I tuned to the YES Network to make sure it was still an ESPN/Bud Selig clone and it was. Michael Kay announced David Ortiz’ stats v Mariano Rivera going into the 9th inning match up on Friday, August 5, 2011 in Boston. Kay says Ortiz does well against Rivera and
is 8 for 25.
Ortiz does well against Rivera but the stat deliberately omits 6 meaningful at bats in the two players’ careers and cheats the baseball consumer out of a larger sample size, ie the post season, stats for which are readily available.
Going into the at bat including post season Ortiz was
10 for 31. Six more at bats.
Even the so-called Yankee tv channel doesn’t dare mention post season stats. 13 straight years in the post season (1995-2007) made the YES Network possible and brought attendance to floundering Yankee Stadium in the mid ‘90’s, when it was so bad all you heard was the Yankees had to move the stadium to Manhattan “because nobody would come to the Bronx.” Three levels of post season play make greater demands on players often in extreme weather conditions, on the biggest stages, against the toughest competition, often in close and extra inning situations, sometimes the most grinding and demanding of a player’s entire career. All in the trash, dismissed because Bud Selig is charge of stats, records, awards, glory, all aspects of players’ images, and perks for those he favors. ...So he has the troops saying post season stats should not be counted because it’s “unfair” to those who weren’t as “lucky” to go to the post season.
...This rationale assumes everyone who goes to the post season gets good stats. Even helpful pitcher vs batter stats are ignored for fear people might look into post season stats a little more-which would be “unfair.” If the YES Network ignores significant amounts of a Yankee player’s most difficult work or fails to inform viewers of meaningful post season at bats between Ortiz and Rivera, what’s the point of watching it?
Once the regular season ends…my 48-year old stat-book closes. As it should.
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1. cercopithecus aethiops Posted: August 06, 2011 at 02:28 PM (#3894195)Truly it's conspiracy so vast, so immense...
I'm not as well versed in baseball history as others, but haven't post-season stats been kept separately from regular season since before Bud Selig was born?
Also what does this mean? From time to time I have the misfortune of having to watch a game on YES and one thing you can't accuse them of is not being a Yankee channel.
Complicating things a bit, sometimes I have the three-way choice of YES/NESN/ESPN. Oh, whatever shall I do?
I think both networks are quite capable of Pravda-style propaganda, and assuming that their team's scrubs would be All-Stars in the National League (to be fair, this is actually supportable by evidence from Yankee failed starting pitchers).
My tiebreaker recently has been announcers. If Kay's not in the YES booth, it's a slam dunk that I'll go there for my baseball needs. If he is, it's a lot closer. But I have trouble listening to Remy for too long, and as near as I can tell, he's in the NESN booth all the time.
The Yankee radio announcers OTOH...
One thing I like about both NESN and YES is that they each include pitch counts in their score box. I can't understand why that's not standard for every network, considering how important that number is if you're just tuning in at any given moment.
I haven't heard the YES guys much but I've liked them when I have. Singleton is fantastic and while he's not there anymore Kaat was really good.
Scully was pretty good for getting excited when the time called for it. His call of Gibson's homer comes to mind.
Sterling is just a bad announcer. I don't like the schtick but what drove me nuts about him when I lived down that way was it was difficult to follow the action. The radio guy's first and really only job is to accurately describe what is happening, to be the eyes of the listener and I think Sterling does a terrible job at that. I remember listening to the 2002 ALDS with him and there was a key moment (don't remember the specifics now) but it took 2-3 pitches to the following batter before he explained the base runner advancement on an out. One example but that was a consistent theme with him.
Of course, Ortiz being 10 for 31 instead of 8 for 25 doesn't exactly make for a dramatic case for this proposed shift, lol.
I prefer not, actually. When a pitcher is dealing around the third or fifth innings, I'd rather enjoy what he's doing rather than be constantly reminded of the impending overcautious yank and inevitable parade of relievers due in an hour. And for one-inning relievers, showing pitch count is silly. Show the pitch count only when it's relevant, when the starter is nearing 100 or when the swingman is in his third inning or so.
Wait what? The problem with Remi and Orsillo is that they frequently fail to actually pay any attention to what's happening in the game. When they are actually announcing the game, they are fine, but their giggle-fests are just unbearable.
See, I kinda like it when the announcer gets excited (note excitement, not HOMERISH a la Sterling or Hawk). Certainly better than Joe Buck's blaise commentary...it's like he doesn't want to be there.
I disagree. Orsillo can get pretty excited, but only when the situation actually demands it. Which I do think is a more honest form of announcing, rather than trying to hype every non-event to 11. E.g. last week when Ellsbury hit a walk-off bomb, the night after another walk-off hit, Orsillo sounded like he was really into it.
Post-Season stats are never included.
David Cone and Ken Singleton were great last night. Coney plugged FanGraphs again.
Regarding Gary Thorne (not sure why he's brought up, but anyway...):
He's a homer. But he was a homer for the Mets. So that makes him fake.
He looks and acts like Mr. Smithers from the Simpsons.
He is a stooge for the Orioles front office.
He judges way too much in his ivory booth.
He and Jim Palmer enjoy saying how "trainable" black players are.
Generic Yankees bias.
Of course this true, but for batter/pitcher matchups it would make sense to include the post-season stats.
Wait, what?
Coney is breathtakingly great (a NY scribe told me earlier in the year that Cone said he was going to let it fly this year) at times but seriously underused/muted by the nitwitty twins Kay & Singleton (when Singy was counting down the consecutive strikes Boone Logan was throwing last night and discounting the ones outside the zone, or hammered, as being intentional...I wanted to pour some quality acid on my pooch's wagon-circled fresh litter).
Well, if you look 'em up on BB-Ref, post-season IS included.
Agrred. And I could do without Heidi Watney's food criticism and guests in the booth. That's what the pregame is for.
I will always remember hearing Thorne's call on an O'Neill home run in that series. I had no other reason to label him a homer before then, but "Home run, Paul O'Neill, into the night of New York!" was a little too joyful to my Seattle ears.
This, yes, 1,000 times this. I wonder, Andy, did you form your opinion of Remy/Orsillo recently? Because they seemed to have been told to tone it down a bit. I guess you would also probably see them as bland if you were usually only watching during Sox/Yanks, as those games are pretty intense and provide enough drama that they can't even pretend that their schtick has a place in the broadcast.
The other problem with Orsillo (besides the silliness, which is PLENTY) is that he often says things that don't happen. For example, a player will reach up for a ball at the wall and Orsillo will say "He leaps but can't get it!"
The camerafolks also tend to like to make routine flies look like HRs. I don't know what they get out of this.
If I heard John Sterling correctly today, he said that back in the early 90's the Yankees beat Dennis Eckersley on back to back games and the reason he remembers this...is because Deion Sanders got the winning hit in both games.
I can find no proof of any of this.
Scully was good for getting excited, yes, but better for actually telling stories relevant to the game at hand. #23 hits the problem right on the head -- and this is a problem that television baseball broadcasters in general have struggled with for at least 25 years.
CNN struggles with the same thing. I was watching Piers Morgan interview Anderson Cooper the other night (OH MY GOD WHAT A SCOOP), and it was nothing but sophomoric jokes and giggling for like two minutes. Thank God I can just listen to BBC Radio 4 instead.
McCarver has always been good at getting broadcasters off the subject of the game at hand. I was rewatching Dwight Gooden's first start (from April 1984) the other night, and McCarver made me want to throw a wrench at the TV screen. I still don't understand people who think he was competent when he worked with the Mets. He's always been awful.
For me the announcers are more background noise. I don't really need (or want) them to tell me what is going on. I can see it and I understand it enough that unless there is something really insightful to offer I don't need much.
I've noticed this too. It feels like a somewhat recent change, around about 2009 and I wonder if NESN changed producers or something at that time.
B-R says Sanders was 0-2 against Eck and both PAs were in 1997.
According to B-R, Dennis Eckersley never allowed a "winning hit" in back-to-back games (let alone to one player) to the Yankees during the 1990s:
EDIT: removed table of PAs that didn't show correctly
9/8/90: A's 5, Yankees 2
9/9/90: A's 7, Yankees 3
4/20/93: A's 9, Yankees 7
4/21/93: Yankees 5, A's 3
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