You can’t spell ‘no big contracts’ without RSN: 2024 regular MLB season thread!

xp I didn’t know that, what are commentators excuses then!

it's kind of mean but i think a lot of them just don't care about baseball anymore. it's a slog, in a way, traveling all the time, constantly being at the stadium. the tv crew all wants to go home. listening to the cards announcing team the last 10+ years, it seems clear that none of them really follow the game, not just "advanced stat" stuff like you might find of fangraphs, but even the minor league system, prospects, that kind of stuff.

there was an infamous spring training game a while back, 20212, when uber-prospect oscar taveras was making his first appearance. i remember, i was watching and was psyched to see taveras play (he had an incredibly graceful and beautiful swing). the cardinals broadcasters had no idea who he was, so when he reached first base they referred to him as "minor league guy" and made a bunch of dumb jokes about it. the previous year, 2011, oscar 'minor league guy' taveras had a wRC+ of 190 (!) as a 19 year old at A level, destroying everything he touched, was near the top of all the prospect lists, etc. just an unbelievable "we don't actually know anything about this team" moment from the entire crew

https://i.imgur.com/nsTkuW5.png

anyway, imo all the information is there for the broadcasters; some of them just no longer care

Yeah that’s fair. I only watched last year ofc but I got an idea of good and bad. I remember the Tigers commentators last year had some fella with a voice that could cure insomnia. I know Tracer Hand always watches Sox games with the radio commentary on (Joe Castiglione and Will Flemming). Obviously, SF has great broadcasters on both TV (Kruk & Kuip) and the radio (Jon Miller & Dave Flemming). It really adds so much to a game when they have interest and passion in the subject.

On that note, this was cool!

Red Sox announcer Will Flemming and his brother, Giants announcer Dave Flemming, share the booth with each other for an inning of Sunday's series finalepic.twitter.com/EVgdKvdx5g

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) July 30, 2023

the Giants / Dodgers / NYM broadcasts are so good, i'm very jealous of fans of those teams

I can’t recall the Mets off the top of my head but I’ve heard that. I don’t know who does the Dodgers now but I will tell you I’ve watched old Giants/Dodgers games on YouTube purely to hear what Vin Scully said.

Dodgers fantastic when you get Jorel (Joe Davis and Orel Hershisher). The two have great chemistry and you can tell they have a deep friendship outside of the job. Sadly Joe is away doing the fox broadcast a lot and Orel doesn't fly solo so you get a bunch of fill in, perfectly serviceable guys and girls for half the games

i grew up with harry kalas and richie ashburn, whom i only now know to be among the all-time greats

the current mets guys are OK but they're no kalas/ashburn!

tigers should be much better with jason benetti this year

feel bad for steve stone -- after all those years with hawk, he seemed reborn with benetti. guess we'll see how schiffren is with him

Whenever Gary Cohen (life-long passionate Mets fan) is not calling a Mets tv game, it is really a drop off. I don’t know how they will be able to replace him.

keith is 70, gary is 65, ron is 63 (and has had cancer). enjoy them while we can : /

I'm biased, but I love the Mets broadcast.

i almost always watch games muted, partially to not annoy the rest of my family but mostly because the commentary is usually inane and useless. but i do enjoy the cubs radio team (pat hughes and ron coomer) - they aren't particularly informative but they seem to genuinely enjoy each others company. it's more of a good vibes broadcast.

Idk where to put this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/1bmah2f/the_portland_pickles_opened_a_bar_and_these_are/

2 and a bit days. Thank you good Lord for giving us a public holiday that aligns with opening day. Antipodean supremecy strikes again

did all sorts of juggling to make room for opening day, turns out it's gonna rain. not sure if it'll be the kind of rain that calls a game, but i dunno if i wanna spend the money to find out....

okay so the plan is this
we wake up at 5am
we've got 5 minutes to make a coffee
we struggle to hit that time but thankfully the tv is visible from the coffee machine
we see big dawg corbin burnes pitch an immaculate inning and adley rutchman goes 6/6 before 6am at which point we switch on the dodgers
we see tyler glasnow strike out 3 but give up a run on a walk, hpb and 2 wild pitches
after shohei goes yard, we switch over to the royals and twins because we never watch the AL Central because it's a bad division so we need to get some reps in early in the season
it's now about 9am, the appropriate time to have a beer or two.
we heat up some nachos in the microwave after Webb gets pulled in the third inning for giving up back to back jacks to tatis, croenenworth and machado
we fall asleep on the couch for an hour
wake up in time to see louis castillo pitch a no-hitter
we check in with ippei who is blown away that our opening day parlay has hit; we cash out for 4.5mil, letting him pay back ohtani and I become ohtanis new best friend in the process

can't wait

fr tho Pablo Lopez vs. Cole (Carl) Ragan (Sagan) is a fire matchup

I just got MLB.TV for free via T-MOBILE, second year in a row after paying DirecTV for probably 20 years.

Nice! Good luck to your Giants tomorrow Bee

Amazing, just got it too. Thanks Bee Ok!

NL West is going to be so much fun this year, can't wait. It will be the Dodgers on top, but with expanded playoffs, who knows how the rest will shake out.

Big bias here, but it definitely feels like the division to follow this year. Gonna be a lot of NL West and AL East watching for me

ESPN must be giving up on MLB as they used to have three games on Opening Day, this year-1.

I took the day off, even if I'm only watching one game.

I can only watch Giants-Padres today because of timezone but I’ll be following all the scores on the app. I’m excited. Lee has huge potential to be A Guy on this team. Also watching Tatis is always fun.

Also, having an east coast team to follow when your beloved Mariners are constantly playing at 2am (my time) constantly backfires when they are starting the season in Seattle. I’m just…not taking sides there. Kirby is now so good he’s the Mariners #2. Have so many hopes for all my faves this year but above all: STAY HEALTHY

Delete one constantly there, the second one

doing some file cleanup and found one not in my meme folder labeled 'george bush smashing pumpkins.mp4' pic.twitter.com/py5X6dkvg3

— Will (@WillemDaFro) January 31, 2024

Trout is back!

Just saw that.

He makes it look so easy

Adley 2 for 2, the parley is looking good!

How can you pitch to these orioles hitters sheesh. Everything thr bat touches Is a hit

The Angels lineup is so fucking bad, obvious exception aside.

Do you think Mike Trout is standing in center field right now thinking, "man, this fucking sucks."

— Red Sox Stats (@redsoxstats) March 28, 2024

trout leads the league in WAR. he’s back baby

Tatis is wearing cleats dedicated to Peter Seidler
https://i.postimg.cc/k41T4YGz/IMG-8144.jpg

The Angels lineup is so fucking bad

they have 3 potentially interesting/valuable young guys in their line up so of course they gotta have ron washington around to bat them 6, 8 and 9

Omg dodgers stadium is a painting right now. Gotta turn my TV brightness down

Jung Hoo Lee has a little patch on his sleeve that says debut!

https://i.postimg.cc/6p1WwtfN/IMG-8133.jpg

Okay after watching ohtani try stretch that double to a triple, I'm convinced, he is the gambler

Haha they’re interviewing 20 year old Jackson Merrill’s parents, they’re younger than like 60% of ilx

Tim Anderson’s lack of power last season was pretty bad; however he was hitting for extra bases towards the end of his spring training and hopefully his health/personal circs etc mean he’s back being good at the plate?

Tim Anderson with an RBI double in his first Marlins at-bat! pic.twitter.com/gef7fy7lHV

— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) March 28, 2024

The lefty-lefty matchup in Tigers-White Sox is too good. Tarik Skubal is him, sadly.

Framber Valdez walking the bases loaded and hbping two runs in is too funny.

I shouldn’t cos they’re playing the Giants but Tatis going first to third is electric! What a player.

i still kind of can’t believe how trash the uniforms are, it’s very obvious on today’s hi-def sets

hader’s not bad huh

filthy

i think he missed the tag but there’s no angle that shows it

Astros have a good pen but their rotation isn’t it

Wow even the road greys look awful

pic.twitter.com/KxbHCCfLwm

— Red Sox Stats (@redsoxstats) March 28, 2024

yanks actually went to a new away uniform look for the first time since 1971 or something they were saying on the broadcast. don’t think the sweat stains were part of the plan tho lol