A brief comment on announcers

First, a clarification about the Stoneman debate--I basically agree with Wraith that not trading at the deadline was probably the best bet, in so far as we would have been forced to give up key players, which seems to have been the case. However, I've heard several veritable rumors (but rumors nonetheless) that we could have acquired Soriano, for example, for "second-tier prospects." I'm not quite sure what that term meant in context, but I imagine it meant we wouldn't have had to give up Santana/Weaver/Wood/Kendrick/Adenhart, but somebody like Aybar/Mathis/Bulger. Which is not to say those three players aren't someday going to be excellent sportsmen, but we have enough depth at each of those positions (possibly excepting Bulger) that it wouldn't have been the Apocalypse had we given them up. We also could have gone after temporary stop-gaps such as Casey or (Aramis) Ramirez relatively inexpensively, too. The problem, it has been so rumoured, is that Stoneman did not react fast enough to land the Soriano deal, meaning if he were a bit more attentive we would have had him. That's what frustrates me most about him.

OK, so my comments on announcers. It seems to be agreed that Steve Physioc and Rex Hudler are pretty horrible. I don't completely agree with that sentiment, as they do say some pretty intelligible things from time to time, but watching them day in and day out is pretty awful. However, I wonder how much better certain other announcers are. The White Sox announcers last night were extremely biased towards the Sox (try comparing the reactions to the Angel and Thome home runs), while Hud and Phys tend to show enthusiasm toward great plays by both teams (sometimes to a fault). Tonight, I'm ready to pull my hair out at listening to the Indians announcers--S and H may ramble from time to time, but I swear the Cleveland guys just like listening to themselves talk. They have not stopped spewing forth useless nuggets of verbosity for the twenty minutes I've been watching the game. The camera focuses on them, not the game. They don't talk about the game, they talk about general baseball stuff. Extremely annoying. So I'll take Phys and Hud over other announcers (with some exception) almost any day.

Wraith?