During the Mets-Padres playoff series, ESPN’s Karl Ravech talked too much, while David Cone did not speak enough.
That was the biggest issue with the Sunday Night Baseball booth this past weekend. For the Mets’ series, Ravech, Cone and Eduardo Perez had the unenviable task of replacing Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling.
The SNB crew wasn’t great.
Studio guy: Ravech is more of a studio guy than a play-by-player. He narrates the game instead of calling it. He talks way too much, not letting his partners in enough.
Lead, not question: When Ravech does try to include his analysts, he often asks questions, which works if you are sitting on set in Bristol, but during the game you want to lead your analysts places, not put them in places they may not want to go.
The best play-by-play practice is to use your words to move the conversation where you think it should be heading. This allows analysts to say what they are thinking and makes them more comfortable. It leads to a looser booth.
Cone of silence: Cone should be the star of the ESPN broadcast. He is in his first year with the network, but that shouldn’t matter. He is probably the best game analyst in baseball. He should be the one saying what he thinks all the time. At times, he was mute.
Missed chance: Midway through Game 2, with the Mets up in a tight game, Ravech wondered if Edwin Diaz might go four innings, which seemed ridiculous and was quickly shot down by Perez.
Ravech could have made the same point that invited discussion.
With the Mets having the lead going into the sixth, he could have brought up Buck Showalter’s failure to use Zack Britton in 2016, then given some background on how Showalter used Diaz during the year.
At that point, Perez and Cone could have said how early they would use Diaz. This little difference would have made for excellent TV.
Not a Sunday Conversation: During Sunday’s Game 3, the trio again didn’t feel like they were having a conversation at a ballgame. It was more of Ravech moderating and sporadically asking Perez and Cone questions. The Padres’ lead took air out of the game, but the crew didn’t make it feel much bigger than a typical Sunday night broadcast.
Dreaded oops: I don’t like to nitpick mistakes. Live broadcasting is hard. But in the fourth inning of Game 2, Ravech called Francisco Lindor “Jose Reyes” twice. In the same inning, Ravech reminisced about Jacob deGrom in the 2015 World Series against the Dodgers. Of course, the Dodgers are in the NL and the Mets faced the Royals. Mistakes happen to the best, but it just tugs at credibility.
The SNB booth is the second-most prestigious in national baseball coverage. This is the big leagues. Yes, mistakes and misspeaks happen, but it is fair to point them out.
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The good news: Analysts are the show on TV, which is why this SNB team is better than last year, when Alex Rodriguez was Matt Vasgersian’s analyst. During Game 2’s bottom of the fourth, with men on first and second and no-out, Tomas Nido was up. Cone said this would be a smart time for the Padres to put on the wheel play because San Diego had a force at third. Perez succinctly added that Nido would have the option to swing instead of bunting in this scenario.
It didn’t happen, but the pitcher-hitter dynamic that ESPN has envisioned of Cone and Perez volleying worked. More of this in the future!
Quick clicks
It is hard to say what fully holds Alex Rodriguez back as a game analyst, but let’s start with the fact that he doesn’t trust himself enough. When he does, he can be good, like in the sixth inning of Game 2 of Phillies-Cardinals, when, with two outs and runners on the corners, he said that the Phillies could try to have the man from first steal. The Cardinals were on the same page and a pick-off ensued. “I think they are listening to us up here,” Rodriguez said. He didn’t need to pat himself on the back, but he deserved credit. Good stuff. Still, there isn’t enough over nine innings. On Friday, his partner Michael Kay gave A-Rod a layup, but Rodriguez was either unprepared or gun-shy. In the ninth, Kay pointed out that the Cards had no one throwing in the bullpen down two runs after relinquishing the lead. Kay did the right thing, not putting Rodriguez on the spot, but Rodriguez just said, “Yeah.” He needed to go more into the Cardinals’ thinking. Does it make sense? If so, why? If not, why not? But, as the old saying goes, you can lead a centaur to water, but you can’t always make it drink.
• Some folks liked Al Michaels’ dissing the quality of Thursday night’s game between the Broncos and the Colts. There is an argument that Michaels is relating to the viewer at home, and, indeed, some pithy comments appealed to Twitter (e.g. “This is the type of game you’d have as the fifth regional on CBS on Sunday.”). But the job is to call the game, not be Statler or Waldorf. A line or two is fine, but Michaels’ commentary became the focus. I have written that Michaels is probably the greatest NFL TV play-by-player ever, but he took the Amazon package knowing that the games wouldn’t all be up to “Sunday Night Football” standards. There were nearly 10 million viewers, according to Nielsen, and I bet most were actually interested in the game, not complaints about its quality. You tell people something is bad enough times, they will listen. Next up for Amazon is the Commanders vs. the Bears. Is Michaels going to say how this really is the fifth regional game on Fox this week, too? … One other thing about Broncos-Colts: Despite all the complaints about it, prior to the season that looked like a pretty good matchup between Russell Wilson and Matt Ryan.
• Networks are always trying to figure out how to present lineups. The use of graphics that look like baseball cards is a good one on ESPN’s MLB coverage.
• Nice move by MLB Network, which will have every game of the ALDS and ALCS in Spanish. For Yankees-Guardians, Fernando Álvarez and José Mota will be on the call. The Spanish language coverage of the World Series remains on Fox Deportes.
• Is there a new Czar of the telestrator? Great stuff from ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky on Tennessee-LSU. Pre-play, early in the third quarter, Orlovsky saw LSU’s defense and squiggled the exact route Tennessee used to score a touchdown.
• ESPN’s Malika Andrews has become such a big deal that the Associated Press wrote a whole story about how she is going to host “NBA Countdown” on Wednesday during the season. Mike Greenberg remains the lead host, working the marquee events, including all the ABC games and the coveted NBA Finals shows.
• ESPN’s new NBA score bug is an improvement. It’s smaller and color coded, which is needed when teams have alternate jerseys.
• You want to know how far women’s soccer has come? The United States played European champion, England, on Fox on a Friday in a friendly and no one flinched. It says something about the power of women’s sports and how there is a large, underserved market that still probably has miles and miles of growth. A friendly is just an exhibition, but there was a sellout crowd at Wembley and the whole thing wasn’t seen as a landmark event. It was more like, “Yeah, that’s what women’s soccer can do.”
• Next week for its Premier League FanFest in Philadelphia, NBC will have an interview with the 76ers’ Joel Embiid and former national team goalie Tim Howard both juggling soccer balls. Watching the seven-foot Embiid could be a sight to behold. NBC has made the Premier League Fanfest a success; now, CBS, with Paramount+ having the Champions League for the next eight years, will try its hand with a similar idea and host a viewing party at Brooklyn Bridge Park on Oct. 25 and 26.
Who called it better?
On The Marchand and Ourand Sports Media Podcast, we do our “Call of the Week,” but let’s have a little fun here with the end of the Guardians’ extra inning marathon to beat the Rays and let you judge for yourselves.
• Boog Sciambi on ESPN.
• Dave O’Brien on ESPN Radio.
• Tom Hamilton on Guardians’ radio.
