidentally, the London Irish are a Rugby Union club in Great Britain.
Didn’t the Irish themselves choose the name? It’s Notre Dame, a Catholic school, where a lot of Irish people go.
Conversely, was the Cleveland Indians baseball club founded and operated by American Indians?
I think it’s very hard not to offend ANYBODY with ANYTHING — there are always a few outlying individuals that are either crackpots or those of very bizarre circumstances, and there’s not much you can do about those. But I would think it’s pretty common sense that if you pick a mascot based on a race/nationality/etc. of people, particularly a group that has been oppressed in their somewhat recent past, and use cartoonish caricatures of said people, there’s a pretty good chance you will offend a significant portion of them. I don’t understand why people think that’s ok. I would venture that most of those people are not a member of an oppressed minority group or do not have the ability to empathize with others who are in different situations from themselves.
So, I, and others, have given legitimate reasons why picking certain team names are a bad idea, and I haven’t heard even one somewhat reasonable counter argument in this thread so far. The only counter seems to be just throwing around terms such as “group-think” and “PC”, etc.
After reading this thread it’s no surprise that somebody blatantly racist as Trump can win a nomination in 2016. People really do think it’s ok.
After reading this thread it’s no surprise intolerant leftists who try to whitesplain everything are rioting and being generally violent at Trump rallies.
Actually, I have *never* voted for a Democrat. I used to vote Republican. but the growing portion of uneducated, racist, hateful, misogynists pushed me away. The Republican debates of the last few elections and the tea party have all but assured I won’t be voting for the GOP for awhile. Leftist have nothing to do with that.
Come on. You’ve got all the liberal buzzwords down. You’ll have me believe, Mr Random Internet Guy, that you’ve never voted Democrat? BS. You’re a collectivist; it’s clear as day.
For the record I hate Trump & Republicans too. Just hate weak-minded, group think, low-info liberals a touch more.
…yikes.
I am a lot of things. Collectivist isn’t one of them. I am way too selfish for that. I am much more likely to walk away from a group than to join them. It’s just that as I’ve grown older and have learned about my own depression and anxiety that I have developed compassion for others. I *hate* bullying and and see racism as part of that. 2000 was the last time I voted GOP. Since then it’s been all independants. I don’t support either party.
So you see racism as part of bullying? I do too. Not sure what that has to do with the conversation. Because YOU aren’t offended by Braves or Indians. You’ve been TOLD to be offended, despite the fact that Native Americans overwhelmingly are not offended. Groupthink.
Why does it matter what percentage are offended? I don’t see the point of naming baseball teams after a black eye on american history. I guess the Viet kongs would be a fair name as long as over 15% Vietnamese people aren’t offended?
“Groupthink” is about as meaningful a term as “political correctness”. Do you really think that everyone who agrees with you came to their decisions through careful independent thought, while everyone who disagrees with you mindlessly follows orders given to them from some mythical collective?
@cornflake5000 – you had me until you blithely threw in “tea party” into your condemnation of the Republican party. The tea party was started by folks opposing pork-barrel spending of both parties, but was unreasonably accused of being racist by much of the media. The way you lumped them in to your comment sure makes it sound like you’re one of the folks who have been coached in how to put “I used to be Republican, but….” comments into any political discussion.
I enjoy your baseball comments, but I have to agree with Backdoor Slider’s assessment on your choice of buzzwords.
Point taken. I agree I’m better at commenting on baseball than politics and better off at sticking to that.
One last comment, and then I’m out. I started this by saying I support the writer’s decision to not use the names he disagreed with. Rather then go off on a rant, he simply chose not to use them. The problem I had was people telling him he had to use them. The dissenters made a far bigger deal out of this than the author did.
Having said that, back to baseball. Have a good day, guys and gals.
Who does this hurt?
Taken to an extreme, that line of reasoning would suggest that using the “n” word is acceptable if done in a region where 90% of the population is racist white people. The issue at hand isn’t whether the team nicknames offend locals, it’s whether the nickname is offensive in general. People are certainly entitled to their own opinions on the matter, but it’s a legitimate discussion.
Additionally, keep in mind that FanGraphs is not a website published exclusively for the consumption of the regional populations of the Atlanta and Cleveland baseball markets, so it is unreasonable to expect their standards to be based solely on those markets’ tolerances. As FanGraphs creates the materials published on its site, I would propose an acceptable compromise would be that they can publish the team names however they like and people can choose to be patrons of the website or not.
The “n” word is an entirely different matter considering its use by a segment of the black community, the population that it offends. This leads to a very complicated issue that shouldn’t be compared to the other potentially racist words at issue.
Yes. But don’t forget that the “90%” is a figure without any supporting data, unless the person that wrote that has been either asking all his customers the question, or asking a random sample of customers. Fangraphs is a site for real data analysis, not made up numbers Scott employs.
“Political correctness” is a completely meaningless term that basically means “ideas that I disagree with, but are supported by a sizable amount of people.” The New York Times and Fox News have their own versions of political correctness.
What matters is the substance. Given the long history of race-based problems in the US and elsewhere, do you think it unreasonable that some people find sports team names based upon race or racial stereotypes offensive? And if people do find such names offensive, do you think it unreasonable that they decline to use those names?
I’m offended by the name “Yankee”, but nobody cares because I’m white :'(
I agree that nobody cares, but it is not because you are white.
Apparently alot of people can’t take a simple joke either. I swear, too much butt hurt going around these days.
I apologise for making a joke at your expense and I hope your butt recovers post haste.
Only changing your name will heal my wounds
This is a blog, not the NYT, they don’t concern themselves with all that shit.
I live in Florida and I’m taking my clothes off right now.
I’m in Illinois… just wearing a shirt. Nothing else. Well socks. I’m also wearing socks.
I definitely think the Braves announcers are a lot better than 16, even if these ratings are arbitrary. Those two work well together and are extremely funny, they also have been working a lot more metrics into their broadcast this year.
After reading this I was curious about the TV broadcasters, I had not previously noticed those articles. I use to love listening to the Braves announcers, back when they were actually on TBS, don’t get to hear them much anymore. But I watched the Braves game in LA the other day and I had to mute the game to watch it. Vin Scully has got to be the worst to listen to when watching a game. I don’t know what it is with LA announcers, when I went to school in California listening to Chick Hearn do Laker games was awful, couldn’t listen to him either.
So you’re saying you prefer southern conservative uneducated white guys…
It’s not even what they talk about. It is how they talk. The sound of Scully’s voice made me mute the TV. Just like on the Doug and Wolfe show in the mornings here in Arizona, I think the sound of Wolfe’s voice is awful, so I only listen to sports radio in the afternoons here.
I mean, he’s 100% wrong about Vin Scully, but you arrived at a much stupider conclusion.
If “Uncle” Ted Leitner is ranked as high as 19, I feel sorry for the listeners of the other 11 rated below him. I live in the LA area and get the SD radio station over the air and have a rare occasion to listen to his broadcasts, and wow, he is just awful, in just about every respect.
Two comments:
First, I agree that Tom Hamilton’s enthusiasm is awesome. I listen to a lot of games on MLB At Bat. Often, I start listening to the home broadcast by default. Then, having been lulled to sleep, I’ll switch over to the Indians broadcast because of the enthusiasm: it just makes it so much easier to stay engaged when listening to baseball.
Second, as a former resident of Florida, I can categorically state that Strip Clubs are one of the favorite things I remember about living in the state. I wrote a book called “What Sucks about South Florida” about 20 years ago, and I did not list their strip clubs as something that sucked. Just about everything else you can think of *did* suck.
IMO if Jon Miller is not first on this list, then there is no justice. He has it all: great voice, great love of the game, great storyteller, and pairs well with anyone. You know this is true because he made ESPN Sunday night games watchable while paired with Joe Morgan (great player, fairly bad announcer).
Maybe 10 years ago you could make a case for Vin Scully atop this list–I wouldn’t have voted that way even then–but at this point, it’s not even a contest.
/scans rankings
/rubs eyes
/looks through 30-21 rankings again
/rubs eyes
where is the dodgers crew?
Jerry Howarth sounds just as good now as he did 30 years ago. His play-by-play is fantastic.
However, his asides/analysis can be cringy. He’s had a man-crush on Ryan Goins for a while. Last year, he suggested moving Tulo to 1B so Goins can start at SS.
Joe Siddall is cool.
I’m not surprised Tom Hamilton did well in these rankings, because he’s clearly very popular with a majority of Indians fans. His disdain for any baseball statistic younger than his grandfather is off-putting to me though, and his outright hatred for Carlos Santana is a deal breaker. If you’re a Royals fan though, you should tune in to Hamilton. You’ve never heard someone lavish so much praise on another team before.
Jerry Howarth has such a friendly and familiar voice, is a very oldschool kind of guy. Joe Siddall also does a fine job, while still new I will be happy to hear him for years to come.
Good read!
I like Joe Siddall a lot. He has sometimes subbed for Tabler on the Jays’ TV broadcast and been excellent at it. Honestly, the Jays would be in a much better position if they could have Shulman and Siddall all the time over mostly Buck and Pat.
I don’t know how to balance my own feelings with with these rankings. So man of them just seem wrong.
The Yankees broadcast team is so terrible that I spent most of my time listening to the other broadcast (through the Gameday App). The exceptions to this are against the White Sox and the Indians. Tom Hamilton’s approach of whispering into the mic anything good that happens for the other team, then screaming for Anything done by the Indians is worse than Sterling’s singing.
I also tend to turn off the Rays broadcast team, who seem to take a “Well the ump is favoring the Yankees because they’re the Yankees” approach whenever the game turns against them, but that’s more specific content than broadcast style, so I put that complaint in a different box.