You mean it’s not because most teams treat interleague play like bearnarth league-level Mayor’s Trophy Games? Fooled me.
During last night’s Mets-Orioles game, Mets broadcaster Gary Cohen—inspired by Oriole rookie Jason Berken’s solid outing—said this:
This year, rookie pitchers in the major leagues have accounted for 14.8 percent of all starts. That’s the highest percentage at this point in the season since 1969, and remember 1969 was an expansion year. So, since 1957—which is the first year they started figuring out rookie designation—there has not been a non-expansion year where rookies have started so many games to this point, before this year. Which I find an interesting trend. I don’t know whether it’s a quirk, or whether teams are looking to rush their young pitchers for financial reasons, or what’s going on. But maybe it means there’s going to be a boom of good young starters.
And then Keith Hernandez—who I like—made up some silly explanation about fewer players using drugs and getting “back to basics,” which seems to me a great load of claptrap. To which Cohen suggested—in a sort of backhanded way—that fewer players using drugs might mean fewer veteran pitchers using drugs, and thus fewer veteran pitchers taking the spots that are now going to younger pitchers.
Anyway, I bring this up for two reasons:
First, I want to mention that Cohen is one of the very best play-by-play men in the majors. He has the silky, syruppy voice, of course. He also calls a good game, he knows his history, and he has at least a passing familiarity with sabermetrics and the basic principles of logical thinking. His brief comments about the rookie pitchers are highly reasonable and nonjudgmental, which I like. The Mets and the Yankees should have some of the best broadcasters, and for the most part they do (at least on TV).
Second, I want to throw open the subject of young starting pitchers for discussion. I don’t think that 14.8 percent is just a “quirk”; what I suspect is that baseball executives, collectively speaking, have realized that if you’re going to have a starter with a 5.32 ERA, it may as well be a cheap kid who’s learning something instead of an expensive veteran who’s got no upside.
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
1. Barry`s_Lazy_Boy Posted: June 19, 2009 at 06:29 PM (#3225081)Speaking for the Jays, due to injuries, they're now using our 11th starter, and the current rotation consists of four rookies (Richmond, Romero, Cecil, Mills), and Brian Tallet. They've also handed rookie starts to Robert Ray, and to just-past-the-rookie threshold David Purcey. Just under 50% of their starts have gone to rookie pitchers.
They have, however, managed to avoid any fatalities.
According to ESPN, 157 starts have been made by rookies.
-23 of those were made by 34-year old Japenese pitchers signed as free agents.
-81 of those came from four teams that are committed to a youth movement or have had serious injuries to their pitching staff (Oakland, Washington, Baltimore, Toronto).
The other 53 came from 12 different teams.
To put it another way, 70% of rookie starts have come from just five teams (OAK 30, BAL 29, ATL 18, TOR 17, WAS 16).
Things even out. The Giants have used the same 5 starters all season, none rookies. Though there are rumors that Sanchez is on the verge of getting bumped from the rotation.
Leave the trail of idiocy. We all have our moments like this, and it's nice to have that permanent record of our collective stupidity.
Isn't Toronto at 28? I've got the list as follows:
Richmond - 11 (at least I assume he's a rookie, since he won "AL rookie of the month" in April)
Romero - 8
Cecil - 4
Ray - 4
Mills - 1
That does seem like a pretty strong statement, but I like Cohen. I'm not a Mets fan but I was in nyc the past two years, and Hernandez/Darling/Cohen always made Mets games fun to watch.
On the other hand, his comment about the Yankee TV broadcasters is bizarre.
Michael Kay sucks. The Yankees' other broadcasters are all very good.
I'm reminded of the old George Carlin routine about putting together a string of words that have never before in history been uttered:
"Hand me that piano."
"Please saw my legs off."
And now, "He damaged his pitching hand with a giant mallet while smashing watermelons."
If this is in fact a legitimate trend, my explanation for it would, I think, be a pretty obvious one: Teams are realizing that since 1) SP get hurt so much and 2) signing even a halfway-decent established SP is incredibly expensive (and also risky -- see #1), therefore 3) if you've got a guy who's cheap, can do the job and isn't hurt yet, you really need to get him in there.
TV broadcasters. The Waldling is something else entirely, not a broadcast team so much as a curse put upon Yankee fans.
Al Leiter, who I hated as a player, is a tremendous broadcaster. He makes other ex-players in the booth better too. Cone is at his best when he's talking to Al. Same thing with Singleton. I can't remember him working with O'Neil. I don't think much of Flaherty, but I agree that all the other non-Kay guys are very good.
I think the confusion comes because all of the other four made their major league debuts this season. Richmond (though still technically a rookie) did not. He debuted last year.
-81 of those came from four teams that are committed to a youth movement or have had serious injuries to their pitching staff (Oakland, Washington, Baltimore, Toronto).
#1 is pretty clearly relevant as that's just "fluke". But pretty much every season has a couple teams on a youth movement and at least a couple teams with decimated staffs so I'm not sure this season is any different than usual in that regard so it's not clear that's an explanation for more rookie starters.
Oh wait, wrong thread.
My point was that I don't think Neyer is correct when he says that "baseball executives, collectively speaking, have realized that...it may as well be a cheap kid."
We're talking about a handful of teams relying on mostly-rookie rotations because of some combination of foreign veterans, youth movements, and injuries. Only 8 teams have had more than 5 starts by a rookie, and 14 teams haven't had a single game started by a rookie.
Maybe teams are more willing to rely on rookies for fill-in starts. As far as I can tell, only a handful of rookies were in opening day rotations (Kawakami, Uehara, Anderson, Cahill....anyone else?).
I would never call Cohen's voice silky. Actually it is kind of whiny at key moments.
NY baseball has a lot of extremes in the broadcasting booth, lots of excellence and lots of turds. The only middle of the road guy, to me, is J Flaherty. Cone is quickly becoming very good. Darling is my favorite analyst, Keith Hernandez is rock solid. I like Singleton, he makes the event he broadcasts seem more like a special event.
Kay, we have suffered enough. Waldman, good god. Sterling, starting to become so senile that he is actually getting better. Cohen, far better than these 3 turds, but personally, I am easily annoyed by him.
That said, I tend to prefer the Mets broadcast, but YES has the best production values/quality of any baseball network, including national networks.
Then why am I still yelling 10 times a game that the camera is on the wrong thing?
The only middle of the road guy, to me, is J Flaherty.
"If you're a Yankee fan, you'd like to leave Flaherty in the middle of the road. This is a big spot and you don't want to risk hearing him." Ever again.
I'm sure there are lots of flubs during a YES broadcast. But from what I know, baseball is probably the most difficult live sport to create quality broadcast productions. YES usually has the best use of replay and the extra 3-4 camera's that your typical baseball production lacks.
Josh Outman. And Nick Adenhart :(
The Jays had both Richmond and Ricky Romero in their opening day rotation.
Richmond, Romero, and possible Purcey.
EDIT: Cancel Purcey. I keep forgetting he pitched enough innings last year to get over the rookie threshold.
1. Hockey
2. Gun fighting
3. Baseball
4. Buzkashi
Fair enough.
If this WERE the answer, I would think it would apply to position players also, and not just to pitchers.
I can't compare it to other productions, only to my ideal production. They have all those cameras and they therefore feel compelled to use all of them all the time. There's too much masturbation with different shots and graphics. I could do with far fewer replays from 360 degrees that add absolutely nothing to my understanding of what happened. I could do with far fewer tight camera shots of balls rising into the night for home runs. (That's actually very impressive, but completely pointless.) They will almost always cut to a runner easily walking across home plate, even while the ball is being thrown in from the outfield and there's obviously the potential for a play to occur elsewhere on the bases. Meanwhile they will rarely show (or describe) where the fielders are set up. They rarely show a wide view of the ball and the runner, so you have an idea how the play is developing. These are probably endemic to all broadcasts, not just YES, and in my mind none of them present the game properly. I'm not talking about missing plays because it is hard to anticipate where the ball will be hit and it moves so fast. When they show the wrong things it is not because baseball is hard to televise but because they've made poor choices.
This is my major complaint regarding all baseball telecasts: we get far too many close-ups and isolations, and far too few wide shots that show multiple things simultaneously.
Cohen is good when he's not on his high horse about something. Which, unfortunately, is a lot of the time.
Porcello was in the opening day rotation for the Tigers.
I don't know, they have what I'm pretty sure is the worst radar gun ever made. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's just a random number generator they have setup. It'd also be nice if they could get a K-zone.
Those are both minor nitpicks I guess, and they are much better than almost every other team's network. MASN, for example, looks like it's produced by a film studies class in a special ed. middle school.
As bad as Kay can be, he's much more enjoyable to listen to than any of the big network announcers (save Jon Miller), especially if Leiter and Cone are in the booth with him.
Also, I'm happy they rarely commit my biggest pet peeve, which is cutting away from the game to show interviews with some jackass. Is it really that hard to just let us know who it is and play the audio? I want to see the freaking game.
Maybe you're right actually, overall they may be the best. If there was just a way to get ESPNs production but to replace the announcers, it'd be just about perfect.
There was a game where they were clocking Wang's sinker at about 60MPH. Well, maybe that wasn't too far off. And I don't remember if it was YES or MSG but they had something they called "supervision". It was like a 3D k-zone. Pretty cool. Wonder what happened to that.
-- MWE
Why do we have so many closeups? I assume most of us prefer baseball in person. A big part of the reason is that we can see the whole play unfold, rather than a tight shot of a runner rounding 1st or an extreme closeup of the pitcher's nostril. I understand that you can't (and wouldn't want to) fit all of the fielders into a single shot during the pitch, but after the ball is put in play, so much of what the TV broadcasts show are the least interesting part of the play.
Actually, I prefer it on television. My favorite part of the game is the pitcher/batter duel, which comes across much better on TV than from any MLB seats I could afford. Being able to watch the play develop in the big picture is nice, but honest replay (ie: not just replays that don't make home team/umpires look bad) make up for it. When I can get seats right behind the plate (virtually always at minor league games), then yes, being there is preferable.
Also, paying $15 for $1.50 worth of beer and hot dog just plain p1sses me off. Maybe I'm crazy, but feeling like I'm being ripped off really detracts from my enjoyment (I haven't been to Disneyland since my parents stopped footing the bill either).
last nights Cardinal game, Royal on first, less than two outs and a ball is hit sharply to the shortstop, the shortstop makes a slight dive, the ball bounces off his glove towards second base, the shortstop scrambles to get the ball (the guy should now clearly be on second base) and gets the ball and tosses it to the second baseman covering the bag beating the guy on first by about three steps. My friend asks me what was up with the runner (I said, watch the replay, most likely the runner thought the ball was caught was going back to the back and couldn't get back in gear in time to make it to second) They show a replay with the camera that is behind the catcher, you can see the man on first, the second baseman, the shortstop(and pitcher of course) the ball is hit, you see the guy on first take two steps, meanwhile the camera is now zooming in, the runner stops and starts to go back (and is no out of the scene of the camera as the camera is now zooming towards the shortstop and the freckles on the second basemans neck) you never see the runner in the scene again. If they would have kept the camera without zooming people would have gotten a much better idea what happened.
I want to educate people about the game and how much is going on, and instead we get camera closeups that even hollywood squares would never use. Last time we had this discussion someone was talking about they didn't realize how much is going on in the game, football doesn't do a 2 foot closeup of the quarterbacks head because the aligning of the defense is important to get a feel for the game, yet baseball insists on ignoring defense in telecast and then allow their talking heads to claim so-and-so is a great defender based upon a close up showing the tail end of a play which was more often than not misplayed by the guy to begin with.
I know plenty of people like that, I understand that aspect. but the rest of the telecasts and their insistence on using close ups instead of big picture type of thing is annoying. You have the technology to make the game come alive and instead you hire people that don't understand the game and who think the broadcast should be about a tight shot of the end of a play instead of the full story that is going on. (once in a while a defender makes a great play, say a catcher backing up at first base, and they make a big deal about it, but if they actually showed the full action of the game, they would realize that most of the time these guys are doing things to put themselves in position to make the play even if they don't have to make a play)
Maybe the Giants are just better about this than other teams. They usually show the wide picture during a complex play, in the replay if not in real time.
But then it's a trade off I'm willing to make. Short of bringing my opera glasses to the bleachers, the tickets I have access to simply aren't going to satisfy my main interest.
Lately, I am sitting at the front part of the upper deck, over the first base line. So yea, if you want to pick up the catcher's sign to the pitcher, then this is no place to do it. I always find that these sorts of seats present the best value for me. I most enjoy watching the action in the field, seeing the play develop as the ball is hit, that sort of thing. Maybe it is because growing up I watched so many games on TV and saw very few in person, and as I result missed out on a lot of this stuff.
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main