Broadcaster Crowdsourcing Results, Part 1: 30-21
Last month, we at FanGraphs put out a call for broadcaster ratings. The votes are now all in, and over the following days, we’ll be releasing a compilation of those rankings, as well as selected commentary from each team’s responses. A similar survey of radio broadcasts will follow early next year, and a final summation at some point after that.
As a refresher, our survey asked for scores in four areas. If you’d like a thorough explanation of them, you can read the introductory article, but I’ll also recap them briefly here before starting off with the bottom third of the league.
The “Analysis” score covers the frequency and quality of a broadcast team’s discussion of baseball. This isn’t limited to statistical analysis, and many of the booths that scored best excelled at explaining pitching mechanics. This score represents how much viewers feel they learn about baseball by watching.
“Charisma” covers the amount of enjoyment voters derive from listening to the announcers fill space, which takes on many forms. The booths that scored best on charisma varied wildly, from former players recounting stories of their glory days to unintentional comedy and playful banter between long-term broadcast partners.
“Coherence” focuses on play-by-play, but it also covers how well broadcasters stay in tune with the game. The most coherent broadcasts strike a balance between telling stories and informing viewers of the current state of the game. That’s a tough balance to strike, and many broadcasts that scored well on charisma did worse in terms of coherence.
Lastly, an overall score simply answers the question: on a scale from 1-10, how much do you enjoy this broadcast? It’s not an average of the other scores or anything other than how the broadcast makes you feel overall. It also covers anything else: graphics, use of replay, and any other features that can affect overall enjoyment.
One note: the comments I’m presenting alongside each team’s ratings have been lightly edited for clarity and aren’t meant to be exhaustive. The ratings do a better job of conveying the overall reader view of each broadcast team, but I’ve highlighted what each fanbase found to be the high points of their television crew so that prospective viewers can go in with an idea of what to expect. They will hopefully provide extra information without detracting from the ratings. Without further ado, let’s get started.
30. Detroit Tigers
| Team | Analysis | Charisma | Coherence | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Detroit Tigers | 4.3 | 3.2 | 4.0 | 3.5 |
Selected Comments
- Like the broadcast much better when Kirk Gibson is on there.
- The coverage can get rather stodgy when the game itself drags.
- Morris is the best and is starting to lean more into analytics. Gibson has inconsistent presentation. Dan Dickerson who does the radio broadcast is by far the best we have.
29. Colorado Rockies
| Team | Analysis | Charisma | Coherence | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Colorado Rockies | 4.5 | 4.5 | 5.0 | 4.5 |
Selected Comments
- Goodman and Huson, the main broadcasting combo, leave a bit to be desired although they both have a lot of insight. Ryan Spilborghs is a great member of the group. Overall, a pretty charismatic group but there are some analytical aspects lacking.
- Analysis of within game situations is good. Critical analysis of the team’s overall capabilities comes up short.
- The saving grace of the broadcast is the presence of Ryan Spilborghs and Jenny Cavnar. Both are perfectly mellow and intelligent.
28. Texas Rangers
| Team | Analysis | Charisma | Coherence | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Texas Rangers | 4.9 | 4.3 | 5.4 | 4.5 |
Selected Comments
- Raymond is excellent. Nitkowski can be too boisterous, almost like he’s trying to get his own sports talk show.
- Tom Grieve is nice to hear every once in a while. He’s more comfortably familiar than insightful. It’s been nearly a decade, and I just want Josh Lewin back, with cookie reviews and all. Any issues in the booth don’t extend to on-field reporting, where Emily Jones has been excellent for many years.
27. Atlanta Braves
| Team | Analysis | Charisma | Coherence | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atlanta Braves | 4.7 | 5.2 | 5.2 | 4.9 |
Selected Comments
- Analysis is at its best when Glavine is in the booth.
- Francoeur is really who makes the broadcast for me. He is likable, fun, provides good insight, and simply loves the game of baseball. Crull and Byrd are a fun group on the field also.
- This crew is fun to listen to if the Braves win, but when they lose it gives off “old man yelling at clouds” vibes. Also, they hated analytics until analytics showed how good Freeman was in 2020.
26. Washington Nationals
| Team | Analysis | Charisma | Coherence | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Washington Nationals | 4.9 | 5.2 | 5.4 | 5.2 |
Selected Comments
- F.P. Santangelo is understandably divisive; I was a long-time hater, but I’ve finally come around. He notices and appreciates the details of the game that make baseball seem fresh on the thousandth viewing. Those joyful moments and astute observations are finally enough for me to outweigh his more outlandish takes.
- I don’t think there’s a gray area on F.P. You either love his dumb comments and jokes or you hate them.
- F.P. is the guy in your freshman philosophy class that would ask a ton of thought provoking questions, but would only show up to class once every few weeks. I mean this as a compliment.
- Carpenter is solid. Alex Chappell is great.
25. Pittsburgh Pirates
| Team | Analysis | Charisma | Coherence | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pittsburgh Pirates | 5.3 | 5.2 | 5.5 | 5.2 |
Selected Comments
- I like how they sometimes do extended interviews with players in game. Like, not the one question things that everyone does, they’ll talk to a player on the bench for a full inning.
- Bob Walk is the best of the group due to his humor.
- The rotating color commentators are hit or miss, but Bob Walk and John Wehner are usually a joy to listen to.
24. Philadelphia Phillies
| Team | Analysis | Charisma | Coherence | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Philadelphia Phillies | 5.0 | 5.8 | 4.9 | 5.5 |
Selected Comments
- Kruk and Rollins are the two best reasons to listen to this broadcast.
- Murphy is a solid field reporter, engaging and upbeat.
- Tom McCarthy and John Kruk make a great duo, Ben Davis often feels like a third wheel. Ruben Amaro brings back bad memories but is often insightful.
23. Arizona Diamondbacks
| Team | Analysis | Charisma | Coherence | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arizona Diamondbacks | 5.5 | 5.9 | 5.7 | 5.7 |
Selected Comments
- Brenly is an old school dude, which can be looked down on sometimes in this era of analytics. That said, I have always enjoyed listening to his perspective on the game and the anecdotes he shares. He may not be the best at explaining UZR, but he knows baseball and can explain it in a very relatable way.
- The occasional break from Brenly would be nice to highlight his strong points.
22. Cincinnati Reds
| Team | Analysis | Charisma | Coherence | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cincinnati Reds | 6.1 | 5.5 | 6.3 | 5.8 |
Selected Comments
- Jeff Brantley tells it like it is. Hats off to him for doing so.
- I like Brantley quite a bit. I wish he worked more games.
- This broadcast is quickly improving. To be clear, everything doesn’t have to be analytical, and it isn’t, but simply moving away from an anti-analytical stance has helped stop the spread of bad information and made the games much more enjoyable to listen to.
21. St. Louis Cardinals
| Team | Analysis | Charisma | Coherence | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| St. Louis Cardinals | 5.7 | 5.8 | 5.9 | 5.8 |
Selected Comments
- Jim Edmonds is the best color commentator they have.
- Edmonds once learned about the Binghamton Rumble Ponies during a broadcast and spent the next three innings looking up weird minor league team names and laughing at them.
- Dan McLaughlin typically rises or falls to the levels of his guests. When they have analytical, smart people on as guests, he’s engaging and willing to explain advanced and statistical concepts. But when he has someone on who hates “sabermetrics,” so does he.
- Ricky Horton has made incredible strides and actually does a good job mixing player stories with analytical approaches to the game.
- I feel that the overall analysis is adequate to good but that some color commentators tend to go off on tangents too frequently.
If you’d prefer to see the ratings all in one table, you’re in luck: here are the 10 teams covered today in sortable grid form:
| Rank | Team | Analysis | Charisma | Coherence | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 | Detroit Tigers | 4.3 | 3.2 | 4.0 | 3.5 |
| 29 | Colorado Rockies | 4.5 | 4.5 | 5.0 | 4.5 |
| 28 | Texas Rangers | 4.9 | 4.3 | 5.4 | 4.5 |
| 27 | Atlanta Braves | 4.7 | 5.2 | 5.2 | 4.9 |
| 26 | Washington Nationals | 4.9 | 5.2 | 5.4 | 5.2 |
| 25 | Pittsburgh Pirates | 5.3 | 5.2 | 5.5 | 5.2 |
| 24 | Philadelphia Phillies | 5.0 | 5.8 | 4.9 | 5.5 |
| 23 | Arizona Diamondbacks | 5.5 | 5.9 | 5.7 | 5.7 |
| 22 | Cincinnati Reds | 6.1 | 5.5 | 6.3 | 5.8 |
| 21 | St. Louis Cardinals | 5.7 | 5.8 | 5.9 | 5.8 |
There doesn’t appear to be one unifying similarity among the broadcast crews that received the worst ratings. The most significant theme appears to be rotating booths; a majority of these teams use multiple color commentators in varying amounts. Broadcaster camaraderie can cover for many sins, and most of the best-rated teams feature a main pairing with only occasional substitutions. Some of the broadcasts on today’s list would likely improve if they settled on one main booth. For the most part, though, these booths have one or two strong performers but don’t do enough to lean into those strengths, a theme that will continue in the next installment.
Ben is a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Bluesky @benclemens.
The sad part for Detroit is that the broadcast team of Rod Allen and Mario Impemba were enjoyable to watch. Sigh.
Also sad that they hated each other so much. They were a really solid combo back in the Tigers glory years
as a fan of none of these teams – this bottom tier lines up with my experiences of listening to these teams when MLBN does a live lookin or live full broadcast. most of these are just awkward and hard to listen to.
This ranking is just going to depress me when I see where Len & JD ranked for the Cubs, isn’t it?
“I pride myself and think of myself as, a man of faith, as there’s a drive into deep left field by Castellanos and that’ll be a home run. And so that’ll make it a 4-0 ballgame. I don’t know if I’ll be putting on this headset again. Whether that be for the Reds or my bosses at FOX.”
-Thom Brennaman, Reds Announcer 2006-2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fstNaoLpG8
Legend.
“Good broadcasters are all alike; every bad broadcaster is bad in its own way.” (Lee Tolstoy, who played 58 games for the Brooklyn Dodgers, under a different name.)
Considering these are the bottom 10 in the rankings, including more negative comments would probably me constructive
Agreed, it seems odd to see a booth get an overall rating of 3.5 (out of 10!) and yet the most descriptive negative aspect was that it’s “stodgy.”
I thought so, too, but perhaps the negative comments weren’t specific/”printable?”
I gave a pretty detailed response on Detroit’s booth with some detail on each member. It was negative because they aren’t a good TV broadcast, but, I thought it was fair & gave an accurate description of how I view it. Wasn’t used.
I honestly don’t care or have much interest in statistics they are trying to explain in-game. I understand it is supposed to help with ratings, but I just don’t find it to hear about some obscure stat that makes it difficult for kids to understand. That’s why the classic stats have worked so well, they don’t pretend to explain the game away; the game retains mystery without a super complicated but accurate stat. Best to leave that to the fantasy site when people search it out themselves.
I’d love it if the play by play would have to describe more and rely less on the visuals viewers have. I think the game would be better if you had to listen to get your bearings, or at least it would redirect the focus to engage with the program instead of being able to see the score and the strike box. You really only need the score as a reminder mid inning.
You can tell a good story and use more precise tools to do so. You can be a good pitcher and rely upon cameras and advancing processing to better attune your workouts. You can be a great hitter and use modern methods of swing path alignment and video study. You can be a good fielder and use data to better position yourself to make even more incredible plays. You can be a good GM and benefit from sources of data and analysis undreamt of by your forebearers. You can be well-educated and appreciate what you’re seeing. You can learn new things without becoming joyless. You can be alive. It’s ok.
That is a false equivalence. Broadcasters don’t have to compete for production, they’re more like artists.
I enjoy stats as the next guy, I’m on this site for christ sakes. But I know that it isn’t for everyone. It becomes a barrier to entry, not an open gate. Broadcasters have to have engaging content for a BROAD audience. I’m hoping to develop an interest in the game, not statistics, as entertainment for a more diverse base of fans.
Broadcasters absolutely have to compete; especially as the older generation moves on, we’ll see in MLB what we’ve seen in NFL, NBA, etc. (especially as broadcasting networks revolve owners, change audience foci, etc.). And respectfully, your argument makes the false equivalence and some pretty heady assumptions. Talking stats is *not* gatekeeping and different kinds of audiences can enjoy stats in different ways (ask my dad’s generation how much fun they have arguing about WAR comps between their players’ and my gen–they don’t know or care how WAR is calculated, but it gives them a meaningful way to continue the conversation).
Can stats be a barrier? Sure, when done poorly (like all things). But so is some jerk going on about how Acuna’s jewelry is why he strikes out (as the ATL team has said) or someone ignorant to basic logic arguing about how pitchers today aren’t tough because they don’t throw 300 innings, etc etc. Doing something badly isn’t the fault of the subject as much as it is the speaker.
Broadcasters that take the time to explain the few stats they choose to include–usually OBP, OPS, and sometimes WAR or FIP) do so because they’re both accessible (OBP and OPS are not hard to understand for a novice or expert; more is better, and the numbers are more likely to reflect performance than AVG). By still providing simple ways of comparing players/events, stats offer more inclusivity, which a broadcaster can make possible (something you see a lot in SEA, SD, SFG, LAD broadcasts, imo). There are multiple ways to engage, or not, but you’re not being given bad faith numbers out of laziness or desperation for an ignorant crowd. *That’s* divisive.
Stats are *going* to be part of any broadcast. Pretending that you can watch and enjoy without noticing them doesn’t seem possible. Whether or not you *care* about how they’re expressed is different, but if no one on the broadcast mentioned any statistic throughout the game, both broadcaster and audience would run out of relevant things to say pretty quickly.
Broadcasters are subjectively judged and more secure…not like the objective goals of teams and the high turnover they face(apples to oranges).
Kids that are 4-11yo don’t get these statistics… hence the barriers (not gatekeeping, because gates prevent entry while barriers make it more difficult not impossible). Advanced stats shouldn’t be expunged, but maybe it shouldn’t be too heavy.
My preference isn’t to remove statistics. Instead, shift the focus elsewhere that makes a story people can be attached to (because statistics are fleeting). Young people need to learn the game to become fans and develop an attachment if they are to stay interested.
Pairing it back so you don’t know what the strike or ball is right away is a simple thing. Not having the score and outs showing every second makes people have to follow the ump and remember what is going on, just like when you play the real game. Making these more infrequent helps teach new fans what is going on. Right now, it isn’t interesting because you are spoonfed, essentially don’t have to pay attention all the time.
Can you add a column to each table for total number of responses?
Take this with a grain of salt with me having only lived in Pittsburgh for two years, but Bob Walk is their best color guy. He gives off such a delightful curmudgeon vibe, and I’m pretty sure he’s just decided to lean into it.
He’s clueless about the current crop of major leaguers. He’s ALL about the glory days of the 1980s.
It would be great if you could list the broadcasters again for each team.
Agreed, it would be nice to know who is being discussed for each team.
As a Cardinals fan, I can guarantee the broadcast team is not the 21st broadcasting team in the league.
That being said, we are mostly insufferable jerks who are never satisfied with anything. If we gave Dan and the gang a cumulative 5.8, just imagine how much we’d hate every other broadcast team. 😀
Braves radio crew (Jim Powell, Ben Ingram, Joe Simpson) is miles better than the TV broadcast. The TV crew still shuns analytics quite a bit. Chip Caray is pretty polarizing in the booth: love or hate with little in between. That said, Caray *has* authored some iconic calls over the years, and knows how to let the mic breathe when something big occurs.
Their unrestrained hatred for Acuna kills them for me. They never miss an opportunity to point out his bling, call attention to a strikeout, etc, but his good stuff is just “doing what he’s supposed to do” (which recalls too many ugly and lazy broadcasting tropes for me to let go).
I remember Joe Davis and Orel talking about how they couldn’t believe how underappreciated Acuna was in ATL during an away telecast, which was pretty telling (and Davis/Orel are pretty wonderful).
This is the most vexing aspect of Caray / Francoeur to me. They almost seem to have an axe to grind with Acuna. Caray does, presumably because he is old school and has been slow to embrace swagger. Francoeur maybe has some skills envy? I mean Acuna has already doubled Jeff’s career fWAR in just 2.5 seasons.
I, for one, can’t stand Tom Glavine in the booth. He’s just so dry.
Considering Jack Morris has been on plenty of Twins broadcasts and is arrogant and anti-analytics, I’m a bit concerned to know how bad the rest of the broadcast is if he’s considered the best. That’s good to know he’s leaning a bit more into using them, though. (Morris was on few Twins games in 2020 which is why I didn’t really notice.)
Well, that was one comment. I know mine was not so favorable to Morris.
He is awful
I’ve also heard anecdotes that he’s an 80 grade asshole
Surprised Texas is so low, they’re more middle of the pack for me. Can’t disagree with any of the rest though. PIT WAS and STL are particularly intolerable.
TIL about FP Santangelo, the broadcaster. Friends, the word “polarizing” is not hyperbole.
How are the Mets not on this list? They still employ Ron Darling correct?
If Ron Darling had done one inning on Sunday games with Vin Scully that would have been enough to sink the Dodgers to last
I’d rather be shot in the head by the SWAT team than ever hear Ron Darling do another inning.
Don’t hold back, tell us how you really feel.
Jeff Brantley is a treasure, delivering it to you via color commentator, or play by play, ” Straight Down Broadway”.
Bob Walk knows nothing about the current players outside of the Pirates…. and doesn’t care to know. I want my announcer to know who Matt Olson or Wander Franco is. If the player is outside the NL Central or below the Pirates AAA dude has no clue.
If it wasn’t for Dan Shulman taking over for Buck Martinez as the main play by play guy and moving Buck to color where he’s best, Buck and Pat Tabler would have to be the worst pairing in baseball for the Jays.