2023 MLB Season Thread

[FinsUp1214]

I’m sure that kid is really going to appreciate being made fun of on television. Imagine he pulls his phone out after the game and he finds out through texts or retweets or whatever that he was blasted like that for no good reason at all. Kay’s serious-sounding use of “breaking the rules” killed off any “it was just a joke” defense he may or may not have. That was really poor and unfortunate on Kay’s part.

[Germanshepherd]

7 minutes ago, FinsUp1214 said:

I’m sure that kid is really going to appreciate being made fun of on television. Imagine he pulls his phone out after the game and he finds out through texts or retweets or whatever that he was blasted like that for no good reason at all. Kay’s serious-sounding use of “breaking the rules” killed off any “it was just a joke” defense he may or may not have. That was really poor and unfortunate on Kay’s part.

What Kay did was absolutely uncalled for and dumb, but if you purposely decide to rock that look in a job where you’re on TV a lot I don’t think you’re surprised if somebody says something. 

[Cujo]

14 minutes ago, Germanshepherd said:

but if you purposely decide to rock that look in a job where you’re on TV a lot I don’t think you’re surprised if somebody says something. 

 

So if you're at a game and the tv zooms on you in the crowd, it's cool for Michael Kay to rip on your appearance?

 

They later took away his NY logo helmet and made him tuck in his hair.

 

[Germanshepherd]

 

7 minutes ago, Cujo said:

 

So if you're game and the tv zooms on you in the crowd, it's cool for Michael Kay to rip on your appearance?

 

They later took away his NY logo helmet and made him tuck in his hair.

 

I don’t think it’s cool for Kay to rip on his appearance, I’m just saying that the long hair/mustache combo is going to get noticed. Like he works for the Yankees, I don’t think he‘s too surprised by this. 
 

Making him tuck the hair in is dumb, every other team would have made him a meme by now.  I think it’s funny that we make players shave but come on its batboys who cares. 

[Cujo]

Just now, Germanshepherd said:

the long hair/mustache combo is going to get noticed. Like he works for the Yankees, I don’t think he‘s too be surprised by this. 

 

Somebody (if not many members) within the Yankees organization approved him to suit up and take the field without having to alter his looks. For Michael Kay to get on the mic and narc him out like that is childish. Nobody else on the Yankees cared except him and the other guy in the booth who called out his red shoes (really?)

[Kramerica Industries]

The bat boy works for the Guardians. It's customary that bat boys for the road team are actually employees of the home team. It was a misguided rant criticizing the guy for not following policies that his employer doesn't require him to follow. 

[McCall]

5 hours ago, Kramerica Industries said:

The bat boy works for the Guardians. It's customary that bat boys for the road team are actually employees of the home team. It was a misguided rant criticizing the guy for not following policies that his employer doesn't require him to follow. 

[BBTV]

I heard Kay for the first time during last year's playoffs (without knowing it was him.)  It blows my mind that the richest team in baseball employs him to be their voice.  The dude is really bad at PBP and made his games challenging to sit through if you didn't have a rooting interest (and even then, it was worth the effort to sync the TV to the radio.)

 

That he would do a thing like this isn't surprising, given the amateur level at which he operates at.

[McCall]

3 hours ago, BBTV said:

I heard Kay for the first time during last year's playoffs (without knowing it was him.)  It blows my mind that the richest team in baseball employs him to be their voice.  The dude is really bad at PBP and made his games challenging to sit through if you didn't have a rooting interest (and even then, it was worth the effort to sync the TV to the radio.)

 

That he would do a thing like this isn't surprising, given the amateur level at which he operates at.

Yeah he did the Cardinals/Phillies series. He probably doesn't know about anything outside of the Yankees.

[Cujo]

I don't mind Michael Kay's PBP. But he also dubs as a sports shock jock. I've not listened to his radio show (outside of clips on twitter) -- Does he ever slam the Yankees? Ask for NY players to be cut, managers to get fired? Him being employed my the Yankees almost feels like a conflict of interest if that's the case.

[tp49]

Michael Kay's PBP is so bad I'll sync games to the radio broadcast.  Then again when compared to the Mets the Yankees' television booth's always been subpar going back to the early 90's or so.  The Yankees are notorious for not allowing their broadcasters to criticize the team too hard.  

 

Kay's radio show is horrible too.  It's damn near unlistenable. 

[TrueYankee26]

Rays undefeated streak to start the season ends at 13 along with the 82 Braves and 87 Brewers

[SailorOfSilence102]

On 4/12/2023 at 6:56 PM, Kevin W. said:

I'm tired of hearing about exit velocity and launch angle on every single home run. FFS, not everything needs to be examined through the analytics lens.

This is silly, no offense. I guess I kinda get launch angle, it's not really that interesting most of the time, but complaining about the velocity is like complaining about showing the distance for each HR. It's not analytic in that context, it's just cool to see something was hit harder then how fast most cars go.

[BBTV]

On 4/13/2023 at 8:08 PM, tp49 said:

Michael Kay's PBP is so bad I'll sync games to the radio broadcast.  Then again when compared to the Mets the Yankees' television booth's always been subpar going back to the early 90's or so.  The Yankees are notorious for not allowing their broadcasters to criticize the team too hard. 

 

You'd think the New York teams could have their pick of talent - or at least have a huge local pool to choose from.  Yet they each end up with subpar broadcasts (though I've only heard the Mets team a couple of times, so I could be off there.)  Kay struggles just to pronounce names - and the interesting is that he butchers them in such non-obvious ways.

 

My biggest pet-peeve is dopes that don't know the "ll" digraph, and pronounce names like Castellanos "Cast-ell-anos", and can't get it right no matter how many times it's explained.  I find it unhealthily triggering.  It's one thing if you're reading something for the first time, but once you hear someone's name, just say it right.  It's not hard.  But Kay got that part right, but then butchered the stress.  "Cast-AY-yanos".  How the hell does that happen?  

 

On 4/12/2023 at 7:56 PM, Kevin W. said:

I'm tired of hearing about exit velocity and launch angle on every single home run. FFS, not everything needs to be examined through the analytics lens.

 

Not to be pedantic, but that's not really analytics.  I think that when it comes to sports, people often confuse individual bits of information, or basic statistics, as analytics.  IMO, analytics is the output of complex processing of information, not the input.  To go a step further, you could say it's the implementation of some strategy based on the output of complex processing.  Maybe in sports language it's different though - I could be wrong.

 

But FWIW, I also don't care about exit velo or launch angle.  Exit velo is kinda interesting when comparing two hits - just to let you know who hit it harder - if there's some baseline to measure against (like an amazing hit earlier in that game, or the hardest hit of that player's career.)  Launch angle doesn't mean anything to me.  I can see with my eyes if it's a low line-drive HR, or a towering fly ball that the wind carried out.

 

Maybe launch angle helps paint a picture on a radio broadcast, but even then, a good broadcaster doesn't need it.

[GDAWG]

Rangers are tied for first place......we'll see how long that lasts. 

[tp49]

2 hours ago, BBTV said:

 

You'd think the New York teams could have their pick of talent - or at least have a huge local pool to choose from.  Yet they each end up with subpar broadcasts (though I've only heard the Mets team a couple of times, so I could be off there.)  Kay struggles just to pronounce names - and the interesting is that he butchers them in such non-obvious ways.

 

My biggest pet-peeve is dopes that don't know the "ll" digraph, and pronounce names like Castellanos "Cast-ell-anos", and can't get it right no matter how many times it's explained.  I find it unhealthily triggering.  It's one thing if you're reading something for the first time, but once you hear someone's name, just say it right.  It's not hard.  But Kay got that part right, but then butchered the stress.  "Cast-AY-yanos".  How the hell does that happen?  

The Mets television booth is arguably the best in baseball followed by the Giants, and I watch every team's broadcast at least a couple of times a season.  Gary, Ron and Kieth do a phenomenal job you should watch them more often and this is coming from a Yankee fan.

 

Kay was a Yankee beat writer for the NY Daily News back in the 80's which somehow led to him finding his way into the booth, first on the radio side working with Charlie Steiner and then on to television.  The Yankees tv booth is so bad I sync the radio to any game I watch.  IMHO the Yankees tv booth is hasn't been remotely watchable since Phil Rizzuto retired in the early 90's. 

[The_Admiral]

10 minutes ago, tp49 said:

Kay was a Yankee beat writer for the NY Daily News back in the 80's which somehow led to him finding his way into the booth, first on the radio side working with Charlie Steiner and then on to television.  The Yankees tv booth is so bad I sync the radio to any game I watch.  IMHO the Yankees tv booth is hasn't been remotely watchable since Phil Rizzuto retired in the early 90's. 

Wasn't it Sterling and Kay on the radio in the '90s/early-2000s, and then Kay went to television once YES started, making way for JAWN JAWN THE GAME IS RUNNING TOO LAWNG JAWN I'M GOING TO BE LATE TO MY MAH-JONGG NIGHT JAWN?

 

Yankees broadcasts are bad and have been bad for years, but it's fascinating to me that YES has a Cecil B. DeMille cast of thousands for color commentary, as if there are so many brilliant minds there that the job has to be divided seven or eight ways. Then one of them is Paul O'Neill chilling out in his rec room literally phoning it in because he thinks vaccines give you gay autism.

 

 

[Kramerica Industries]

26 minutes ago, tp49 said:

The Mets television booth is arguably the best in baseball followed by the Giants, and I watch every team's broadcast at least a couple of times a season.  Gary, Ron and Kieth do a phenomenal job you should watch them more often and this is coming from a Yankee fan.

 

I'll piggy-back off this comment to speak to the rest of New York television broadcasts as well. Mike Breen does the Knicks (Kenny Albert a frequent fill-in), Ian Eagle does the Nets, Brendan Burke does the Islanders, all of them play-by-plays with national profiles as well. Sam Rosen also has a national profile and I still enjoy listening to him but he's really old these days. I suppose the point being that the other New York teams do have broadcasts where the play-by-play (at least) is someone with a high profile and done lots of national work. Michael Kay has done some playoff radio broadcasts before for ESPN, and he did a wild card round series last year, but his national profile otherwise pales in comparison to pretty much every other name I listed here. (I guess it would only be fair to point out that Gary Cohen doesn't have much of a national profile either - that I know about, anyway - but the reviews he and SNY get speak for themselves; Howie Rose similarily isn't someone I know for doing much, if any, national work, but he's always been well-received from Mets and Islanders fans...even Rangers fans for a certain 1994 goal.)

[tp49]

42 minutes ago, the admiral said:

Wasn't it Sterling and Kay on the radio in the '90s/early-2000s, and then Kay went to television once YES started, making way for JAWN JAWN THE GAME IS RUNNING TOO LAWNG JAWN I'M GOING TO BE LATE TO MY MAH-JONGG NIGHT JAWN?

 

Yeah, I mixed that up.  It's what happens when I go off of memory sometimes.  Steiner did replace Kay.

 

 

24 minutes ago, Kramerica Industries said:

 

I'll piggy-back off this comment to speak to the rest of New York television broadcasts as well. Mike Breen does the Knicks (Kenny Albert a frequent fill-in), Ian Eagle does the Nets, Brendan Burke does the Islanders, all of them play-by-plays with national profiles as well. Sam Rosen also has a national profile and I still enjoy listening to him but he's really old these days. I suppose the point being that the other New York teams do have broadcasts where the play-by-play (at least) is someone with a high profile and done lots of national work. Michael Kay has done some playoff radio broadcasts before for ESPN, and he did a wild card round series last year, but his national profile otherwise pales in comparison to pretty much every other name I listed here. (I guess it would only be fair to point out that Gary Cohen doesn't have much of a national profile either - that I know about, anyway - but the reviews he and SNY get speak for themselves; Howie Rose similarily isn't someone I know for doing much, if any, national work, but he's always been well-received from Mets and Islanders fans...even Rangers fans for a certain 1994 goal.)

I'm a long-time, die-hard Islander fan and much of the fanbase is afraid of losing Brendan Burke he's that good.  I've also enjoyed Howie Rose over the years because he's always been brutally honest about the teams he worked for be it the Mets or Islanders and he worked for the Islanders during arguably the worst period in team history.  Interesting too how a lot of ex-WFAN guys ended up in the broadcast booth be it Suzyn Waldman, Howie Rose, Ian Eagle, Steve Levy, Bob Wischusen, etc, and if you want to extend it out to WNBC radio (I'm old enough to have listened to this too) Dave Sims with the Mariners who did sports talk in NYC before there was an all-sports radio station. 

[The_Admiral]

1 hour ago, tp49 said:

if you want to extend it out to WNBC radio 

W-ennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn-BC