Rating MLB play-by-play and color voices: The NL East
The roster of play-by-play and color analyst talent in NL East TV booths is an eclectic mixture of the familiar, the innovative, and guys you want to have a beer with. There are All Stars, an MVP, a Cy Young Award winner, a third-generation MLB booth talent, and just enough zaniness to keep everybody wondering what might happen next.
You can thank John Kruk and Keith Hernandez’ cat for the latter.
Rating the MLB announcers – the NL East
Play-by-play and color analysts are important because the vast majority of baseball fans enjoy the sport through the eyes and lips of their favorite team’s announcing crew. Although this is particularly true in a Covid-driven era of limited in-stadium attendance, it’s really been substantially so since widespread access to televised games became available anywhere and any time through various media.
But that, in turn, means that a lot of the buzz we draw from a game hinges on the skill, passion, knowledge, and oratorical talents of each team’s telecasters. As in any field, some are better than others.
In the series that enters its second installment here, each team’s primary TV crew is rated based on six criteria that are important to fan enjoyment of a game. The criteria are:
1. Experience: How deep and constant is the attachment between the announcing crew and the team?
2. Likeability: Does the announcing crew genuinely come across as people a fan might enjoy spending an afternoon or evening with?
3. Knowledge: This criteria does not require description.
4. Humor: Does the announcing crew make appropriate effort to entertain without being clownish?
5. Rapport: Do members of the announcing crew seem to get along easily with one another?
6. Oratory: Do members of the announcing crew evince a comfort level with proper techniques of English language delivery?
Focusing only on TV announcing crews – they’re the ones most readily available on more than a regional basis – the evaluation considers the main MLB play-by-play announcer plus the principal color commentators or, if you prefer, expert analysts.
This analysis specifically does not consider pre-game or post-game personalities, or in-stadium interviewers.
Today’s subject is the NL East. Announcing teams can receive a max score of five points in each category: with six categories that make 30 points a perfect score.
New York Mets: Gary Cohen, play-by-play; Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling, color.
Cohen is in his 15th season as lead play-by-play announcer for the Mets. A native New Yorker, he got a degree from Columbia and has worked play-by-play in hockey and basketball as well as MLB.
The secret to the telecast team’s chemistry probably lies in its stability. Cohen, Darling, and Hernandez have been a unit for all of those 15 seasons.
You can detect their mutual familiarity in the seamlessness with which their telecasts develop, and in the casual banter that flows naturally among them regarding all things Met. While obviously and naturally fans of the team that employs them – and which made champions of both Darling and Hernandez – they are entirely capable of critical analysis when that is called for.
They also manage to avoid being cerebral, a potential concern in a booth two-thirds populated by Ivy Leaguers. Darling, a Yalie, fits particularly comfortably into the analyst’s role. Hernandez, more spontaneous and less predictable than Darling, adds a quirky element that can occasionally be distracting, but manages to stop short of being off-putting.
To a non-Mets fan, the most valid criticism of the trio is the sense of tonal sameness that can make one wonder whether it was Hernandez or Darling who just spoke.
Experience: 5
Likeability: 4
Knowledge: 5
Humor: 5
Rapport: 5
Oratory: 5
Total: 29
Atlanta Braves: Chip Caray, play-by-play; Joe Simpson, Tom Glavine, and Jeff Francoeur, color
Caray’s credentials hardly need elaboration. Son of a famed MLB announcer and grandson of a legendary one, he has stood on his own for more than a quarter-century, apprenticing with the Braves and Mariners in the 1990s before earning a spot behind the mic at Wrigley Field in 1998.
He moved to Atlanta in 2005, where he worked for a time with his father, Skip, and took over on Skip’s death.
Simpson, probably the dean of color analysts today, came to public attention doing Braves games on WTBS, Ted Turner’s Superstation, in the mid 1980s. Simpson overcame the early appearance of being an add-on to the popular tandem of Ernie Johnson, Skip Caray, and Don Sutton, and has long since established both his expertise and his linguistic fluency.
Glavine and Francoeur are newer additions who have established their ability to both fit in yet stand out.
To the extent the Braves announcing team has a weakness, it probably has to do with the lack of what might be termed “funness” in their presentations. That’s an odd critique for any team headed up by a Caray, but perhaps Chip – in attempting to distinguish himself from his lineage – has de-emphasized that aspect of the family character.
In any event, it’s a minor flaw in a telecast team that is excellent in so many respects.
Experience: 5
Likeability: 4
Knowledge: 5
Humor: 4
Rapport: 5
Oratory: 5
Total: 28
Washington Nationals: Bob Carpenter, play-by-play; F.P. Santangelo, color.
In Carpenter and Santangelo, the Nationals have a maturing tandem that cedes nothing to their peers in terms of talent. Their only real drawback is that they telecast in a division that also includes two of the game’s best units.
Carpenter, who comes across as young-sounding and vibrant, has been behind somebody’s microphone for four decades now. For 16 seasons that microphone has belonged to the Nationals, who he joined concurrent with the franchise’s relocation from Montreal.
He’s also telecast MLB games for the Cardinals and for ESPN, and has worked a variety of other sports.
Santangelo played seven seasons in the late 1990s, mostly for the Expos, and got into media following his 2001 retirement from the active game. He learned the trade with the Giants before partnering with Carpenter.
He has a relatively rare and prized ability to combine legitimate player insight with an aw-shucks delivery that makes what he says come across as 20 percent more interesting than it may actually be.
The duo’s strength is their rapport, although enhancing rapport has always come easily to Carpenter. He has the ability to sound simultaneously serious and laid-back. Santangelo’s natural wit blends perfectly with Carpenter’s style.
All in all, this is a team with few weaknesses aside, perhaps, from the absence of an overpowering strength.
Experience: 4
Likeability: 5
Knowledge: 4
Humor: 5
Rapport: 5
Oratory: 4
Total: 27
Miami Marlins: Paul Severino, play-by-play; Todd Hollandsworth, color.
All Severino needs is time – plus, of course, a far larger Marlins audience – to improve his stature. His journalistic skills are clear.
Born in Bristol, Ct., home of ESPN, Severino is in his third season with the Marlins. He learned his craft at ESPN before moving to MLB Network, where he was a prominent on-air personality for seven seasons. He also did hockey.
He knows his stuff, and he is witty when the moment calls for it. What is missing, then, is the sense of identification between announcer and team that requires time to take hold.
His color guy, Hollandsworth, had a 12-season big league career as an outfielder with eight teams. The 1996 Rookie of the Year – his career highlight – he came to Miami four seasons ago from Chicago, where he gained experience in various roles with the Cubs telecasts.
The knocks on the Severino-Hollandsworth team are primarily experience-related. Three seasons may sound like sufficient time to build a rapport, but given the importance of creating a bond with viewers – a special challenge considering the Marlins’ slim audience – it isn’t. Hollandsworth’s modest on-field credentials compared with peers such as Darling, Hernandez and Glavine make it all the more important that he wear his personality as well as his knowledge on his sleeve. That, however, is not Hollandsworth’s thing.
The result is a telecast that, while entirely competent, sometimes lacks entertainment value.
Experience: 3
Likeability: 4
Knowledge: 5
Humor: 3
Rapport: 4
Oratory: 4
Total: 23
Philadelphia Phillies: Tom McCarthy, play-by-play; John Kruk, color.
It is impossible to consider the Phillies telecast team without beginning with Kruk. For better or worse, he is the dominant personality.
From his days with the 1993 National League champions, the gregarious infielder-outfielder has always been a popular figure in Philly. His outsized personality has a lot to do with that popularity. A Kruk telecast is a fun telecast.
The problem is that Kruk often appears not to take his own duties seriously. For starters, his command of the basics of language and presentation are at best casual. From time to time a Kruk-like figure arises in the baseball booth – those of a certain age can recall Dizzy Dean, the John Kruk of his day.
The problem is that the desire to have a beer with a guy will only get you so far. In that sense, the attractiveness of the Phillies telecast team is capped by Kruk.
McCarthy, the team’s play-by-play man, is almost lost in Kruk’s shadow. As competent as anybody who does what he does, McCarthy approaches his task as the consummate veteran that he is. Re-joining the Phillies, for whom he had previously done pre-game work, in 2008, he took over full-time play-by-play when franchise icon Harry Kalas died in April of 2009.
Next. Rating the AL East play by play voices. dark
He has all the reportorial skills a play-by-play guy needs. The problem is that Kruk’s personality is so dominant that any effort at rapport is almost naturally overwhelmed, and humor – while at saturation levels, is sometimes stylistic, unintended, and therefore harmful.
Experience: 3
Likeability: 4
Knowledge: 3
Humor: 5
Rapport: 3
Oratory: 3
Total: 21