During the Mets-Padres NL Wild Card series, ESPN play-by-play man Karl Ravech “talked too much,” while analyst David Cone “did not speak enough,” according to Andrew Marchand of the N.Y. POST. Ravech is “more of a studio guy than a play-by-player.” He “narrates the game instead of calling it.” However he “talks way too much, not letting his partners in enough.” When Ravech does try to include his analysts, he “often asks questions, which works if you are sitting on set in Bristol, but during the game you want to lead your analysts places, not put them in places they may not want to go.” Marchand writes Cone “should be the star” of the ESPN broadcast. Marchand: “He is probably the best game analyst in baseball. He should be the one saying what he thinks all the time. At times, he was mute.” During yesterday's Game 3, the trio again did not “feel like they were having a conversation at a ballgame.” It was more of Ravech “moderating and sporadically asking (Eduardo) Perez and Cone questions.” The Padres’ lead “took air out of the game,” but the crew did not “make it feel much bigger than a typical Sunday night broadcast” (N.Y. POST, 10/10).
FANS BAMBOOZLED: THE ATHLETIC's Evan Drellich wrote international baseball fans who were "planning to stream the postseason" are accusing MLB of a "deceptive last-minute money grab." On Thursday, some fans abroad, including many in the U.K., "discovered that if they wanted to watch MLB’s postseason, their subscription to MLB.TV’s package would no longer cut it." In a departure from the past in some countries, MLB "was asking fans to pony up additional cash to one of MLB’s broadcast partners if they wanted to watch the games." Fans said that they "didn’t know as much until the playoffs were about to start." The @batflips_nerds Twitter account, which has nearly 10,000 followers and represents a popular British baseball podcast, wrote, “What a self-defeating mess this is. So much good will and opportunity here in the UK and they push it behind another paywall. Definition of madness.” A follow-up tweet: “Just can’t get over this being communicated ONE DAY before the playoffs start. The decision is abject, the comms worse. A complete piss take of loyal fans” (THE ATHLETIC, 10/7).
