Fire Steve Phillips

I don't know if there's anything worse than ESPN's current Sunday Night Baseball announce team. I don't mean in terms of announce teams, I mean I don't know if there is anything worse in the world. Steve Phillips is completely intolerable, at the same time encouraging Joe Morgan's worst tendencies and making Morgan seem reasonable by comparison. Tonight they've spent entire innings pontificating on "edge" and "leadership" and "why David Wright and Carlos Beltran are not totally awesome but actually kinda suck." All this while the Mets are in first place and have won eleven of thirteen.

I put forth that this booth is worse even than Fox's Joe Buck/Tim McCarver dream team of awfulness. True, Jon Miller is better than either of those guys, but at least BucCarver will give you a break every now and then by spending an inning or two not even talking about baseball. Steve Phillips will not stop talking and as long as he is talking he will be talking about the things that the best players on the Mets do wrong. Joe Morgan of all people had to defend Carlos Beltran on the basis of his great statistics. Phillips thinks the Mets need to consider getting rid of the best center fielder in the league because he's not enough of a leader in the clubhouse.

ESPN's baseball coverage has been bad for years as they'll always choose the ex-player who'll spew platitudes about grit over anyone who might have anything interesting or insightful to say, but I think having Steve Phillips in the booth for games is a new low. I just don't understand who the audience is for this. Does anyone want this? Does no one actually like baseball?

Since I don't have any time in my schedule right now to drive up to Bristol and throw eggs at ESPN headquarters, I'll just post this link for old times' sake.  ¶ joe | 9:36 PM |