Monday Bantering: Today’s lineup and spring notes

The Blue Jays are playing in Dunedin against the Pirates. One would think that the first game in the redone ballpark would be something that they would want to show us on one of the 258 sports channels. They should be making a big deal out of this.

If you have MLB.tv the game is being broadcast by the Pirates radio team. I think I’ll listen in just hear how Nate Pearson does. Bob Rae gets the start.

Santiago Espinal, 2B

Joe Panik, 3B

Rowdy Tellez, 1B

Alejandro Kirk, C

Breyvic Valera, CF

Danny Jansen, DH

Forrest Wall, LF

Austin Martin, SS

Chavez Young, RF

Ray will be followed by a combination of Pearson, Jordan Romano, Ryan Borucki, and Francisco Liriano.

The decision to go to simulcasting of radio and tv is on my mind, and I don listen to all that many games on the radio (though if I’m driving, I like to have a game on). Craig Calcaterra, in his Cup of Coffee newsletter, called it pennywise, pound foolish. Radio broadcasters have to paint a picture of the game going on. TV guys, in my view, are to get out of the way of our watching of the game, but be interesting enough when there isn't action going on.

Calcaterra puts it as In the (TV), the pictures carry a lot of the weight and the broadcasters support the visuals. In (radio), the broadcasters paint the picture. If you try to use a TV-style approach in radio, listeners will get a pretty terrible product, lacking in necessary detail. If, on the other hand, the TV announcers try to over-describe the action to compensate for what radio listeners require, the TV broadcast will be a pretty terrible product, overly cluttered with unnecessary detail.

There is a very strong possibility that both the radio and the TV broadcasts will be much worse than in the past. For me, who watches most of the games on TV, if the commentators are going to be talking more, I will enjoy it a lot less. I like letting the game breathe. I find, as much as I like Dan and Buck together, I would like them to get out of the way of the game more. When Tabler’s there, I’d like them to get out of the way a lot more.

I’m sure that Sportsnet made this decision before they fired Mike Wilner.

I don’t understand why sports radio and, for that matter, TV, wouldn’t want to do sports well.

Craig also points out that the Red Sox sold 10% of Fenway Sports Group for $750 million, making the company worth more than $7 billion, so there is money in sports.

Keegan Matheson has some Jays notes up. He mentions that Anthony Kay’s velocity was up yesterday. We noted that he hit 97, Keegan said he hit 96 several times and 97 on occasion. Kay says he came into camp in a little better shape than last year. And he says he is working on a cutter that he used a few times yesterday.

He also mentions that Bo Bichette saw 8 pitches in each of his two plate appearances yesterday.