2024 DETROIT TIGERS REGULAR SEASON THREAD

[holygoat]

50 minutes ago, romad1 said:

Benetti and Dirks are a good team.   Really enjoying that pairing.  

I've found them to be increasingly annoying and cringey. Dirks became my favorite booth analyst last year when paired with DD, but I'm growing to hate him with Benetti, whose act I'm growing less and less fond of, as well. His Aren't-I-Very-Clever? thing plays better with a more straight-ahead partner who doesn't encourage it so much.

[romad1]

1 minute ago, holygoat said:

I've found them to be increasingly annoying and cringey. Dirks became my favorite booth analyst last year when paired with DD, but I'm growing to hate him with Benetti, whose act I'm growing less and less fond of, as well. His Aren't-I-Very-Clever? thing plays better with a more straight-ahead partner who doesn't encourage it so much.

Yeah a lot of people hate joy.   :--)

Edited September 25 by romad1

[KL2]

4 minutes ago, holygoat said:

I've found them to be increasingly annoying and cringey. Dirks became my favorite booth analyst last year when paired with DD, but I'm growing to hate him with Benetti, whose act I'm growing less and less fond of, as well. His Aren't-I-Very-Clever? thing plays better with a more straight-ahead partner who doesn't encourage it so much.

You're in the minority

Edited September 25 by KL2

[KL2]

2 hours ago, chasfh said:

Is there a movement afoot for Baseball to ban openers? If so, then that one has gotten by me.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/40847173/mlb-rule-changes-2024-six-inning-starting-pitcher-injuries-tommy-john

[Nate7474]

You watch/listen to anyone for an entire baseball season and they are going to start to annoy you. To me the simple fact is when given a passable partner Benetti is elite and we are lucky to have him in comparison to the last couple years. Now when paired with a bad partner and we’ve had a few of them this year he tends to try and do to much to help them. 

[Tiger337]

2 hours ago, chasfh said:

Is there a movement afoot for Baseball to ban openers? If so, then that one has gotten by me.

I believe they are exploring the idea of requiring starters to go six innings (with caveats).   

[Edman85]

2 hours ago, chasfh said:

What a swell guy.

I’m still going to listen to Dan Dickerson.

 

Your hatred for Benetti for having a national job is fascinating. There's a reason Shep didn't have to miss games.

Edited September 25 by Edman85

[Tenacious D]

Benneti reads his own press on X, methinks.  I like him, but wish he’d dial it down some.  And agree Dirks might be a better fit with an adult in the booth (DD).

I suspect we’re seeing more of Dirks on TV to appeal to a younger audience who might be tuning in regularly for the first time given the playoff excitement.

[Tiger337]

2 minutes ago, Nate7474 said:

You watch/listen to anyone for an entire baseball season and they are going to start to annoy you. To me the simple fact is when given a passable partner Benetti is elite and we are lucky to have him in comparison to the last couple years. Now when paired with a bad partner and we’ve had a few of them this year he tends to try and do to much to help them. 

I was younger then, but Harwell never ever annoyed me.  Dickerson doesn't annoy me either even when he is paired with a weak partner.  Benetti sometimes pushes his esoteric humor a little too much, but he is great.   

[gehringer_2]

7 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

I believe they are exploring the idea of requiring starters to go six innings (with caveats).   

Rules committee in pro sport never seem to miss an opportunity to shoot their sports in the foot.

[chasfh]

10 minutes ago, KL2 said:

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/40847173/mlb-rule-changes-2024-six-inning-starting-pitcher-injuries-tommy-john

Thanks for sharing this, although "there is some belief around the game" doesn't sound like very much of a movement afoot. In fact, since he didn't attribute the idea to anybody, not to the commissioners office or even to anyone anonymously by profession, I wouldn't doubt that the idea came strictly out of the head of Jesse Rogers himself.

[chasfh]

8 minutes ago, Edman85 said:

Your hatred for Benetti for having a national job is fascinating. There's a reason Shep didn't have to miss games.

I don't know where you got this, but I don't hate Jason Benetti.

[chasfh]

18 minutes ago, Nate7474 said:

You watch/listen to anyone for an entire baseball season and they are going to start to annoy you. To me the simple fact is when given a passable partner Benetti is elite and we are lucky to have him in comparison to the last couple years. Now when paired with a bad partner and we’ve had a few of them this year he tends to try and do to much to help them. 

I've listened to Dan Dickerson for several entire baseball seasons and he has never annoyed me even once.

I agree that we are lucky to have Benetti in comparison to the last couple of years.

[gehringer_2]

1 minute ago, Tiger337 said:

I was younger then, but Harwell never ever annoyed me.  Dickerson doesn't annoy me either even when he is paired with a weak partner.  Benetti sometimes pushes his esoteric humor a little too much, but he is great.   

Ernie was unique in a lot of ways that may be pretty much lost. 1st and most importantly I think, since he mostly worked alone he was always talking directly to you, the audience. It changes the dynamic when a 'conversation' is directed to you, vs overhearing a conversation between two other people. A lot of complaints in this thread are exactly about the guys in booth being too distracted with each other and not nurturing their connection to the the audience. Ernie worked harder than any other broadcaster I ever heard at being interesting to the audience all the time. His work ethic to find all the things he talked about, stories he related, broadcast to broadcast puts today's guys to shame. He was probably better because he worked harder at it.

The other thing he understood better than Dickerson is that over 162 game too much emotion is fatiguing to listen to. If I have one critique of Dickerson it's that he could stand to dial it down a notch - e.g. Jon Miller. (that and stop talking so much about pitch counts in the 1st inning!).

[romad1]

it boggles my mind that the SE Michigan radio audience once had Bob Ufer once a week during the Fall.   

[chasfh]

16 minutes ago, Edman85 said:

Your hatred for Benetti for having a national job is fascinating. There's a reason Shep didn't have to miss games.

I will tell you what does annoy me about Benetti: the guy has all but told us that he is passing through Detroit by insisting on skipping dozens of games so he can do national broadcasts. Going 100% national is clearly his goal, and it's not even because he considers himself football-first so he wants to make that his #1 thing. I would respect him more if that were the case. But he also bugs out on Tigers games so he can do national baseball games on FS1. Which, honestly, I'm fine with from a Tigers' fan standpoint, because that means we get Dan Dickerson on TV, and to me, that's a win.

And now that Benetti has said that he's going to skip his national football game this one time because the Tigers are, all of a sudden and unexpectedly, where the spotlight is at this very moment, I respect his blatant careerism even less. So it's not only the Tigers he's jerking around here.

All this said, I don't hate Jason Benetti. I like him way better than Mario, and I certainly like him a lot a lot better than Shep. I even like him better than George Kell, and George was the PxP guy when I was eleven, which for many fans is the age at which baseball freezes as being in its best-ever state. The only other PxP I liked as well as Benetti was Josh Lewin, who worked his games in a sort of similarly jocular vein, if not as flamboyantly.

As I've posted here many times, Benetti can be very good when he's discussing the game at hand, and his sly jokes can work pretty well in that context, and I can watch an entire game of Jason Benetti and be quite OK with that. What I don't like is when he goes off on protracted sidebars about millennial pop culture or this or that, which are basically opportunities to demonstrate how clever he can be. He didn't do this with the White Sox so much because Steve Stone, a 40+-year baseball broadcaster himself, knew how to keep him in check and on track. Benetti doesn't have a guy like that here, so we are the beneficiaries, as it were, of his occasional poor impulse control.

In the end, I would be fine if Benetti hung around to do a couple decades of Tigers baseball, but there's no way he's going to do that, because he has his eyes on a bigger prize. So I will be neither surprised nor heartbroken when he does leave, and the only potential downside I can see is that the Tigers might replace him with a far worse PxP like Mario or Shep.

 

[Nate7474]

37 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I've listened to Dan Dickerson for several entire baseball seasons and he has never annoyed me even once.

I agree that we are lucky to have Benetti in comparison to the last couple of years.

Listen yes but not on TV. Radio guys call the game and describe in detail because we don’t see it and it gives them more content and less time. TV personalities have a lot of space to fill in. They are also catering to a less informed fan base as the radio listeners don’t want to miss a game. Hence the jokes and feel good stories that get added in that the hardcore fans dislike. This of course is all just my opinion. 

[chasfh]

1 minute ago, Nate7474 said:

Listen yes but not on TV. Radio guys call the game and describe in detail because we don’t see it and it gives them more content and less time. TV personalities have a lot of space to fill in. They are also catering to a less informed fan base as the radio listeners don’t want to miss a game. Hence the jokes and feel good stories that get added in that the hardcore fans dislike. This of course is all just my opinion. 

I don't mind jokes and stories in moderation. A decent joke or a concise story can really add to the experience.

I like Dan on TV because he calls the game as though he's on radio. I acknowledge that a lot of people hate that very thing.

[gehringer_2]

34 minutes ago, romad1 said:

it boggles my mind that the SE Michigan radio audience once had Bob Ufer once a week during the Fall.   

absolutely hated Ufer. To me he was epitome of all the things that have gone wrong with modern college football - which stem from the appropriation of what should be a piece of youth culture by a bunch of old men and gamblers.

Edited September 25 by gehringer_2

[chasfh]

40 minutes ago, romad1 said:

it boggles my mind that the SE Michigan radio audience once had Bob Ufer once a week during the Fall.   

I remember liking Bob Ufer. I was a child.

[gehringer_2]

53 minutes ago, romad1 said:

it boggles my mind that the SE Michigan radio audience once had Bob Ufer once a week during the Fall.   

There are three Ann Arbor voices, the passing of which encapsulate the transition of the American State University from a genteel center of education to just another big business enterprise: Fred Hindley, Tom Hemmingway, and Carl Grapentine.

Change may be inevitable and necessary, but it's never cost free.

Edited September 25 by gehringer_2

[romad1]

28 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

There are three Ann Arbor voices, the passing of which encapsulate the transition of the American State University from a genteel center of education to just another big business enterprise: Fred Hindley, Tom Hemmingway, and Carl Grapentine.

Change may be inevitable and necessary, but it's never cost free.

I used to like this town before old man Ford built the Rouge Complex!

:--)

Edited September 25 by romad1

[oblong]

The Hurricane that's bearing up on the gulf could have an impact... the Royals play at Atlanta this weekend and whatever's left of the hurricane will go thru Atlanta on Friday and head North then go west a little bit.  

 

[holygoat]

2 hours ago, KL2 said:

You're in the minority

So what?

[Edman85]

Benetti has been a national guy for over a decade. There are lots of national guys who take full time announcing gigs with teams. ESPN and Fox broadcast a ton more CFB/CBB than 20+ years ago and need to draw on baseball broadcasters to fill those numbers, since the seasons minimally overlap. Benetti isn't the only one. Gaudin, Provus, Anderson, Davis, Brown, Orsillo, Randazzo, Sciambi, O'Brien off the top of my head. It's just common and isn't a reflection of the announcer.

It did drive me nuts when Fox pulled him away to do spring games.

Edited September 25 by Edman85