In the final days of the regular season, we spent our time thinking about which teams would make the playoffs, followed by identifying the opening opponents and potential bracket paths through the American League. The next think we think about is the game times, and the 6:00 starts for this entire week works in the East Coast fans’ favor, as opposed to fans of teams in Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, and San Diego, all of whom have three straight days of game times during the 9-to-5 workday.
The last
thing that comes to mind until Game One actually starts is the broadcasters. Over the previous six months for 162 games you know who will be calling your games when you tune in that night, by and large. Yes, you’ll run into an occasional national TV game with a crew that lacks the day-in and day-out knowledge of your team, but you can get through one regular season game with a subpar announcing crew. Hell, Apple TV even has a “Local Radio” option, which you can click over to, and it syncs the local radio call with the television. But the playoffs are a whole different animal. You’re stuck with these jabronies for the entire series, and there is no local radio sync to save you.
Around the turn of the century, Tim McCarver called the Yankees’ local broadcasts, while Joe Buck did the play-by-play for the St. Louis Cardinals during the regular season. You may remember a couple of important playoff series that the Red Sox were involved in during that era against the Yankees and the Cardinals, with Buck and McCarver on the call for FOX. Were they biased against Boston? It sure felt like it at times. You could feel the disdain that McCarver had for some of the Red Sox players during the most heated of Yankees matchups. Buck has spoken in numerous interviews, notably on the Pardon My Take podcast, about how every fan base thinks he hates their team. Which probably means he’s doing a good job overall.
Which brings us to ESPN’s “A Crew” that was assigned to this 2025 Red Sox and Yankees series. Earlier this year, ESPN used its opt-out clause on the remainder of its television deal, and Sunday Night Baseball will no longer exist after a lengthy run that has been on the air for basically every week since 1990. Karl Ravech, Eduardo Perez, and David Cone have been the trio since 2022, and, thankfully, this series will be their last. It’s difficult to convey why an announcer or announcing crew works and why it doesn’t. But judging by every text message I get whenever the Red Sox play on Sunday Night Baseball, and by every message in our OTM Slack last night, and by searching the names “Karl Ravech” and “Eduardo Perez” on Twitter, I feel very confident it’s almost unanimous that we can do better here. While David Cone is the least egregious of the three, he plays more of the A.J. Hawk on Pat McAfee Show role, where we’re not always sure he’s alive.
For six innings of Tuesday night’s Game One, the coverage felt like it was being directed by the YES Network. From the get-go, the Aaron Judge ball-washing was on full display. When the Red Sox innings ended, Ravech might as well have said, “Due Up for the Yankees, an Aaron Judge at-bat just eight batters away!” When Judge pulled a line drive off of his own dugout on the third base side, Ravech exclaimed, “He was all over that pitch!” When Nathaniel Lowe’s rip to right field was tracked down by Judge, Ravech described it as a “great catch,” and while I wouldn’t call it routine, the play had a 95% catch probability.
Time and time again, the booth discussed Garrett Crochet’s pitch count getting up there, and how impressive the five-pitch at-bats of the Yankee hitters were, while not once mentioning Max Fried until he got to 100 pitches. This turned out to be laughable after seeing when each of these respective pitchers was pulled out of the game.
In the third inning, when Nick Sogard ripped a line drive single into left field, Ravech commended Bellinger for cutting the ball off, a routine play that was made with ease. Perez added to this by rambling about Bellinger’s ability to play all three outfield positions this season, rather than ever talking about Sogard’s hit. They weren’t the only people in the building who underestimated Sogard’s skills during this game.
Ravech stated that Duran and Rafaela were the two most likely players to leg out an infield single in Boston’s lineup, leaving out Nate Eaton and his 97th percentile sprint speed, faster than both of the players that he mentioned.
With Perez, I couldn’t find the words to describe why it’s so hard to listen to, but I found this tweet to be perfect:
“Eduardo Perez really never shuts up during a broadcast. Just rambling about stuff that makes no sense.” – @zachTNT
It’s as simple as that. This crew, Perez specifically, cannot handle silence to let the game breathe, instead opting for three hours of word vomit. During Giancarlo Stanton’s first at-bat, Perez referred to him as “G”. And while “G” does, in fact, show up under Stanton’s nicknames on the Baseball Reference page, I’m almost certain that Perez was only aware of this because he was on Stanton’s Baseball Reference page at that exact moment.
Once the Sox rallied off of Luke Weaver in the seventh inning, the tone turned a bit as the broadcast recognized that there was a chance that the Red Sox could win this game. They could even, possibly, advance to a future series, despite the fact that they were mapping out upcoming Max Fried starts. In the top of the ninth inning, Bregman doubled in Trevor Story. As Story scores, Ravech yells, “He will be in there with a double, and insurance from Trevor Story!”
And finally, in the bottom of the ninth, when Cody Bellinger singled to load the bases, Ravech delivered by far my favorite line of the night: “Those singles come on five pitches, and this place is getting off right now!”
I quickly checked to make sure that Reese McGuire hadn’t been re-signed, but thankfully, he’s on the Chicago Cubs roster this postseason.
During the final week of the regular season, McGuire’s teammate Michael Busch homered and Ravech called the play a home run from “Matthew Busch.” Perez then proceeded to call him Matthew Boyd (a Cubs pitcher), getting both his first name wrong and his last name wrong. To which Ravech (who had just called the same player by the wrong name!) corrects Perez that the man’s last name is “Busch.” Absolute clown show. It needs to be witnessed to believe it.
The early games this week feature the great Sean McDonough, who ESPN has made the face of their NHL broadcasts. This is followed by Kevin Brown, who is on loan from the Orioles, and is one of the great play-by-play guys in the sport, followed by the very likable Jon Sciambi at night. With Todd Frazier, Jessica Mendoza, Ben McDonald, and Doug Glanville all doing the color commentary for solid broadcasts across the board. It became abundantly clear that while the Red Sox and Yankees were assigned the “A” Crew, but of the four, instead got the “D” Crew, for Dinks.
After this round, ESPN will hand the rest of the playoffs off to FOX Sports and TBS. Next year, they’ll hand off MLB coverage entirely, a sport that they took seriously for decades, with nightly episodes of Baseball Tonight, even if a live game wasn’t on. The station slacked on their coverage over the last several years, and if we’re lucky, tonight’s game will be the last from the unprepared Ravech, Perez, Cone Squad. Good riddance.
