i’m watching the game on espn and joe morgan keeps saying wellemeyer is not a strikeout pitcher. seems to me that anyone averaging a k per inning is a strikeout pitcher. maybe joe needs to get after his staff, they are making him look foolish. joe - do your homework!

it’s been years since Morgan said anything of actual relevance.

I did a quick check of Wellemeyer’s K rate and added it to the text ….

Thanks for noting that Bernie. He started the broadcast off saying that Wellemeyer doesn’t throw that hard (right before first pitch as they were profiling him). Wellemeyer then proceeds to throw two 94 mph fastballs and a 96 mph fastball past Soriano. I’m convinced the gun is juiced a bit on espn’s brodcast, but still 92-94 mph is above average in this league. Then later when Dunc visited the mound Morgan said that neither pitcher can throw a 2-0 fastball by a hitter and Wellemeyer promptly fires a 92 mph fastball past a swinging Reed Johnson. All you’d have to do is watch one inning of a previous start to see Wellemeyer does, in fact, have an above-average fastball. Or just check the stats and see the guy does actually strike guys out at an above-average rate.

Fire Joe Morgan.

Was in Tampa Bay last weekend, watched the Rays sweep the Red Sox, and give their fans hope for the first time in a decade. The broadcast team on Rays coverage is decent. None of the usual crapola like Dan&Al deliver, still humble because they have to be, so they actually call a game minus the extraneous horses**t.

Rays here in 2 weeks.

i asked a while back if al hrabosky is popular in st. louis. no one seemed to want to answer. i think every announcer should be made to listen and to try and emulate vin scully, the best announcer alive. he adds quite a lot of interesting tidbits about players but you will never hear him talk about a movie he likes or other crap i hear from al and dan. and talk about doing your homework. no one has ever done that better than vin. anyway, i will ask again, are these guys popular in st louis?

By the way………..Joe Magrane is the color guy for the Tampa Bay broadcasts. I’ve heard him for years with Extra Innings. He’s not bad at all……I’m sure he’d tell you the same

Joe Morgan….sheesh. Don’t forget he also said “neither pitcher is a strikeout pitcher, they pitch to contact. I think it is absolutely irresponsible for a national broadcaster not to do his homework. Joe Morgan had/has NO IDEA who Wellemeyer is. You can’t tell me he “missed” seeing every MPH reading on the screen. I think he just refuses to admit a mistake.

I don’t think the ESPN gun was juiced. The fastball to Soriano in the first inning registered at 97 mph on the stadium gun.

it also irked me when joe morgan said fukudome’s stats in japan don’t really mean much because the leagues in japan are like AAA. come on, completely dissing japanese baseball leagues and at the same time minimizing fukudome’s stats is unprofessional in my opinion. i wonder if he even knows much about japanese baseball.

btw, i fear that fukudome could make the cubs a contender for a few years. sure wish the cardinals had tried a little bit harder to get him. he seems like a terrific player.

Roger, I don’t know how popular or well-liked Al is in St. Louis, but I don’t care for his announcing or his sarcasm or the silly feud games he plays with the other guys. Dan can be okay and I think he would be really good with somebody else. They have done much better this year, but last year was terrible. I thought Al was asleep half the time.

Re: Joe Magrane. How could I forget that? I even said to my mother, “Hey, that’s Joe Magrane. He went to Lindbergh with me”. Of course I was wrong. Who was the Lindbergh alum that pitched back in 80s? Name escapes me, didn’t know him but he graduated my class 1979.

DeWayne Staats and Magrane are a very listenable team, have been doing Rays games since their first season.

Fortunately we only have to listen to Joe Morgan and Tim McCarver a few times a year. We unfortunately have to listen to Hrabosky almost nightly.

Al Hrabosky is terrible. I can’t wait until they get another announcer.

Re: #11: Joe Boever was the Lindbergh grad who pitched for the Cardinals in the 80s.

Joe Morgan is either lazy or dumb, or both. It takes at most 15 seconds to pull up Wellemeyer’s player profile on Yahoo! or, *gasp* ESPN (his own employer’s website!) and see that Wellemeyer is definitely a strikeout pitcher. Joe’s problem is that he doesn’t even realize the need for . . . hmm . . . actual facts because he is a former player and member of the hall of fame. He’ll hand his baseball knowledge down from on high without taking time to quibble with anything resembling the truth. If Joe thinks it, then its probably true . . . after all, he’s in the hall of fame.

I got a real kick out of Joe Morgan’s comment when the Cubs loaded the bases with no one out. He was very critical of the third base coach holding up the runner, with nobody out, and Schumaker coming up with the ball ready to gun. On top of that…Derrick Lee was batting next.

Is this ACTUALLY the same Joe Morgan that played for the Reds and is in the HOF?!?!??

Joe Morgan and Jon Miller are great broadcasters. They’re both great baseball men. Just let it slide and give Joe a break.
It will be nice to see Parisi get a chance in the majors. Bernie,how big of a prospect is he?
Maybe Reyes will pitch well enough to become trade bait.
Glaus absolutley has to step up. we need protection behind Albert.

I admired Joe Morgan as a player — who could not ? One of the best 2nd basemen I ever saw, and a fierce hitter. And when he started out doing color, he was informative and well prepared. But he seems to be mailing it in these days — perhaps the trip to the Ky. Derby with Big Shots that he was so proud of telling us about took the place of prepping for the game.

Likewise, when Al first stared announcing he was honest about bad plays and we could see how well he knew the game. But he has been trading that for being Al the Great Character and sometimes trades being Al the Employee for being All the Shill….