Good luck to the Giants tomorrow, with Vogelsong on the mound.
I swear you could hand Rosenthal a 28-run lead with two outs in the ninth and nobody on and he would still somehow conspire to end the game with the tying run on base.
Yeah, that was not great umpiring.
Cards win 3-1.
I can’t stand Joe Buck. It’s painful watching when he’s behind the microphone.
What’s really weird is that I’m not aware of anyone who can stand Joe Buck. Especially St. Louisans, who generally consider him an embarrassment. I have no idea why he’s on the air.
I can’t stand him either, and it was worse when McCarver was his sidekick.
Football fans make fun of him all the time, from what I’ve seen, so the sentiment seems near universal.
For football, I think of him as the lesser evil: I don’t love him, but I’ll take him and Aikman over Nantz and Simms all Sunday long.
For baseball, though? Buck has this smarminess that really comes through and makes him completely unbearable.
To be honest I’m not sure how networks at any level choose announcers. I’ve never really understood it, because there seems to be very little connection between the skill, insight or likability of the announcer and how likely they are to get work.
Obviously the ability to speak reasonably clearly and quickly without having a voice that’s outright weird is a skill all announcers have to have, and those skills are not as easily developed as you might believe. Joe Buck has that as well as anyone, but beyond that it seems to me there’s a million people who possess that skill. The ability to provide insightful, interesting commentary that moves with the flow of the game is what separates the greats, like Vin Scully, from the mediocrities, like Joe Buck (he’s not THAT bad) from the really bad, like a lot of local accouncers.
I’ve ripped on them before but I have to again cite Toronto’s TV men, Buck Martinez (play by play) and Pat Tabler (color.) Martinez, who you’ve all heard on some national broadcasts, is mediocre at best. Tabler as a color man is quite literally about as bad as a guy can be at that job while being able to speak English; in ten years of doing the job I honestly cannot remember a single example of him providing a legitimate insight about the way professional baseball is played. He’ll say something inane like “the Jays could really use a base hit here” or some bone-stupid observation like “Bautista really crushed that ball” after Jose Bautista just hit a ball 440 feet, as if you could not see that the ball just went 440 feet. They used to have Alan Ashby as the radio color man and occasionally he’d fill in for TV, and he had ten, twelve things a game to say that made you think “huh, I would not have noticed that before, how interesting.” Really interesting stuff about the technicalities of playing baseball.
So why is Pat Tabler still doing the job? I cannot say. I have never met anyone who liked him or found him interesting. Why they don’t hire a better color man at a 25% discount, which I am sure they could, I cannot for the life of me begin to explain. And yet Tabler is hardly the only example
There’s a fair bit of nepotism in hiring announcers. If you’re the son of an institution, like Joe Buck, Skip and Chip Caray, or Thom Brennaman, you’re bulletproof. Knowing that can *make *you smarmy.
Tonight, we’ll see if Kershaw can get some much needed post-season redemption. We really need a solid eight from him due to our abysmal bullpen but I have faith he will deliver. A win brings it back to LA with Greinke on the mound.
Gonna be a long day.
Tonight, nothing. Game’s at 2pm.
And a great game by Kershaw does nothing if the Dodgers don’t score. The offense has gone from scoring 9 runs down to 3 runs down to 1. The next step in that direction makes it pretty much impossible to win. Too many missed opportunities.
Baseball announcing isn’t that easy to do, few do it well and a lot do it poorly. I think the best ever TV pair were Garagiola and Kubek in the 1960s, the best local ones I ever heard were Kell and Kaline for the Tiger network. But then again, I like Hawk Harrelson. I’ll miss seeing the Cub and White Sox broadcasts as WGN drops sports. I hate the postseason because we have to hear Joe Buck.
Is it realistic to expect eight innings from Kershaw pitching on short rest? Not to mention we’ve seen what the Cardinals can do to him.
Puig out of the lineup for this afternoon’s game, to be replaced by Andre Ethier. Given Puig’s inability to even make contact for most of this series, it feels like a no-brainer.
ETA: Crawford will be moved up to hit second, and Ethier will hit sixth.
What is the general consensus on Puig among Dodgers fans? Here in Giant-land, he is the perfect personification of ‘Dodgerness’…he’s just so damn easy to hate 
Are LA fans tired of the ‘drama’, or is the upside (the last couple games notwithstanding) worth it?
I love watching Puig. He’s rough, but a gem nonetheless. The more the Dodger staff works with him, the greater he will be.
“Hate” is a term that should be reserved for people with zero redeeming features, or who are actively Evil. You know…the Yankees.
Or Barry Bonds.
I’m not sure what makes Puig “rough.” He looks very polished to me; his defensive play is technically very proficient and his hitting fundamentals are solid. He’s pretty advanced for his age.
I think the whole Puig “drama” thing is way over-rated, especially at it applies to the actual thing he is paid to do, which is play baseball. He’s a character, but basically the notion that he’s any sort of detriment to the team is little more than media sensationalism, combined with the tut-tutting of old-timers who have outdated ideas of “how the game should be played.”
And how could LA fans NOT think that the upside is worth it?
Puig is getting just under $4 million this year, and he has a better WAR for the season than any of the hitters on the team earning $15 million or more this season.
The difference between Puig’s WAR and Andre Ethier’s WAR this year is basically the difference between winning the division and tying with San Francisco.
I’m not a Dodgers fan, but yes, it’s 90% fiction.
Absolutely worth it to me. He’s extremely talented with tons of upside. And fun to watch. Sure, I wish he was a bit more mature, but there’s already been a lot of improvement between last season and this one. I have no reason to think he’s not going to turn out to be a great player over a long career.
I’m glad he’s being benched today, but not out of any animosity toward him. You play the hot hand, and he’s about as cold as you get at the moment.