During most baseball games, there are eight people calling the action. Both the home and away teams have radio and television broadcasts, and most of those crews consist of a play-by-play announcer and a color commentator. If those teams have a Spanish language broadcast, the number is even higher. More often than you might think, something notable happens in the middle of a game and not one of those eight people notes it. Maybe a player will square around to bunt but end up taking the pitch, and that detail just goes unremarked upon by everyone. It’s a small detail, but it’s part of the story of the game. It tells you about the batting team’s strategy and their confidence in the hitter. It informs the defense’s pitch selection and positioning. Maybe the television crews figure you already saw it. Maybe the radio crews need to squeeze in a promo or the color guy’s in the middle of an anecdote about that one time he got to be an extra in Little Big League. There’s only so much time between pitches, and the announcers all have a decision to make on how best to fill it. Either way, if you’re listening on the radio, or if you’re looking away from your television for a moment, you’ll never know it happened at all. Something happened on Wednesday, in the first game of a doubleheader between the Tigers and Pirates. I found it remarkable, but apparently I was alone. No one else mentioned it. The Pirates were starting Jared Jones and Paul Skenes that day, and I was watching Detroit’s television broadcast. I did so partly because Jason Benetti is a delight, but mostly because when Jones and Skenes are on the mound, it’s fun to hear the opposing announcers react with awe as they watch batter after batter on their own team get taken apart limb from limb. Unfortunately for both Jones and me, the Tigers avoided dismemberment, hanging five earned runs and two unearned runs on Jones en route to a breezy 8-0 victory. On the bright side, Benetti and Kirk Gibson, who was serving as color commentator, decided that for much of the game, the best way to spend their time was by bickering like an old married couple. Benetti: Do they know you at your local donut shop? Gibson: No. Benetti: They know you as the guy who orders all the chocolate fry cakes. Gibson: I don’t. I’m on the sugar free now, so I’m not doing it now. So nobody knows. Benetti: Well, everybody knows you’re on the sugar free diet because you keep saying it. Gibson: Yeah, but you keep asking me if I like stuff with sugar on it. And I say no, they don’t know me because I’m not getting them. Although… well… my grandson brought me one over today. So I did it where nobody could see. Benetti: So you did eat sugar, but you’re yelling at me for saying that I would offer you something with sugar. But you then went and ate it? Gibson: If that’s yelling, I would peg you at about a year-and-a-half old. Benetti: [Laughing] Swing and a miss, strike three. Keith strikes out. In the top of the seventh, as Tarik Skubal was just about finished grinding the Pittsburgh lineup into a fine paste, Benetti mentioned that Skubal does the USA Today crossword before every start…
Analyzing the Impact of the Rosin Bag in Baseball | FanGraphs Baseball
