Thursday, May 3, 2007

Baseball Tonight: Artificial Debate Central?

Have the producers of Baseball Tonight told their analysts to disagree with each other no matter what the issue?

The other night, John Kruk and Steve Phillips were asked to name their player of the month for April. Phillips chose A-Rod, but Kruk chose Vladimir Guerrero because he didn’t want to pick the obvious choice.

(That argument got overshadowed by the surreal debate over the Indians sending Fausto Carmona down to the minors. When Phillips (pro) asked Kruk (con) how he would feel if returning from injury he lost his job to someone with a couple of good games, all Kruk could do was huff. The hard feelings were palpable the rest of the night.)

Wednesday night, apparently it was Kruk’s turn to be reasonable. Kruk and Fernando Vina—who sometimes looks at the camera as if it’s Albert Belle’s forearm coming at him all over again—were asked to rank their top three aces in baseball, setting aside salary. Kruk chose Santana, Halladay and Oswalt. Vina chose Colon, Willis and Beckett. He was being serious. Apparently, it’s not a fireable offense for a retired second baseman to think Johan Santana isn’t one of the three best pitchers in baseball, but it would be if he consoled Santana with a hug.

I know it would be boring if they just sat around agreeing with each other, but rather than disagreeing over something that should be obvious, wouldn’t the producers be better served to scrap the segment in favor of something truly divisive?

I can’t wait to see what happens when the Indians recall Carmona.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm a Sox fan and even I know that's stupid. Can you make a case for any of Beckett, Willis, Colon being one of the three best?

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