When we’re not at the game, we’re watching on TV, and broadcasters shape the way we see baseball. Sporting News reviewed local and regional booths last season. This year, we’re looking at national broadcast teams. We start off the new season with ESPN’s ‘”Sunday Night Baseball.“
Dan Shulman is the play-by-play man, with analysts John Kruk and Curt Schilling by his side for the Red Sox-Yankees tilt. Their task is somewhat different from a local broadcast, because the viewership is different. On a national game, it can be assumed that in addition to fans of both teams tuning in, there will be casual fans and even some people who hardly ever watch baseball. That is worth keeping in mind, because it means there might be more explanatory work necessary, while still trying to balance things so that die-hard fans don’t feel browbeaten. It is a difficult job.
Curt Schilling, John Kruk, Dan Shulman (ESPN)MORE: Manager rankings | Schilling should be Hall of Famer
DISSECTING TANAKA
Shulman starts the game by talking about how New York starter Masahiro Tanaka is “one of the great unknowns of baseball heading into 2015 — will it be the great Tanaka from the first half, or a Tanaka whose elbow will not hold up this year?”
Kruk gets right down to analyzing Tanaka on the first pitch, a 91 mph fastball for a called strike to Boston’s Mookie Betts.
“A good sign, if you’re the Yankees,” Kruk says. “That was up in the strike zone, at the very top of the strike — Mike Winters’ strike zone. It’s a great sign, if he can stay up there, to let him see it.”
The second pitch is a fastball high in the zone, at 89 mph. Shulman believes it to be a cutter. PitchF/x calls it a fastball, and the data-tracking system identifies very few of Tanaka’s offerings as cutters, about half a percent since he came to the major leagues.
“That almost had a little backup to it,” Schilling says. “I’m doing what Krukkie’s doing. I’m watching the top half of the strike zone, then seeing if he’s going to his split to get it down.”
Masahrio Tanaka (ESPN)
Shulman calls the next pitch: “There’s a slider that is fouled back by Betts.”
Schilling continues: “That’s one of the reasons why — uh — I was — we talked about this early in spring training, about the fact that I thought he was gonna have trouble and break down. He’s throwing a lot of breaking balls, and that’s one of the things I think you don’t do when you’re throwing in pain.”
The rhythm is good at the start. Schilling coming into the game with preconceived notions about Tanaka and his health… that’s not good.
Betts flies to right field, and Shulman’s call of the play, with Carlos Beltran battling the lights before making the catch, is solid.
“That looked like a split that caught too much of the strike zone,” Kruk says. “Curt, you threw a split-finger, you have to bounce that, especially on an 0-2 pitch. You can’t leave it in the strike zone.”
Schilling, set up well, responds: “Yeah, Krukkie, the only reason I might question it, I think it might have been a two-seamer (PitchF/x called it a splitter, agreeing with Kruk). If you look, watch the velocity of that ball, it’s running back a little bit, but we saw in that first at-bat, up in the middle of the zone, up to the top, then he went out-up, then he went down-middle. So, he’s moving it around.”
Talk turns to Tanaka having thrown fewer fastballs in his first start, but what is not mentioned is that he starts each of the three at-bats in a perfect first inning by throwing four-seamers. Including two-seamers, six of the right-hander’s nine pitches in the inning are fastballs.
A-ROD A-HOY
The Yankees take the lead against Clay Buchholz on a leadoff walk to Jacoby Ellsbury, a squib single by Brett Gardner and Carlos Beltran’s RBI fielder’s choice. Following a walk to Mark Teixeira and an error by Mike Napoli on Brian McCann’s grounder that loads the bases, there is a strange silence in the booth as the crowd roars for the introduction of Alex Rodriguez at the plate.
Kruk breaks down the replay of Napoli’s gaffe in somewhat mushmouthed fashion, leaving Shulman to have to rush into the first at-bat of a player whose story is one of the more interesting ones in the game.
“Alex Rodriguez, 10-for-25 with a couple of home runs in his career against Buchholz,” Shulman says. Then A-Rod swings at the first pitch. “Lines the ball up the alley in left-center field for extra bases! Two runs will score for sure. McCann is getting the wave! Throw to the plate… isssss… NOT IN TIME! And it’s a three-run double for A-Rod to give the Yankees a 4-0 lead!”
Kruk is first to speak: “Well, we talked about Brian McCann’s at-bat, looking for something first pitch, because he (Buchholz) fell behind and walked Te – walked Teixeira before him. Alex Rodriguez didn’t wait around. Looked like a cutter back there, Schill. Just stayed up just a little bit, but not a bad pitch.”
Schilling: “Especially not first pitch. Breaking ball strike with the bases loaded (no, it was a cutter – Kruk was right again). First time, lower half of the strike zone. Alex put a good swing on that, and he drove that ball being out in front.”
Shulman: “Again, on a team that is really struggling for offense, he’s had some of the best at-bat of any Yankee.”
Kruk: “Yeah, it’s amazing. A guy that’s been out for over a year, and to come abck and swing the bat the way he’s capable – the way we never thought he’d be able to swing. I really thought he would have some struggles this year, just the fact that he would probably get beat on fastballs in. Again, there’s a reason why he was a great young player. It wasn’t because he was a dumb hitter. He’s starting to figure it out at an older age.”
After a little more talk and another look at the replay, Schilling says, “That was more of the old A-Rod than the new, the way he drove that ball right there.”
These comments make very little sense.
Why wouldn’t we have thought A-Rod would be able to swing well? He had a .771 OPS in 44 games in 2013, while dealing with the recovery from hip surgery. The year that he spent sitting out for his involvement in Biogenesis left A-Rod able to make sure that his body was well suited to play this year. He may still have trouble on fastballs in, but the pitch he just hit was a 90 mph cutter down and over the middle of the plate. And what’s the difference between the old A-Rod and the new, anyway? There has been no appreciable change in his game outside of getting older and slipping from Hall of Fame-caliber numbers to merely above average ones.
“You know, opening day, he got a very positive reaction,” Shulman says. “About 80 percent positive, 20 percent negative. As the week has gone on, he’s one of the few guys swinging the bat reasonably well. They’re back in his corner now in New York.”
This is almost self-contradictory, as if the first part of the statement hadn’t been made, and that it was the hitting of the past week that got fans on A-Rod’s side. He had the positive ovation on opening day. What, are people going to start booing him now?
“Well, he’s on their team,” Kruk says.
“Yup,” Shulman says. “And the team needs the bat. Whatever the bat may be over the course of the entire season, remains to be seen, but right now, they need the bat.”
“I think part of it, too, is the fatigue,” Schilling says. “That story was fatiguing. Everybody’s tired of it. They want to move on, including Alex, and I think we should, at this point. He paid his penalty, he’s back, he’s playing, let’s enjoy the game.”
This may be the most reasonable thing Schilling has ever said, albeit with a bit of a lack of corporate self-awareness about how that fatigue happened and how the media’s portrayal of A-Rod as a cartoon villain led to more public support for him. Kruk comes back down on the side of A-Rod getting support because nobody else on the Yankees is hitting. That fatigue is setting in again. Fortunately, Chase Headley changes the subject and gives Shulman a chance to show off his home run call.
“And, a breaking ball hammered,” Shulman calls. “Right field — deep! Iiiiiitttt… iiiiisssss…. GONE! Second deck home run for Headley, and the Yankees lead 6-0!”
Simple and effective. Then it’s Stephen Drew’s turn.
“And now another fly ball, driven to deep right field… and THIS ONE IS GONE!” Shulman calls on less of a no-doubt blast. “Stephen Drew with a home run, 7-0! … What a disastrous inning for Clay Buchholz and the Red Sox.”
Buster Olney, Tim Kurkjian (ESPN)
ALL THE VOICES
The rest of the world has caught up to ESPN with dugout reporters for baseball games, so ESPN ups the ante by adding Tim Kurkjian to the mix with Buster Olney. In the third inning, as a tie-in with MLB’s “Franchise Four” vote, the two are invited to debate their Yankees ballot. Each has Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio, while Kurkjian goes with Mickey Mantle for his fourth spot and Olney picks Mariano Rivera.
For some reason, this debate is introduced following a two-out walk to Chase Headley.
“I’ll start with this one, Buster,” Kurkjian says. “Look, I have great respect for you, but you are an idiot. How can you not have Mickey Mantle on this list? He won three MVPs. He won a Triple Crown. He’s one of the three greatest center fielders of all time. He was even as good as Willie Mays in his prime. He has more value than a closer, I’m sorry.”
“Is this a filibuster?” Olney replies. “Mariano Rivera, the greatest postseason performer of all time — 141 innings, a 0.70 ERA, and yes, he had a couple of blips, otherwise Curt Schilling wouldn’t have a couple of rings, but he’s better than anyone has ever been in October, and this is an organization built on what they’ve done in October.”
“Mickey Mantle was pretty good in October also!” Kurkjian says.
“.257 batting average, Tim!”
OK, sure, but also a .908 OPS and 18 homers in 65 World Series games, and a 7-5 rings advantage on Rivera if that’s your thing. But then, if you’re going to take the position of criticizing Mantle, this is your only possible avenue.
Kurkjian shoots back, “He hit a million home runs! He hit 16 homers (sic) in October, all in World Series play, he’s got even more rings than Rivera. I love Mariano Rivera. He’s not better than the third-greatest center fielder of all time, I’m sorry.”
Olney: “Tim, you’re wrong. Dan, back to you.”
Shulman asks his booth cohorts to weigh in, and Schilling says, “If I was going to go with a modern Yankee, I’d probably go with Jeter over Rivera in that fourth spot.” That’s ludicrous.
Also, all five men agree that Ruth, Gehrig and DiMaggio are easy picks. Really? How is just accepted that DiMaggio was flat-out better than Mantle?
Anyway, as the inning comes to an end, Olney drops this gem: “I’ve talked to members of the Atlanta Braves from the ‘90s teams, and they believe if they’d had Rivera, they would have won more titles.”
Well, sure, starting with 1996, when Rivera probably would not have given up the three-run homer to Jim Leyritz to tie Game 4 in the eighth inning. This is also about as close as you can get to “if my aunt were a man, she’d be my uncle” as you can get.
This was entertaining because it was 7-0 and one guy called another an idiot. In a close game, it would be infuriating, and this segment was going to happen regardless of the score. It’s a gimmick, just like the constant presence of the “K Zone” illustrating the strike zone during gameplay and offering a weird distortion to the image on the screen.
WALKING INTO TROUBLE
With a full count to David Ortiz leading off the fourth inning, Kruk asks Schilling, “Would you rather give up a single here than walk him?”
“Oh yeah,” Schilling says. “There’s no situation I’d ever want a walk. When I talk to young pitchers, the first thing I’ll tell them – I’ll ask them, ‘what’s the on-base percentage of a walk?’ It’s 1.000, right? You give the best hitter in the game a 3-1 fastball down the middle, what are they going to hit, .450? That’s awesome, but you’ve got a 55 percent chance of getting an out, and if you’ve got good stuff, you’ve got a better chance. Your team cannot defense a walk, and to me, it’s a momentum shifter.”
Tanaka throws ball four to Ortiz, and the Red Sox go on to a three-run inning, though this does not prove Schilling’s point. Yes, you want to avoid leadoff walks, but at least you still have the possibility of a double play (undone in this case by two wild pitches before Hanley Ramirez’s sacrifice fly). Kruk talks about how it’s “deflating” as a fielder to watch a pitcher get ahead in the count, then nibble.
There is not a single person on the field who does not understand why a pitcher, even ahead in the count, would work carefully to Ortiz and not give him a pitch to hit out of the park.
GAME OF MOANS
By this time, especially after the Yankees respond to Boston’s rally by scoring three runs of their own to make it a 10-3 game, there surely are viewers checking out to catch Game of Thrones or, later, Mad Men. It’s hard to blame anyone for this, because there is not a compelling reason to stay tuned to the broadcast.
Shulman’s play-by-play work is the best thing going here, but Schilling mostly goes back and forth between talking about himself and jabbing at Kruk, while Kruk stumbles over his words with such frequency that you wonder how he wound up in the booth for a national game of the week. The good thing about Joe Morgan was that there was only one of him.
Then, in the eighth inning, there’s the return of Olney, who says, “All around baseball, people say ‘don’t overreact to the first week,’” then proceeds to overreact. “The Atlanta Braves, who were not expected to be in the running in the National League East, got off to a great start, and how about the Cincinnati Reds, who came into the season with a lot of question marks? Would Joey Votto come back? Would Jay Bruce come back? Votto’s off to a great start. Billy Hamilton is having the type of impact we thought he might – seven steals for him. Nobody else in the big leagues has three. And the Reds are 4-2.”
The Yankees’ 14-4 win puts them at 2-4. Boston falls to 4-2. With a different result in a 19-inning game on Friday night that, obviously, could have gone either way, both teams might be 3-3. How would that change the narrative? Even in a blowout, going down this road is a poor use of time.
This broadcast is better than you would think from reading social media sites on a weekly basis, almost entirely because of Shulman’s mastery of his craft. Overall, though, the quality of the broadcast is one of the reasons that fans would rather see their team play on Sunday afternoon than Sunday night.
