I’m going to keep this brief because it’s a subject I’ve touched on many times.
If you do not like advanced stats–and if you don’t, you probably aren’t reading this blog–that’s fine with me. I’ll try to convince you of their superiority, but if you don’t agree, I can’t force you to do anything about it. If you won’t educate yourself on them, though, or simply won’t listen to me, then I’m going to be upset.
As someone going into education for his career, there is little (if anything) I hate more than willful ignorance. Last night, John Flaherty said something that, at the very least, bordered on willful ignorance. After the results of the Toyota Text Poll were revealed, the booth was having a conversation about the stats used–BA/HR/RB/R–in the poll. David Cone, of course, wondered where WAR was and mused about defense and runs created. Flash would have none of it.
He wasn’t dismissive or rude to Cone, and I doubt he’d ever be. As boring as he is, he’s not unprofessional. However, he said something about how he couldn’t keep up with all these advanced stats. That bothers me. A lot. John Flaherty’s profession right now is color commentator and analyst. I’m not asking him to get up to Marc Carig territory and be a writer for BP but he should at least educate himself enough that he knows what Cone is talking about.
The last time David Cone was an announcer for YES, in 2009, he would drop the odd FanGraphs/sabermetrics reference, but during his time off in 2010, he clearly educated himself even more and has come back well educated and well informed on the positives and negatives of many advanced metrics. So, though he wasn’t working in any large capacity in 2010, David Cone bettered himself for the sake of his new job.
This small complaint highlights what I see wrong with some announcers. Come on, Flash. You don’t have to love advanced stats, but as someone who makes his living talking about and analyzing baseball, you should learn about all the available tools. And, honestly, Flash…your announcing is dryer than a saltine cracker in a desert. Maybe learning something new would help you.
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16 Responses to David Cone, John Flaherty, and responsibility
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TIQ IQ
The whole TV YES team needs a shake-up. With every telecast, Michael Kaye becomes more of a narcissist. As an Extra Innings viewer, it’s gotten to the point that I would rather hear the other sides’ broadcasters than our own.
It goes beyond that. The day Balenuelos was promoted to AAA, both Flash and Kaye admitted they had no idea how he had performed this year in AA. The franchise’s top pitching prospect and neither could be bothered to educate themselves on how he’s been doing. Struck me as kind of pathetic.
That is terrible.
Oh please. They’d probably tell you Betances pitched well enough in AA to be promoted to AAA, what else is there to say about the kid besides that and that he’s a top prospect? He probably won’t be a Yankee this year, he might be one next.
These guys (Flaherty and Kay) don’t care about how guys on the farm do unless they impact the big club. If the Yanks were pursuing a player in a trade, the team who has the player wanted Banuelos, and Banuelos pulled a hamstring, then he’d probably be talked about a bit and that’s it. What else is there to say but the kid got hurt and that might or will cost the Yanks the player they wanna land?
As much as I agree with your post, those last two sentences were unnecessary. They allow for Flash, should he ever see this article, to be dismissive of your otherwise excellent point. Not saying you shouldn’t make that comment but structure is everything, I would include that at the beginning or not at all.
Thanks for that, honestly. This is one of the most constructive pieces of criticism I’ve ever received during my blogging tenure.
Thought of you guys right when he said that last night.
I took Flaherty’s comment as a little tongue-in-cheek and self-deprecating rather than literally as you do. I’m sure he doesn’t know much about Sabermetrics but he probably understands more than he let on. He seems to like playing the dumb jock, always pointing out to Kay that he doesn’t have a Fordham education.
I’m not surprised that these guys don’t follow the farm system that closely. They are announcers not hardcore fans. They probably don’t view it as that important to calling the game in front of them. It’s progress that they would even consider Banuelos’ promotion worthy of mentioning.
There’s certainly room for improvement but I think overall the YES team is pretty good considering how terrible most baseball announcers are and how little homework they seem to do. I actually really like Cone, Leiter and Singleton and I find O’Neill entertaining even if he doesn’t add much of anything in the way of analysis. They could upgrade Kay and Flaherty but I’d consider both to be at least average consider how terrible the national announcers and some of other teams are.
That said, the poll itself was really annoying. They obviously get that sportswriters and voters are starting to pay more attention to advanced stats so why would they completely omit them? Would it have really hurt to replace runs with WAR (although I assume Runs was mainly on there because Granderson leads the majors in Runs)? It would have actually been interesting to see how many voted for WAR and if it was respectable, maybe the broadcasters and producers would start to think they need to incorporate them more into the coverage. And even if they wanted to stick with more traditional stats, wouldn’t slugging percentage be a lot more relevant than most of the options presented.
The poll wasn’t unreasonable. A guy hitting .365 isn’t an MVP candidate? A guy who scores 130 runs definitely is because while it shows he was been driven in alot, it also shows he got on base enough to be driven in 130 times. A guy who finishes with 53 HR isn’t an MVP candiate? Some teams finish with three times that amount of homeruns or less and 53 HR is two power hitters’ worth of homeruns nowadays. If you drive in 130 runs, I could give two shakes of a lamb’s tukus about your WAR, even less the higher your runs are a percentage of team runs. You drove in a seventh of your teams runs if the team scored 910 runs which is quite alot of runs.
The problem with the stats in the poll is not the stats themselves, but that they’re not analyzed twofold: what was created by the stat and how the stat compared to teammates’ stats and the team stats.
E.g. A guy hits 53 HR and wins the MVP. 17 HRs put the team ahead, 10 times for good, 8 put the team on the board, 13 tied the game, 10 put the team a run or two closer to tying the game, and 5 padded the lead. He drives in 70 runs with HR. That’s alot going on / havoc wreaked with those homeruns! The second-highest HR total for a player on the team was 24 and the team hit only 170 HR.
Part of the flaw in the poll question is that you could look at any one stat and really consider it all that important on it’s own. I may care alot more about WAR than you do but I think it’s flawed too. For one thing, the defensive component of WAR isn’t that accurate without sample sizes larger than one year so small differences in WAR can be pretty arbitrary and inaccurate.
Are guys who hit .365 or 53 HR’s valuable? Sure but if they are one dimensional players, they probably still aren’t the MVP.
You think YES is bad? I’m working in Eastern Europe and left to listen to Sterling 100+ times a year. Beyond batting average and W/L he’s lost. I try listening to other announcers, but it feels like I’m cheating on the Yankees. Yet, I feel abused by Sterling.
Still, I’d rather listen to Flaherty than Michael Kaye: “If it’s fair, it’s gone! It! Is! a foul ball.” or Sterling: “It is high, it is far, it is… caught near the wall.” I konw Flaherty doesn’t do the play by play and I don’t have any problem with excitement, but isn’t it time to put that sort of announcing out to pasture? And it’s not like Flaherty is one of the goons on FOX, or, to a lesser extent, ESPN. (right now, i think FOX is worse than ESPN, but I can never truly decide…)
Still, I think it’s time for a ‘In Praise of David Cone’ post – imagine how great it would be if Cone was doing color commentary for every game… just imagine! Since we’re stuck with these guys, I try to focus on the positive.
Apart from Cone and Leiter, every YES on air employee is awful. It’s just that so many people want to watch the games that it really doesn’t matter in terms of ratings.
[...] Flaherty got into it over sabermetrics during the YES broadcast on Monday Night. Matt Imbrogno of The Yankee Analyst provides the [...]
I
LOVE
Coney.
Love ‘em.