but he doesn’t really bother me. If the Mets are involved, he obviously goes into homer-mode, but otherwise, he’s at least better than Joe Morgan was.

I think Steve Phillips at least can evaluate talent marginally well, and his stupid quote per inning (SQPI) rate is in much better shape than Joe Morgan, who was up there with McCarver.

Can’t remember which game it was exactly. But late last season he was calling a Phillies game and was campaigning Ryan Howard for MVP because he was quote “a run-producing machine”

The other commentators asked him what he thought of Pujols, and he just sort of brushed the Mang aside. He tried to sound smart by saying “If Pujols was on the Phillies instead of Howard would he really make them a better team?” The other two commentators both exclaimed “YES!” Phillips shut up after that.

Sorry, I’m completely blank on which game it was exactly. That event just sticks out to me…………

I’m excited there will be no more Joe Morgan…I think his work is mostly vague and uninformed comments with really really bad ones thrown in here and there.

Phillips is just kind of weird. He’s not very good, but that’s still an improvement over Morgan. Besides, who in the business is good?

Might as well concentrate every commentator I hate in one spot, which should inherently improve the quality of commentary in other games.

for us baseball fans. i for one applaud the WWL’s decision & in the not too distant future look forward to no longer turning to them for my baseball fix.

cancers

cuz I already know espn isn’t very cool, and how often do they actually put the cardinals on sunday night baseball? not much that I remember… I think I’m going to just save and get extra innings since there’s already the mlb network now (perhaps that’s why they canceled it)

I love Jon Miller. One of the best announcers in baseball in my opinion. Especially if you get the chance to watch him do the local SF games on MLB.tv, the guy is really funny.

… watch the games in espanol on ESPN Deportes.

and no, i don’t understand Spanish. still better than Joe and Jon. and now Steve.

So screw it.

If the Cards aren’t on, I don’t have to watch it.

If the Cards ARE on, I’ll turn the volume down and deal with the radio delay.

How Jon Miller doesn’t die of a stroke by the end of this season will be beyond me, if it happens.

sports commentary is one of those weird jobs where someone can be really, objectively terrible at their job, and then be called in to comment on whether other people are good at it. Steve Phillips isn’t qualified to judge my Baseball Mogul game.

The always awesome Joe Posnansky (I’ve had other people interested in kidnapping Joe and having him write for the P-D…can we get some kind of petition going or something?) has spent the last few years researching a book about the Big Red Machine, and he’s come up with an interesting take on Morgan. Not so much to excuse the man’s broadcasting ineptitude, maybe just more to explain it. He’s put together a few blog posts on the matter, so I’m tacking on the links:

• June 25th, 2008: He’s talking about how Morgan may have developed this hatred/disdain/willful ignorance about stats, that it was an outgrowth of his underappreciation (that’s not a word, but I’m using it anyway) by writers who seemed to think that Morgan was a naughty little baseball player for not caring about his holy batting average.

• November 15th, 2007: This one is actually about bad MVP choices, but it still works. In one of his “footnotes,” Posnansky notes a quote from Morgan’s book. I’ll be damned if it doesn’t say the following—
  bq. "The two most overrated stats in baseball are batting average and earned run average. I measure a player by his run production. Slugging percentage and on-base percentage actually tell you more about run production than batting average."

Literally shattered my worldview. I think because of this I may wander the globe in search of meaning and purpose, perhaps becoming a sadhu or something.

ESPN is killing us already, and now they’ve just made it worse. I doubt they’re going to talk about the actual game much at all now that Phillips is on the crew. It’s going to be 10 times worse to watch the game now. I’ve thought about putting it on mute, but now it’ll be a Sunday Night tradition!

spit milk out through my teeth after reading this

Love Baseball Too Much to not watch, probably will have to buy new TV every Monday

The Scott Kashmir trade, the Big Red Machine and playing on such a big “stage”, or the mispronunciation of names such as Ludwig, Fokudome, Encirnacion, and Edmunds?

Right now, this doesn’t seem like such a bad thing.

Horrendous. He held ‘press conferences’ as the GM for every team. Godawful.

I hate Joe Morgan just a little less than Cancer and AIDS, but it’s right around there.

Jon Miller was good until he tried to be hispanic. The over-pronouncing of names kills Miller for me. If I was a rolled ‘r’, I’ll watch Deportes.

has gotten further on such little knowledge of baseball than anyone I can think of.

mute…….

although, the deportes option sounds (ptp) good as well.