A Conversation with White Sox Play-by-Play Voice Jason Benetti

CLEVELAND — Jason Benetti is notable in many ways. He’s one of the youngest television play-by-play men in the game at 34. Only Dodgers’ voice Joe Davis (30) is younger. Benetti is one of the few broadcasters to have a law degree (Wake Forest, 2011). He is one of the few (perhaps the only?) play-by-play broadcaster who has MC’d the Saber Seminar in Boston. His credentials suggest he’s open-minded to FanGraphs-style analysis. His age, meanwhile, suggests he might represent the next wave of baseball broadcaster — one, in this case, who is more comfortable with advanced analytics and who sees the game from a new perspective. While Benetti has an appreciation and understanding of new-age numbers, he still considers himself a storyteller first and believes including “humanity” in a broadcast is as important as any metric.

His duties have gradually expanded as he replaces long-time broadcaster Ken “Hawk” Harrelson, who broadcasts only select games, and who will retire at the end of the season. Benetti, a Chicago native and lifelong Sox fan, will tell you he has his dream job, towards which he worked while spending 10 years broadcasting in the minor leagues from independent ball, to Salem, Va. (2007-08), to the Nationals’ Triple-A Syracuse affiliate (2009-14).

For a long time, Benetti balanced law studies with broadcasting in the spring and summer. He intended to have a law career. But the game kept coming back to him, he told me — including his big break when he was hired by the White Sox in 2016. He will tell you, as he told The Chicago Tribune, cerebral palsy is only a small part of who is.

I found Benetti in the White Sox road clubhouse Tuesday, where one can almost always find him before games talking to players, gathering information. In a way, he’s part reporter and part data analyst. He agreed to speak to me about what he feels his responsibility is as a broadcaster, how he prepares, how he balances calling a season for a team in transition, and how he sees the broadcast industry evolving and adapting to modern challenges:

FanGraphs: A reader might spend five or 10 minutes with a piece at FanGraphs or another media outlet (and that’s if they become engaged with it). But if a viewer watches the entirety of a game, you have their ear for three hours. I’d argue there’s no greater influential platform in a local media. Do you see it that way? Do you feel a sense of responsibility?

Jason Benetti: The level of responsibility comes in both fairness and accuracy. We need to be honest about what we are seeing and know what we are seeing is anomalous or not. So I think the tendency is to see a play that happens and is poor and immediately reach for, ‘Oh, you gotta make that play.’ And that’s what fans do and that’s what I did when I was a kid. But I also think there’s a part of it where you have to understand that baseball is such a long year that there are going to be outliers. Michael Jordan missed shots. I’m not saying that Michael Jordan is on the current White Sox. But I am saying that I think responsibility lies in knowing what people’s tendencies are, knowing when they are breaking them, and being as well informed as we possibly can as to what we are seeing fits what we know about that person — or it breaks the mold enough that we need to rethink the person overall.

FG: Did studying the law at Wake Forest in any way help you in this craft?

JB: It did — and more than I expected… The first time we had trail practice class and they are like, ‘The first 12 people that you see at the food court at the mall that might be your jury,’ I was like, ‘I don’t know my audience.’ I cannot know who is watching at any given time, how happy they are, how mad they are, what their world is like. Really you are just shooting at a blind target with information. You cannot read the audience. So learning to give the theory of the case to a jury you don’t know is really instructive when it comes to talking to audience that you think you know but you really don’t… You can strike some people from a jury, but I cannot strike anyone from my audience. ‘Hey, you 10 people you can’t watch, you’re out, but we get your ratings numbers.’

FG: When I flip around broadcasts via MLB Extra Innings and MLB.TV — while some broadcast teams are great [I love the SNY team in New York] — I feel there is often something to be desired. Is there something in your mind, do you see an area that could be improved in broadcasts booths?

JB: We’re talking broadly — and I’m the new guy to the fraternity, so it’s easy for me say — but the one thing I think baseball could do better is innovate. You see James Corden and his success with Carpool Karaoke. You see Jimmy Fallon’s success with the games he plays. We went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame [Tuesday in Cleveland] and you see all these ridiculous outfits people wore on stage. I’m not saying we need to do glam rock in the booth, but I think the understanding that we can push more as a group — especially because television broadcasts inherently have to be different.

We are not the only information source anymore. [NBA Commissioner] Adam Silver has talked about in the NBA ‘How can we make the broadcasts look more like the video games kids are playing?’ I don’t know exactly what that looks like but I do think the instinct to innovate… If Google or Apple came to baseball and televised broadcasts, I think we’d be in a better place because there would be more, ‘Hey, let’s try to push each other up here and see how we can innovate some more.’ But again, who is your TV audience? I think the older generation — and this is not a dig — there is a group of people that doesn’t want that. And there is a group of people that do. How do you do both? MLB is trying with the Facebook stuff but that is just a toe in the pool.

FG: Take me through a typical day, what goes into your preparation routine?

JB: I’ll go through in the morning and go through clips, what people are talking about baseball-wise. This is total pandering, but [I visit] FanGraphs. I listen to podcasts. I listen to Jeff and Ben, Buster Olney, an assortment of others. I just click around and see where my mind takes me. Baseball Reference can be a rabbit hole, certainly: we all know that in the baseball industry. I just try to gather as much as I can that morning, in the allotted time I give myself. Then I go do life for a while. I pick it back up in the ballpark. Part of what we do with our telecasts is we have a Google Doc where we all just kind of share ideas, whether it be me, a producer, associate producer, or Steve [Stone]. We just kind of put stuff in there as the day goes on. We’ve not gotten to Slack yet… So I will do that during the morning, then when I get to the ballpark and get to the lineup, I will write down certain stats I think are important so I have them in front of me in my [score] book… but I also have trends [highlighted] in a certain color, a hitting streak [etc.], and then a couple trigger words about stories I want to tell that night.

A lot of what I do is in the clubhouse. It’s important for me, from my minor-league days. If you’re not in the clubhouse, people notice very quickly, I think. Like [White Sox Manager Rick] Renteria said to me the other day at Wrigley Field… We were in for a three-game series and I just wasn’t down there, I was running around… The next day he’s like, ‘Frontrunner, huh?’ I was like ‘One day?’ But that’s true. That tends to happen. I think learning about these players to go along with the stats and everything, that is important. You need to know the people to flesh out exactly what we are seeing… A lot of prep happens in the offseason, too. I have a doc on my computer with stories I’ve read about. I’m not catching up on our opponents when we get into the city.

FG: Did you have a mentor or someone that explained or demonstrated the importance of being in the clubhouse and building relationships?

JB: The first guy I ever worked with in minor-league baseball, Bob McElligott, who is with the [NHL] Blue Jackets now. I would have my computer and all these notes and everything, and he would spend most of the time before the game not in the booth but down in the clubhouse. He didn’t have any notes on his computer. He would come upstairs and be like, ‘This guy did that, and this guy did that.’ He’s just throwing stuff out there during the game, [and] I’d be like, ‘How does he know that?’ But I watched him do that. I think when you ask people questions, you suddenly have a world open up to you of who they are and what they are doing. Sometimes it’s self-serving; other times it’s really human and honest. I think getting to know the people you are sometimes critical of is imperative… If I don’t know the people, I am not being fair in talking about them for three hours. If someone spoke about me for three hours and had never met me, I would think there is something wrong.

FG: You’re almost a reporter in some ways…

JB: Nowadays, with the internet, if we’re not telling people about those players, they’re going to be doing it on their own… Everybody can get whatever is on the internet. We’re editors in a lot of ways because not every Sox fan is going to read every story about Jose Ramirez and Matt Skole. We need to give what is most important to us to them that day. If we are not finding new material, then we are a little behind.

FG: Pace has slowed, as we know. I suppose that puts the onus on broadcasters to fill that increasing dead time. It seems the most important part of the job is not the actual play-by-play calling but what you do with the time in between…

JB: You can do baseball so many different ways. You can be hyper-critical, you can be aggressive, you can be this raconteur like Vin Scully and tell every story under the sun. You can be a hybrid of all those things or come up with a new way. I think you have to do all of them to make the entire audience happy, but it’s not possible to do them all in every moment. I am somebody who appreciates numbers. I tend to think numbers know people better than we know ourselves, which is like the robots are taking over the world. I don’t mean it that way. You meet someone at the DMV and they don’t have a WAR. They don’t have a BABIP. But they do understand the idea of doing something for the first time. They do have a dog. Lucas Giolito has a dog, who he loves and walks all the time. The people watching don’t have stats but they do have humanity. I think to exclude humanity for stats’ sake is not really what any of us are trying to do.

FG: How do you decide how advanced you can be in the statistics you employ on the broadcast? And what do you feel your responsibility is in pushing certain stats and analysis forward even if it makes people uncomfortable?

JB: I don’t want to make people feel uncomfortable unless I know I am going to break through. That’s my first instinct. My second instinct is to say, ‘You know what? It’s worth it.’ We’ve had wRC+ leaderboards. If I had it my way, long term, we would probably put them on every batter graphic. Our audience at some point would either disregard them or understand them completely. I think sometimes you do have to push people. What I laugh at is people say, ‘Oh, you’re a numbers guy.’ Then I say ‘Did you ever memorize batting averages from the backs of baseball cards? Okay. Then what are we arguing about?’… If we didn’t have Defensive Runs Saved a couple years ago, we wouldn’t have known how spectacular a right fielder Adam Eaton was… Daniel Palka is sitting not far from us [at the end of the dugout where we’re talking]… He had the hardest-hit baseball in the majors in two straight days. I think it fleshes out who the person is when you have deeper stats.

FG: Do you worry about connecting with as a broad an audience as possible? Or do you just call a game like you believe it should be called?

JB: There are ad hominem attacks and then there are actual criticisms I am hearing, which I will take into account. If I am overdoing stats, advanced stats for nine innings, [broadcast partner] Steve [Stone] would call me out in the third inning and he’d be right. It can’t be just that. I listen. But I also think there are some things that need some time to permeate. You need to try first. We are big — Steve and I and our crew — are big on, ‘Let’s try this and see if it works…’ I think you can include stats in a non-abrasive way and people will be curious and say, ‘I wonder what that is?’ and look it up. Or they won’t and say, ‘Just give me my batting average…’ Steve enjoys spin rate quite a bit because he can explain what that means to people. I didn’t pitch. I’d rather have him explain it. Also, the first thing he says about a pitcher is ‘wins and losses’ because that’s the era he grew up in. I don’t begrudge that at all. I don’t think it fits today’s way of using, deploying pitchers, but I also don’t begrudge him because you learn the games in different ways.

FG: Broadcasters, for the first 100 years of doing this, didn’t get instantaneous feedback via Twitter. Now you are getting constant public opinion baths. How do you filter it?

JB: I read it. I think if you are not reading you are doing yourself a disservice because there are criticisms on there that are fair and accurate and worthy. There are other times when I say something and I just misspoke. I can go correct it because someone brought it up. I want to get it right. It’s live TV. I’m going to eff some things up. I want to correct it… But I don’t read it before I go to bed because there are people that are like… I just got this the other day: ‘Every time you are positive when they lose your eyes drift further apart.’ I am like ‘Who writes that?’ I know when you are on TV you’re going to get arrows. That’s sort of the point of it. Some people go to NASCAR to watch the great bump-drafting; others go for carnage. When you are on TV, you are going to be part of the carnage. What we are tapping around is this: why do people watch baseball games? I know why you and I do, and a lot of other people, but for some people it is just to yell at the TV when things are going poorly and scream in joy when they are winning. It’s an attachment thing.

FG: Did it take you a long time to become comfortable with criticism with people saying mean-spirited things? Have you always had a thick skin?

JB: No, I didn’t. When I was a kid, people would say stuff and I would be pissed. But then it’s like you walk into a clubhouse and these guys are such a tight-knit group and every clubhouse starts that way, I think. If you are not giving it back to people, you are not living. Have a little fun. If people are doing it jokingly, have fun. If people are not doing it jokingly, still have fun… Getting caught up in criticism is allowing it to affect you.

FG: Broadcasters are not always viewed as objective sources of information. They are employees of the club. How do you balance what you want to say with what the interests of the club of players might be?

JB: It automatically comes up. The general manager and the manger, and the PR office and the fans, the left fielder and other fans: they are all going to have a different theory on what ought to be going on with the team. I think you have to distill it as smartly as possible. The question is, what is ‘smartly’?… I think it’s gathering as much information as possible and trying to break down what we are looking at.

Like [last Monday], a ball ends up dropping in right field that Daniel Palka was shaded to right-center for. He slides and it hits his glove. It drops in, three runs score, turning point of the game. I wasn’t hyper-critical. He had a long way to go. Steve thought it should have been scored an error. [The play had a hit probability of 2%.] A couple people on Twitter said, ‘Hey, stop talking about how great of a hitter he is and start talking about how bad of a fielder he is.’ Well, they already know the play should have been made. The first thing I did [Tuesday] was walk into to the clubhouse and I asked him how he felt about that play. He explained to me that he was shaded pretty far into right-center, he was playing deep… It was Edwin Encarnacion, which is why he did it. He’s pissed at himself because the ball hit off his glove. It’s my job to convey that. Making a judgment on that, I don’t think, is very much my job… We’ve been having this same argument for centuries on whether we should be one-sided or two-sided, and I always land on being as objective as possible.

FG: What are the best practices you’ve borrowed from in your career?

JB: I don’t want to give away trade secrets but Ryan LeFebvre, with the Royals, during my first spring training, I went into his booth and I said ‘Can you show me what you do?’ And he showed me his notes on players and how he structures it during the offseason. I’ve taken some from him. In my first year in independent baseball, there was a guy who was using a bunch of colored pens to score. I started doing that. And I love it… Anyone that I think does really good work, I’ll ask.

FG: You were in the minor leagues for eight or nine years. How did that shape you? What was most challenging?

JB: The saddest thing for me about our industry is we take away time from young people who want to be great storytellers and have them do game notes, sell tickets, fold chairs, and tables. I’m not saying hard work isn’t worth it. That’s what that sounds like: ‘Petulant brat doesn’t want to do menial labor.’ But you hone your craft as a storyteller by prepping and telling those stories. When you’re literally at the copier at 6:45 p.m. for a 7:05 p.m. first pitch, you’re not learning that skill. We are churning out fewer skilled storytellers because of the overwhelming nature of the amount of work in minor-league baseball and the lack of supply of labor in most front offices. It’s distressing to me.

If you want to be a baseball announcer, for me, you’re better off going to a Moth StorySLAM. People go up and tell stories without notes. I listen to the podcast all the time. I just think you are better off watching great movies and great stand-up comedians. Being at your computer in front of InDesign until 6:30, there were times where I was running down to the copier to copy game notes because they were sent in late. How are you supposed to learn how to storytell? It disincentives what Vin Scully did and Red Barber did.

FG: How did you hone your skills during your minor-league career?

JB: I almost didn’t mean to, but during blowout games in the minors literally no one is listening. One time we had a rain delay in Salem. It looked like it was going to be a postponement. We get the word that the tarp is coming off. The tarp comes off. I call the radio station and no one answers. I call the cell phone of the board op, the guy who is supposed to be playing commercials. He’s gone home. He just left. It’s a signal that what you do is not all that important. In those situations, there was literally one half-inning when I was doing A-ball and this game was 19-6 and I just started reading the ingredients off a bottle of hand sanitizer in a booth. It was interspersed between pitches. You have to learn there what succeeds and what fails. I love stand-up. I love good acting. I love good writing. I think I am something of an entertainment junkie, and I enjoy watching people perform.

FG: Is your broadcasting and storytelling abilities learned or innate? Were you around great storytellers when you were younger?

JB: I was never in plays or musicals, but I enjoy them. I never acted, but I enjoy great acting. I’m not really funny, but I enjoy great comedy. I just think you immerse yourself in great performance. I also think I was part of the first generation of video-game baseball fans to supplement going to the ballpark. I’d watch the Sox basically everyday in the 1990s and go to the park, but I’d also play as the Sox in Ken Griffey Jr. and whatever the baseball game was on the computer where you would simulate seasons. It was like Front Page Sports Baseball. It was way too detailed about building your roster… It’s a combination of really enjoying the game and performance.

FG: What challenges are there in calling a season for a rebuilding team like the White Sox?

JB: It’s a really interesting, complicated situation. The interesting part is, you have 25 guys in this clubhouse who not only want to win but also want play here in the big leagues for a long time. They have reached the pinnacle of their lives in the game and they are enjoying that. They also know [that], if they don’t win that may wane, that enjoyment might go away. You have 25 people who want to keep their position in that clubhouse very badly. And then more broadly… you have an organization that knew this year was going to be the toughest, probably. How do you reconcile that mentally?

For the manager it’s tougher than for me. He’s trying to motivate people who are probably of lower skill than those that are coming… You have this long-term understanding of what the organization is trying to do and this short-term understanding that every play that is not made this year is going to piss off the person that didn’t make for multiple reasons, selfish and otherwise. That’s a balancing act at every juncture if you want there to be. The end result, the best solution, is each broadcast is a combination of myopic and long-term.

FG: Do you watch a lot of broadcasts?

JB: In the offseason, I watch more than in-season. I will scan to see what other broadcasts are doing element- and production-wise… Last year, when the Sox were on the road, I would watch other [broadcasts] throughout the league.

FG: What percentage of meals do you make on your own during a season?

JB: Oh, we’re talking 0.0005%. I’ll eat lunch at home some times. Generally, I will eat at the ballpark and I like to try to find a good restaurant in the city we are in… The biggest problem with the road lifestyle right now is it takes me half-hour to setup my Amazon Echo — because of the splash pages, not the internet. I like to have it for my alarm in the morning and I also like to say ‘Alexa, play this,’ and it just happens.

FG: Will the broadcast booth alway contain a play-by-play man and a former player turned analyst or do you think that dynamic with change?

JB: I’m all about trying stuff. Let’s see what we can do. It’s not just me. There are Fortune 500 companies who live on that and try stuff. ‘Let’s see what we can do…’ The pearl-clutching over rule changes, when you go deeper into what rules have been before… It’s two bounces and you can catch it and it’s an out, and then it goes to one bounce you can catch it and it’s an out, and now it’s only catch in on the fly… Shit changes. It does. And it’s fine.





A Cleveland native, FanGraphs writer Travis Sawchik is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Big Data Baseball. He also contributes to The Athletic Cleveland, and has written for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, among other outlets. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Sawchik.

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Santos
5 years ago

“Bennett is one of the few broadcasters (perhaps the only?) to have a law degree (Wake Forest, 2011)” Gary Thorne play by play for the Orioles has a law degree as well.

Handsome Wes
5 years ago
Reply to  Santos

Bennett is in good company – Thorne (Georgetown Law!) is one of the best broadcasters in the entire game.