Crowdsourcing MLB Broadcasters: Names and Places
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. Consider: the average telecast of a major-league game offers four distinct audio feeds — which is to say, the radio and television commentary both for the home and road clubs. The idea of these broadcast rankings was to give readers an opportunity to make an informed decision about how they consume a telecast.
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.
As such, what this post represents is the start of another of those crowdsourcing efforts. The first step: to arrive at some understanding of whom, exactly, we’re grading. The names below are intended to represent the main television broadcast teams for each of the league’s 30 clubs. (The radio broadcast teams will be addressed in a future post.) The information here is taken from a combination of Wikipedia and MLB.com, but would benefit from readers who possess a more intimate knowledge of how each club’s broadcasts are executed.
Again, the idea here is to identify the broadcasters most frequently found in each team’s booth. Many clubs have occasional color commentators and guest announcers, but isolating the most regular contributors will make this process more efficient, if slightly less nuanced.
Note that, where a slash (/) divides multiple names, the suggestion is that the relevant announcers are participating in a fairly even timeshare. Note also that — incorrectly or not — both the Chicago White Sox’ and Los Angeles Dodgers’ broadcasters have been split into home and away teams, creating 32 total entries.
Please offer any relevant clarifications or corrections in the comment section.
Arizona: Steve Berthiaume, Bob Brenly
Atlanta: Chip Caray, Joe Simpson
Baltimore: Gary Thorne, Jim Palmer
Boston: Dave O’Brien, Jerry Remy
Chicago (AL) Home: Jason Benetti, Steve Stone
Chicago (AL) Away: Ken Harrelson, Steve Stone
Chicago (NL): Len Kasper, Jim Deshaies
Cincinnati: Thom Brennaman, Chris Welsh
Cleveland: Matt Underwood, Rick Manning
Colorado: Drew Goodman, Jeff Huson
Detroit: Mario Impemba, Rod Allen
Houston: Bill Brown, Alan Ashby
Kansas City: Ryan Lefebvre/Steve Physioc, Rex Hudler
Los Angeles (AL): Victor Rojas, Mark Gubicza
Los Angeles (NL) Home: Vin Scully
Los Angeles (NL) Away: J. Davis/C. Steiner, N. Garciaparra/O. Hershiser
Miami: Rich Waltz, Al Leiter/Eduardo Perez/Preston Wilson
Milwaukee: Brian Anderson, Bill Schroeder
Minnesota: Dick Bremer, Bert Blyleven
New York (AL): Michael Kay, Five Whole Other Guys
New York (NL): Gary Cohen, Ron Darling, Keith Hernandez
Oakland: Glen Kuiper, Ray Fosse
Philadelphia: Tom McCarthy, Ben Davis, Matt Stairs
Pittsburgh: Joe Block/Greg Brown, Bob Walk, Steve Blass/John Wehner
St. Louis: Dan McLaughlin, Al Hrabosky
San Diego: Dick Enberg, Mark Grant
San Francisco: Duane Kuiper, Mike Krukow
Seattle: Dave Sims, Mike Blowers
Tampa Bay: Dewayne Staats, Brian Anderson
Texas: Steve Busby, Tom Grieve
Toronto: Buck Martinez, Pat Tabler
Washington: Bob Carpenter, F. P. Santangelo
Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.
For Detroit: Allen will do 75 games this year. Kirk Gibson will do 60. Jack Morris and Craig Monroe will combine for 20. I would suggest polling the crowd on Allen and Gibson, as their styles, insights, etc are drastically different.
Also: Impemba will be switching with the radio play-by-play guy Dan Dickerson for at least ten games this year, which is pretty interesting. Dickerson is my favorite. Very insightful, 100% reads Fangraphs regularly. Cites it all the time.
Todd Kalas is the guy in the stands on most Rays broadcasts, but does 8-10 games a year in place of Brian Anderson
Orioles – Mike Bordick has done color for all 5 games so far, he slits with Palmer. Not sure how the season will play out going forward though.
For the Pirates (if you need the clarification, because my understanding is their broadcast pairings are way more complicated than most teams’):
Block and Brown do play by play, rotating relatively evenly between TV and radio. Bob Walk always does color with one of them, Steve Blass is the other color guy for home games, Wehner is the other color guy for away games. As far as I can tell they rotate the pairings either weekly or maybe by the series, so you’ll get Brown with Walk and Block with Wehner/Blass for about a week, swapping TV and radio nightly, then they’ll trade at the end of a series or week or whatever to put Brown with Wehner/Blass and Block with Walk.
It is, in other words, completely unpredictable anarchy.
Yeah, the Pirates offer one of the more difficult broadcast teams to evaluate this way. The radio and television teams received almost the same exact scores last time, which makes sense given the variety of configurations. Wouldn’t be surprised to find a similar outcome this time.
For the Dodgers, Steiner is just radio now.
Also, the slash between Nomar/Orel suggests they split time, when actually I believe both are on every broadcast doing color, in addition to Davis on PBP.
This has been true for the games I caught.
For the Giants, Jon Miller and Dave Flemming rotate with Krukow/Kuiper for half the game on their Friday night telecasts/other local channel broadcasts. “On KNTV telecasts, Miller teams with Krukow for innings 1-3 and 7-9 while Kuiper moves to the radio booth alongside Flemming; the two then switch places for innings 4-6.” – per Wikipedia/my memory
Ryan Spilborghs has joined the Rockies broadcast. So far, he has been the third man in the booth. Throughout the season, he may take Huson’s old role of commentating from the dugout bunker.
Hi Carson
Blue Jays
Dan Shulman is joining the broadcast team for some games.
From sportsnet.ca:
“The Toronto native is set to call upwards of 30 Blue Jays games in each of the 2016 and 2017 seasons, working alongside Buck Martinez and Pat Tabler.”
Mark Mulder is doing 20 games for the A’s this season. In the past Eric Chavez/Scott Hatteberg did the color commentary and Ray Fosse moved to the radio side so I’m guessing that’s the case this year also.
Wait – are you saying that White Sox home games are now listenable?!?!
Not until the Hawk is gone, no.
Jason Benetti is amazing so far, really diggin’ him. I believe he is the first sports broadcaster to have cerebral palsy?
How’s his rapport with Stone? Reasonable?
He seemed really good, the one game I’ve heard so far. Stone’s performance seems to depend largely on how interested he is in the game. He can still be good if he’s engaged, but too often it’s just Hawk and him trying to see who can go the longest without speaking. The game I listened to was the day after opening day, so Stone was in good spirits and had a couple good wisecracks–one about “my people celebrate the Sabbath on Saturday, so I’ll keep the window closed” when Benetti jokingly complained that they weren’t having the full experience of the ballpark.
He and Stone are extremely jovial with each other. Many goofy jokes coming from Benetti. May be a honeymoon period, but Stone seems so happy to have a break from Hawk (he seemed happy about the same when Chuck Swirsky filled in last year).
People forget just how good Stone was when he was with pre-stroke Harry. He was one of the best color guys in the game, but he and Hawk just have zero chemistry.
And the thing is, Hawk is just so, so bad at his job now that people also forget how much fun the mid-90s Hawk and Paciorek broadcasts were on the South Side. I grew up a Cubs fan that hated the Sox, and even I would tune in.
A couple years back I happened to catch a game on MLB.tv that Paciorek came back for to fill in for Stone, and it was like catching lightning in a bottle. It was the Hawk and Wimpy show again, and it was kind of amazing.
Hawk is so bad at his job now that he really needs to be retired. Harry Caray and Steve Stone were a great combination, even if Harry was a bit lost by then.
Isn’t Don Orsillo part of the San Diego broadcast booth now?
That’s for next year, this year he’ll be doing a select few games as Dick Enberg is still on his farewell tour.
Well, it’s still the Dick Bremer and Bert “be home” Blyleven show for the Twins on Fox Sports North (TV). Those two have been squatting on the airwaves since before I can remember and if the early season is any indication, have taken the opportunity to pay even less attention to the events on the field. Dick’s passable, if a little boring…although I heard him mention OPS two nights ago. On the other hand, Bert often bases any commentary on an incorrect understanding of the out/count situation and Dick is too minnesota-nice to correct him. I’m sometimes a little jealous when I hear other team’s announcers reference WAR or any other more usable stat to enhance the commentary.
This is partially true. Bert is once again doing a reduced schedule so there should be plenty of Tom Kelly this year.
However, I do agree that Dick ‘n’ Bert are a little stuck in their ways. Bert says the same things every single game or couple games and you’re absolutely right, Dick is too “Minnesota nice” to argue with Bert.
I believe the ghost of Harry Cary is going to come back and do ten games for the Cubs this season.
Alan Ashby may or may not sexually harass Julia Morales twice per broadcast. This is a matter of opinion.
Is Jeff Brantley not the Reds color guy? I could have sworn I heard his godawful Southern drawl when I caught a few innings of a Reds game over the weekend.
He does a few but not enough to be graded. He is mostly a radio guy.
So are NERD scores coming back?
Chip Caray is miserable for the Braves. He has all these awful terms and phrases that no one knows like “Hope the team has on their fastball hitting shoes today” or “Now on the mound, the pensman, Jason Grilli” (is pensman a thing?)
His twitter handle is @kapaya1234, Joe Simpson’s is @foxsportssouth
Joe has completely mailed it in the last two years while we’ve been terrible
Chip could wrestle you into submission with his eyebrows (points for knowing the
reference)
Hates anything that originated after 1988
Sniffs his own farts
On the Mariners Broadcasts, Secondary Radio Announcer Aaron Goldsmith swaps with Dave Sims in August for a couple weeks. Sims is TERRIBLE on the radio.
I agree Chip Caray is terrible. He doesn’t believe in proven advanced metrics and loves every old school stat in the book. He’s like an 80 yr old man in a nerdy 50 yr olds body. Reminds me of a creepy and no fun Phil from Modern Family.
Loves mediocre contact hitters just because they don’t strikeout much. Could care less about walks, and LOVES sac bunts. Said during a game last year (Stanton was healthy) that “Yelich is the Marlins most dangerous hitter.”
Didn’t like the Braves giving up Martin Prado for 25 yr old Justin Upton.
Gets upset when guys don’t hustle on routine pop-ups that are caught 99.9 % of the time.
Basically he fits exactly what Bryce Harper was taking about when he said the game is tired and needs more SWAG.
If the game gets more SWAG, I will be turning it off. If I wanted to watch the NBA, I’d watch the NBA. Each major sport should have a different style, and baseball has the oldest demographic of any major sport and so needs to be the mature one.
F.P. has grown on me the last few years in the Nats booth, even if he likes to trot out his “old school” bona fides now and then. In recent games, he’s been knocking the infield shift.
Love these Carson! Please offer a way to rate the broadcast beyond just the broadcasters.
I’ve tried to listen to a few Rangers games this year, but had to switch away from their feed because the commercials breaks are much louder than the game. Other feeds don’t capture on field reporters and instead there’s only silence followed by the broadcaster’s response. Perhaps a simple production quality score would suffice.
For the Cardinals, the tv play by play guy is Dan McLaughlin. Al Hrabosky, Rick Horton, Tim McCarver and (maybe, he did in spring but I haven’t heard him during the regular season yet) Jim Edmonds rotate for color commentary. I think McCarver will do about 30-40 games this season as he has for the past few, so I’m not sure if he is regular enough for this project. Horton will do radio for away games, as sadly Mike Shannon will only work home games this year. So Hrabosky may have a plurality of games, but perhaps not a majority as color commentator. Of course, you may already know all this and this comment could be a waste of time for everybody involved.
A little late to the party, but Dennis Eckersley also does a significant amount of the Red Sox games. He has done the last 4 for them now.
Mike Schmidt does color sometimes for the Phils. He called weekend home games last year, 26 games. I believe he is doing the same this year.