Leaderboard

The entire caucus is nothing but tweeters

I also enjoyed her Lions-Packers game recap, given how she is a Packers fan and her brother with special needs is a Lions fan.

If they are bringing CMo back there was no point getting rid of Shep. They could bring in the best PBP guy in the world but the rest of them are going to drag the broadcast down. Either elevate your whole game or don't bother. It's like firing the manager and expecting the mediocre team to improve.

It was more than just the last few years that Mario dryly recited the action. That was always his jam. I don't think he would be any better coming back and working with, I don't know, Morris or Petry or Monroe. I think the organization would benefit from a clean break from that past and going with a broadcast team that is new to Tigers TV. The team on the field itself is going in a new direction and is showing signs of turning things around. Things are looking up, and moving forward, not backward. How about we get a TV broadcast team that itself is not stuck in the past?

Craig Kimbrel did a genius move tonight: 4-1 lead, bottom of the ninth, man on second, two out. He needed more time than just the 20 seconds, so he deliberately spiked the ball on the mound to force a balk and reset the timer and get that extra time so he could concentrate on the batter. The runner moving the third doesn't matter. His only concern is the batter. And he needed that extra time. Again, genius move.

I really don’t want middling guys. Get a superstar or let the kids play. I’d rather Keith get the PT, instead of someone like Cronenworth. At some point, both Keith and Jung should be up.

The Dickerson/Dirks paring was great. A nice mix of analysis and player insight

Dirks is the best of all of the ex-players

Kids home from college for the weekend and requested campfire chili in the backyard.

To quote a popular tv show. ”You are not serious people”

I didn't mind CMO one bit. He was a gentleman with my mentally handicapped brother when he asked for a picture. Seemed like a good voice to have. Read that as ... yes Detroit is a predominantly african american city...maybe have a voice that reflects that in the booth.

This is such a **** show.... I hope every Red Hat loses their re-election. Such dumb babies.

She is wicked hot... And she has epic, wicked, snark. Hilarious.

The one by me is hit or miss on the detroit style. I have had some that were really good. I'd say worth a try.

The market dictated he is worth peanuts. If you trade him for peanuts it is not giving him away. It is getting fair value. I said previously he helps them on the court. He wins them an extra 2-4 games this year I bet. If those 4 extra wins meant making the playoffs vs not making the playoffs, absolutely keep him. I value playoff time for evaluating players and I think that environment is important for their overall growth. But they are not making the playoffs this year, or even the play in game. So you have Williams screaming at these kids to play defense. Probably at some point he will bench guys for not playing defense. And meanwhile you have Bogey giving up 25 to anyone who can dribble a basketball. You can't build a team culture and instill a defensive mindset in these kids while treating some players differently. Not a bad guy. Not a bad player. It is just a bad situation for him.

Solid comment to lead into the xweet, man!

Here's the whole problem. None of these twits give a damn about the folks who sent them to Washington. They only care about clicks and favorable opinions from the "Righteous Conservative" Media gods.

The disappointing thing to hear was 'all the analysts will be back.' If they run the same production but just replace the PBP voice they are already capping their potential improvement.

I didn't mean to imply that I would have preferred Mario overexplain what his eyes see, which I guess would be just a supercharged version of a dry recitation of the action on the field. And I also didn't mean to imply that I don't want him to have discussions with Rod. I like it when TV announcers talk in depth about the strategies and tactics of what they are seeing on the field, or about how our players or other players or other teams have been trending lately, or about the big picture issues or changes in the game. That's exactly what I like in a broadcast. What I was trying to get across was that Mario, with Rod, did almost none of this. Mario would dryly recite the action, Rod would provide cliched commentary, every once in a while they would share a chuckleheaded jocularity between them in a way apparently meant to show an easy camaraderie that to me was unconvincing, and they spent the rest of their time doing live reads or throwing to people outside the booth. Of course, Matt Shepard was much worse than Mario on these and a bunch of additional measures, but just because Mario is the taller m***** doesn't mean we have to re-hire him for the circus.

I don't think Malloy is going to be playing on the dirt with the Tigers.

No, he was not. Beyond any problems Mario may have had that led to his departure in the first place, my main issue with his work is his lack of personableness (personability?), as well as his inability to provide any actual baseball insights during the broadcast. Everything Mario says about the actual game in progress is either a basic description of the pitch or play that just happened; a reciting of the batting or pitching line the player has achieved during the game thus far; or a snippet from the media notes about the team or the player in question. Practically everything else Mario says during the broadcast is either a live read promotion, a throw to the field or studio announcers, or a forced attempt at banter. I don't fault him for the live reads or throws or even the attempted banter, but the bare bones description-only nature of his game commentary is where he really lacks. Mario apparently neither talks to the players, which Jim Price or Rod did, nor digs into the numbers, like Dan does, which leaves only the dry recitation of what he sees in front of him or reads from his notes. Mario is perfectly competent, technically, but I get no sense that he's at all engaged with the game going on in front of him. tl;dr, Mario is not a baseball guy so much as he's a professional announcer. I'd prefer an announcer behind the mike who's also a baseball guy.

Oh, I know. You're Wimpy or bust.

I heard this opinion which makes sense. In a three game set, perhaps part of a team's strategy is to take the 3 best SPs and then you fill in your bullpen accordingly. Maybe this gets a team to 24 or 25. Then you decide whether you need another position player (maybe for defense, base running, or whatever) over another pitcher. That might be part of the rationale here. Or maybe he's just simply pitched himself off of the playoff roster altogether. I still wonder about the workload he has had this season vs prior seasons and he was bound to hit a wall somewhere after 100-115 IP.

stop living in the past people ...Mario was ok but we can do way better

he really is unlikeable.

Not a fan of Mario. We can do better. I like someone’s suggestion about stealing Len Kasper, especially since he’s a native, but he left Cubs TV to do White Sox, radio, because he wants to do radio. But considering the disarray that organization is in, and depending on his contract, maybe he can be had.

There are plenty of PBP candidates out there. Mario would be the safe pick, but perhaps not the best.

Wow. From a no-hitter to this? He just needs some more Fettering.

I hope all the teams lose.

Now that Rod has a job I think it’s possible Mario came back. Slim but possible. If they brought him back and not Rod then they open themselves up to a lawsuit I believe. And throw in the race angle. Just not worth the hassle and both were at fault even if one was more at fault. In that situation you just move on.

Self inflicted wounds IMO. Matt knows baseball, he could have acted and talked like he knows baseball and he might have made it work - at least better than he has done. When all Shep does is play the fool to the ex-player, you never get an actual discussion or counterpoint view on anything - and when the ex-player has nothing to offer but stock phrase platitudes like Monroe, you don't get very good baseball analysis. Maybe it was noble of him to take on the mantel of trying to make poor to mediocre color guys look better, but his first responsibility was to the listener, not his partners.

Impemba is OK. No need to bring back Allen. He is better than Monroe, but that's not saying much.

GOP Problem Solvers = oxymoron

This whole saga has to be NYT Pitchbot's wet dream scenario.

This has become the best part of the week recaps

Shep made a conscious decision to maintain a position of complete intellectual inferiority to his color ex-player. There may a certain kind journalistic truth in that, but it meant he would never engage his partner as an equal, and that made for a terrible broadcast in the end. Plus the fact that he simply wasn't that good technically - too much mangled syntax, losing track of what was going on, etc. Shep has a good voice, but that was about his only virtue. And of course almost any one in the booth would have suffered for the absolutely terrible overall production by Bally. Johnny Kane especially had descended into some kind of drooling idiocy that never should have been allowed within 100 meters of an IP feed.

My favorite of the modern broadcasters.

one big picture thing to keep in mind is what's happening in SF with Harris's old friends. Zaidi fired Kapler and admitted he is next if he cannot figure out how to improve the team. does this sound familiar? constant platooning by Kapler met with jeers when it does not work; frequent dumpster diving on the waiver wire with constant churn at the end of the roster; making a few attempts to land a big fish FA but always falling short; no impactful trades. Ilitch will, I assume, have a lot of patience, more than SF (or Boston where Bloom got axed in part because he did not want to make a mistake and trade the wrong prospects), but next year's free agents will only be more expensive than last year's free agents.

Thanks to my cell phone provider I overlayed the radio feed over the tv broadcast. Dickerson and whomever seem to be the perfect fit. Pre and postgame interviews and stuff is handled elsewhere. I think a lot will depend on the fate of Bally Sports

Also talk Tom Paciorek out of retirement.

did we just get the invite to the cool kids’ table? Just act cool. Just act cool.

Some scouts appreciate his dry sense of humor...others find it off -putting

"some scouts believe that Samuel is a good athlete," others, meh, not so much