Alex Rodriguez Was a Disaster in the Booth During Yankees-Red Sox

[Diamond_Dog]

Here are four words no baseball fan ever wants to hear: The game’s on ESPN.

MLB’s do-or-die wild-card playoffs should be the most exciting games of the year, but they aren’t when Matt Vasgersian and Alex Rodriguez are on the call. The pair (accompanied by reporter Buster Olney) are a chore to listen to on Sunday Night Baseball during the regular season. Those broadcasts feel like a baseball talk show competing with the game being played on the field, but the lack of focus on the game itself isn’t the fault of the guys in the booth. (It’s a production decision made by the higher-ups at ESPN.) What really makes those games unbearable is A-Rod’s uncanny ability to repeatedly say some of the weirdest things imaginable.

Whether he’s talking about “even leads versus odd leads,” not scoring insurance runs to let your struggling closer prove himself or slipping into Shark Tank mode to refer to a team’s rebuild as a “leveraged buyout,” you can always count on A-Rod to say something that will make your head spin. That’s why, even though I’m a Yankees fan and they play plenty of Sunday night games every year, I rarely watch. It’s also why I was grateful that ESPN had the Statcast-focused alternate broadcast with Jason Benetti, Eduardo Pérez and Mike Petriello on ESPN2 on Tuesday night. Anybody who did listen to the primary broadcast on ESPN was treated to some real drivel from A-Rod.

https://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2021/10/06/yankees-red-sox-espn-alex-rodriguez-lowlights