Colorado Rockies: The Phillies TV broadcast’s mistakes and snafus were aplenty this weekend

This year, I’ve been doing something a little bit different than usual in my watching of the Rockies: I watch and/or listen to the opposing team’s broadcasts.

Usually, it’s only for a game or two of the series or some times, just a few innings, but this weekend, it was a little different. I watched all three games via the Phillies television feed and, if you follow us on Twitter, you may have realized that.

I didn’t necessarily watch all three games on their broadcast because it was great.

In fact, it was the exact opposite. The mistakes, snafus, and just plain ignorant statements on the broadcast were simply laughable.

Now, let me be clear: We all make mistakes. We’re human. Players make mistakes, managers and coaches make mistakes, umpires make mistakes, and I know I have made plenty mistakes, whether it’s typo in a tweet, article, or getting info wrong, or just not saying the right thing (on a podcast or when I used to broadcast baseball or other sports collegiately). I guarantee you that 99 percent of the people that are in sports media will tell you that.

But there were so many mistakes on the Phillies TV broadcasts against the Rockies this weekend.

And most of the baffling statements made, just by a lack of research and preparation.

Their play-by-play man for the series was Tom McCarthy and he is their regular play-by-play broadcaster and I’ll be very honest with you: I think he had a pretty good series.

Broadcasting a game off of a monitor when the game is taking place nearly 2,000 miles away is not an easy task and if not for the occasional “there in Denver,” showing them in the studio, or knowing that most teams’ broadcasters are not traveling right now, I wouldn’t have known that they weren’t there.

But his analyst was Ruben Amaro Jr. and he was a different story. Amaro Jr. is not the Phillies regular color analyst as he is usually a pre-and post-game analyst.

Essentially, for comparison, it’s like having Cory Sullivan in the booth for the Rockies (he’s there doing pre- and post-game and he knows the team, but he only does in-game color analysis on occasion).

Amaro Jr., the former MLB infielder who was a teammate and locker mate with Rockies manager Bud Black in Cleveland in 1995, is a former player, general manager, coach, and scout so he, in theory, should bring a lot to the broadcast.

But he didn’t.

Why? A lot of his information was either incorrect, missing context, outdated, or he just flat out didn’t know.

For example, multiple times in the series, it seemed evident that Amaro Jr. was not scoring the game, which is a common practice in broadcasts and media so you can easily refer back to the previous at-bats while you’re in the game.

I could be wrong but when you ask the play-by-play guy what a hitter did in a previous at-bat in the game multiple times, it’s apparent.

But let’s go through the many examples throughout the weekend of mistakes, snafus, and statements not based on facts.