Kay was very good with Sterling on the radio. They complimented each other and their clash of the egos made for an entertaining–if not always relaxing–time.

I think the Mets radio team is top-notch.

The Mets team is pretty solid – Cohen does an excellent job. I miss Murph terribly, though.

The best regional broadcaster I’ve encountered is Gary Cohen of the Mets. It’s a delight to listen to him, and now that Murph is gone, Cohen is having a lot more fun in the booth.

Murcer’s year reminded me of Brady Anderson’s 50 hr season. Any rumors that Bobby was juicing?

Meanwhile, I believe Singleton and Kaat are among the very best in the business, though Kaat’s reactionary stances are getting worse by the year. The pitch count and radar gun stuff drives me nuts. Even when I agree with him (radar guns) he needs to realize when to move on to a new topic. Also, I could deal with his railing against pitch counts if he made the distinction between young and old pitchers. Pitch counts have been proven to be crucial to keeping young arms from falling off. If Kitty argued that coaches should toss out their pitch counters with veteran pitchers on the mound (which is basically what he means anyway), he’d have a lot more credibility.

Meanwhile, Kitty’s comments about the composure and funky windups of “Asian” pitchers and the nonchalant fielding of “Latin” infielders make me a bit uncomfortable. I don’t get hung up on the PC, but those comments border on inappropriate given his position. At least he uses the right ethnic terminology.

Knuckles, I just finished editing Howard Bryant’s book on the juiced era (Juicing the Game, on shelves in time for the All-Star Game!) and in it he discusses the way the inside pitch has been taken away from pitchers by the new warning system. One of his chief sources for that section is Joe Torre, who pines for the days of the game policing itself. Joe’s comments after the game reflected that (something along the lines of “it used to be that these things would take care of themselves”).

Arod hits 2 HRs, drives in the first three runs, and gets on base all four trips to the plate. That’s nothing compared to allowing a meaningless infield hit.

I think the “why doesn’t he…” posts in the previoud thread describe the attitude behind silly remarks like that perfectly.

Do you really see Torre this way? I feel the opposite- Joe has shown zero inclination towards protecting Yankee batters with a little inside wildness now and again. Hopefully this is the start of something new.

As for the Yanks’ hit and been hit ratio, I don’t have that but I did an (Excel file) study showing the correlation between walks and HBP for teams from 2002-2004. Not surprisingly, HBP and Walks rise at roughly the same rates for most teams, with the stark exception of the Red Sox, who almost always seem to be among the league leaders in hit batsmen while also having one of the lowest Walk rates in baseball. I can send the file to people if they’d like.

We make fun of Kay, Murcer, et. al, but they really are the gold standard in terms of regional broadcasts (scary thought).

So is Q going to be suspended for 5 games?