NBC Sports’ MLB Wild Card Coverage Offers a Blueprint for Better Baseball Broadcasts

· Yahoo Sports

For years, baseball has spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make the game feel younger, faster and more relevant. Pitch clocks. Bigger bases. New rules. More action. Maybe MLB should have looked in the broadcast booth, too.

I’ve been saying for years that baseball broadcasts need more energy. Younger voices and people who sound like they’re experiencing the game with us. As opposed to explaining it like we’re auditing an advanced statistics class. Watching NBC’s Wild Card coverage this week, I finally saw a version of a national baseball broadcast that felt different and better.

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During Cubs-Padres, Dave Flemming handled play-by-play alongside Jim Deshaies, who spent the season calling Cubs games. There was also Mark Grant, who spent the season calling Padres games. NBC then added Clayton Kershaw as its “Inside the Pitch” analyst on the field.

I loved it, and it left me wondering why this should disappear when the Wild Card round does.

Local Voices Matter

The concept isn’t completely new. NBC first experimented with team-specific analysts when Peacock launched MLB Sunday Leadoff in 2022. The idea was simple: Pair a national play-by-play voice with analysts who know the teams because they’ve been watching them every day. Peacock continued the approach in 2023, and NBC brought it back when baseball returned to the network this season.

For the Wild Card games, NBC featured a national play-by-play voice, an analyst from each participating team’s broadcast crew and an additional “Inside the Pitch” analyst. Phillies-Braves had John Kruk and C.J. Nitkowski, with Joey Votto providing additional analysis. White Sox-Astros had Steve Stone and Geoff Blum, with Adam Ottavino. Red Sox-Yankees had Lou Merloni and Joe Girardi, with Anthony Rizzo. Cubs-Padres gave us Deshaies and Grant, plus Kershaw.

That’s a lot of people. Normally, I’d say four voices on a baseball broadcast is about two voices too many. Except this worked.

The local analysts provide something national broadcasts too often lack: institutional knowledge. Grant doesn’t need a production meeting to learn the Padres. He has watched them since March. Deshaies knew the Cubs the same way. They know the bullpen patterns, personalities, slumps, and lineup changes. Moreover, all the little things that never make the national broadcast notes.

Then there was the future Hall of Famer, Kershaw.

I learned something listening to him. He could explain what a pitcher was trying to do. Why a pitch was selected. In addition, what was happening inside an at-bat in a way only someone who just finished an 18-year, Hall of Fame-level career can. He knew each hitter and pitcher and quickly explained their strengths, weaknesses and tendencies. Why? Because he competed against those players.

It doesn’t have to be a future Hall of Famer every time. Give me recently retired pitchers talking pitching and recently retired hitters talking hitting. Give me people close enough to the modern game that when they explain what a player is thinking, they remember what it feels like to be that player.

John Smoltz has been a major part of FOX Sports’ baseball coverage since 2014 and its lead game analyst since 2016. Ron Darling has been calling national postseason games for Turner since 2007. Both obviously know baseball and have earned their places in the booth.

Kershaw practically took off his cleats, grabbed a microphone and immediately gave viewers something different. Moreover, he was describing the modern game he had just finished playing.

Thinking Differently

This isn’t about pushing established analysts out. It’s about creating room for the next group to get in.

Baseball has been painfully slow to rethink the way it presents itself on television. The NFL gives us alternate broadcasts, ManningCasts and recently retired players and coaches constantly getting opportunities. The NBA has embraced personality. Baseball too often acts like changing the booth requires approval from Congress.

The strange part is that baseball may have the best collection of local broadcasters of any sport. They live with a team for six months and 162 games. Thus, fans develop relationships with them.

I live in the Bay Area, and Giants fans didn’t just listen to Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper describe baseball. Kruk and Kuip became part of the experience of being a Giants fan. Why wouldn’t you want some of that knowledge in October?

The frustrating part is that when the Wild Card round ends, so does NBC’s postseason coverage. Baseball moves deeper into October, but NBC’s idea doesn’t. That feels backwards.

I’m not suggesting baseball turn October into a broadcasting circus. We don’t need six people in the booth, a celebrity in the dugout and Kevin Hart explaining the pitch clock. Baseball just needs to recognize what NBC figured out.

The people who know these teams best are the people who have been watching them all year. Pair them with a strong national play-by-play voice, then add a recently retired player like Kershaw who can take viewers somewhere the traditional broadcast can’t.

It’s needed in a sport whose national broadcasts can sometimes feel like the baseball equivalent of the furniture at your grandparents’ house. It’s perfectly functional and been there forever. Nobody is quite sure why we’re still afraid to move it.

Baseball has changed. In addition, the players have changed. The way we watch and consume sports has changed. It’s time the people talking to us about it changed, too.

NBC gave us a glimpse of what that could look like this week. The best idea in baseball broadcasting this October shouldn’t disappear just because the Wild Card round did.

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