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Home , Alex Anthopoulos, Bryse Wilson, Chip Caray, Dave Sims, Heidi Watney, Ian Anderson (baseball)

Clippings Friday, August 28, 2020 Braves.com

Braves prioritize starting pitching at Deadline

By Mark Bowman

ATLANTA -- If the Braves had known all that would go wrong during this season’s first half, there’s no way they’d expect to be in their current position, sitting atop the East and winning at a pace that would lead to 97 victories during a 162-game season.

Max Fried is the only remaining member of the season-opening rotation and much of August has elapsed without both Ronald Acuña Jr. and . But the Braves have proven deeper than expected offensively and their bullpen has lived up to high expectations. So, it appears this is a bunch that could make some noise in the postseason with the right fix or two before Monday’s 4 p.m. ET Trade Deadline.

There’s a chance Cole Hamels will prove healthy enough to steadily build endurance in September and there’s a possibility Mike Foltynewicz will regain the velocity needed to again find success at the big league level. But the Braves have no choice but to make pursuing a starting the priority over the next few days.

An important wrinkle to this year’s Trade Deadline is that teams can only trade players who are part of their 60-man player pool (assigned either to the big-league team or the alternate site). Clubs are permitted to include players to be named later in trades, however. Additionally, scouts have not been allowed to attend games in person, so all assessments of prospects have been done based on provided video and data and past knowledge.

Buy/sell/hold: Like his peers, Braves president of operations Alex Anthopoulos will weigh how aggressive he should be this season. But there’s no doubt, he’ll at least attempt to add to a team that is much stronger and deeper than the two Atlanta clubs that were eliminated in the NL Division Series both of the past two years.

What they want: ’s impressive big league debut on Wednesday altered the perspective from both an immediate and long-term perspective. With Anderson and Max Fried, the Braves are hopeful to have at least two reliable starters over the remainder of the season.

At the same time, Anderson’s arrival gives hope that he will join with Fried and to form a formidable trio over the next few years in Atlanta. The recent struggles of and have weakened the system’s starting pitching depth. But the Braves have indicated they are focused on starting whose contracts will expire at the end of this season.

What they have to offer: With an abundance of young talent at the big league level, the Braves’ prospect pool doesn’t look quite as impressive as it did over the past few years. But there is still a lot of quality depth within this system, which is headlined by and Drew Waters, who both rank among MLB Pipeline’s top 30 prospects. If Atlanta wants to make a big deal, they would have attractive currency in the form or either of these two . With , , Freddy Tarnok and others, this club has plenty of those attractive mid-level prospect available to satisfy the needs of what might be deemed a less-significant deal.

Chance of a deal: There’s better than a 50 percent chance Anthopoulos will find a solution within what is a thin starting pitching market. The odds are low that Lance Lynn or are going to end up in Atlanta. But once the deadline passes, the Atlanta rotation will likely consist of more than just Fried and Anderson.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Hard not to get carried away by these resilient Braves

By Michael Cunningham, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Baseball can be a strange game. The oddness is compounded by this small sample size of a season. That’s why I try not to get too carried away by the Braves. But then I watch them keep winning despite rarely having their full squad available. I look at a second-half schedule that includes one opponent with a winning record. I noticed their FanGraphs odds to win the World Series (5.8%) have crept up to the point that, entering Thursday, only the Dodgers (17.9%) had higher odds in the National League.

Now I’m wondering how far these Braves can go. I know that’s premature. The Braves are a virtual lock to make the playoffs, but we know how that’s gone lately. Yet if the Braves have been this good with so much going wrong, how good will they be now that more things are going right?

The Braves (18-12) led the NL East after sweeping a doubleheader against the Yankees on Wednesday. That was four more victories than second- place Miami, which already lost a series to the Braves. After Wednesday’s games, the MLB season was 35 days old. The Braves led the NL East for 23 of those days.

Somehow, the Braves just kept winning.

“It wasn’t easy, believe me,” Braves manager said. “It was a very productive first half, but it wasn’t by any stretch easy to get there with everything we’ve been through. These guys keep grinding.

“We’ve lost chunks of our lineup. We’ve lost big chunks of our starting rotation. They just keep playing.”

That’s been a theme for Snitker’s Braves. They’ve made habit of winning when the probabilities suggest they won’t.

The Braves beat the Yankees in Wednesday’s second game on ’s two-run homer in the sixth inning of the seven-inning game. That’s eight Braves victories this season on the final at-bat, most in the NL. The Braves have done it 84 times since Snitker became manager in May 2016. I want to say it’s unsustainable, but the Braves have done it for a long time.

That resiliency is why, after 20 games, I concluded the Braves are built to last. It didn’t take long for me to start questioning that stance. Right- hander Kyle Wright got knocked around again the next day. Ronald Acuna’s timeline to return to the lineup got extended again. It looked as if the Braves might wobble.

Instead, they won two of three games in Miami while scoring a total of eight runs. They won their opener at Washington by scoring four runs in the ninth, including ’s game-winning homer. A rare bullpen blowup cost the Braves the second game of that series. They brushed it off and took two of three from the Phillies with another walk-off homer, this time by Adam Duvall, in the second game.

And then the Braves swept the Yankees at on Wednesday. The Yankees have their own injury issues. No one wants to hear that from the team with the biggest payroll. The Yankees still have ace Gerritt Cole, who hardly ever loses.

Cole lost to the Braves, who had right-hander Ian Anderson making his MLB debut. The Yankees lost to the Braves a second time when lefty Max Fried held them down and Freeman smacked his homer.

“It’s actually really, really big, especially in a 60-game season,” Freeman said. “When you have two games in one day, it can easily go the other way.”

The past 10 games were like the previous 20 for the Braves. They overcame bad luck and beat-up starting pitching with big bats and backbone.

The Braves kept winning despite four-fifths of their projected starting rotation being injured or ineffective. They kept hitting with Ozzie Albies doing little before going on the injured list, Acuna missing 10 games and Freeman scuffling by his standards. The Braves kept scoring even though they weren’t getting on-base much.

With Albies on track to return soon, starting pitching is the only thing on that list that’s still a concern for the Braves. There are signs that’s improving.

After 20 games only three MLB teams got fewer innings per start than Braves pitchers, whose 5.72 ERA ranked 25th of 30 teams. After 30 games six teams were getting fewer starts per inning than Braves starters, whose 5.01 ERA ranked 20th.

That’s not good. But it’s remarkable considering Fried is the only starter left from the beginning of the season. He’s become the staff ace since Mike Soroka was lost to injury after three starts. Entering Thursday, Fried’s 2.4 Wins Above Replacement (Baseball Reference) were the most in MLB.

The rotation still is shaky behind Fried. A strong debut from Anderson, the organization’s top pitching prospect, was a boost. Veterans and Robbie Erlin have been bullpen guys later in their careers. The Braves just need them provide as many effective innings as they can before handing off to a deep bullpen.

If the pitching remains inconsistent, it will be mitigated by a lineup that’s fully operational. It’s been good most of the season because of the load carried by , Swanson and Travis d’Arnaud and Tyler Flowers. The lineup is much better now that Acuna is back.

And Freeman is on one of his runs: 31-for-102 (.304) over his past 10 games with five homers, 10 doubles and 21 walks. Freeman had severe COVID-19 symptoms during camp. Now Freeman said he’s feeling good again.

“Things are starting to click,” Freeman said. That’s one more reason to believe the Braves will keep winning. The starting pitching looms as a problem, but the Braves overcame all their issues in the season’s first half. That’s why it’s hard not to get carried away and start thinking about what the Braves can do in October.

Max Fried might be Cy Young front-runner at halfway point

By Gabriel Burns, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

When Freddie Freeman was asked who the Braves’ first-half MVP was, he didn’t hesitate.

“Max Fried, no doubt,” Freeman said. “When you lose Mike Soroka after three starts, and how he’s stepped up. I’ve been saying for a few years how special that left arm is. You saw it last year, and now he’s really putting it together. We wouldn’t be here without Max.”

The Braves reached the midway point of their season Wednesday, sweeping a doubleheader against the Yankees to earn an 18-12 record, which is tied for the second-best record in the National League. When considering the circumstances, that seems borderline improbable.

If someone told you in early July what the Braves were going to endure through 30 games — Freeman’s positive COVID-19 test, losing two catchers on opening day, Soroka’s torn Achilles and the rotation falling apart, the laundry list of other injuries, the schedule — you probably wouldn’t have them sitting pretty in first place.

Yet they’ve only strengthened their position as NL East favorites. Fried’s steadiness as the Braves’ new No. 1 starter is arguably the main reason why. It’s difficult to imagine where the rotation would be without him.

“Huge, huge, huge,” manager Brian Snitker said of Fried. “We handed him the baton, and he ran with it. He’s consistent. He took the ball and he stopped things from happening, losing streaks or whatever. He’s the one guy you can count on and he didn’t disappoint. That says a lot, when you put that kind of pressure and responsibility onto a guy, for him to come through says a lot about the maturity and the kind of player that he is.”

Fried built a strong case across his first seven starts: He has a 1.35 ERA and 38:12 -to-walk ratio across 40 innings. He owns a 0.95 WHIP and has held opponents to a .190 average. If you care about pitcher wins and losses, he’s 5-0 in that category, too.

Not only is Fried’s 2.4 bWAR the highest among major league pitchers, it’s the highest overall. Fried has a higher bWAR than and Fernando Tatis Jr. By that number, he also has a case for NL MVP.

Fried’s ascent came at the perfect time. The producers of the “The Bachelor” would blush at the Braves’ unrelenting rotation drama. Forget replacing Soroka; they haven’t figured out how to replace Julio Teheran. From Mike Foltynewicz to to Touki Toussaint to Kyle Wright, they haven’t had another pitcher become consistently serviceable to this point.

Before Soroka went down, it was evident that beyond him and Fried, the group would struggle. When the injury occurred, many simply wrote the Braves off as a pennant contender. But glancing around the NL, outside Los Angeles, there isn’t a team anyone would confidently pick over the Braves in a postseason series.

It’s because Fried has been, and it isn’t really an exaggeration, the season’s savior. He’s assumed a workhorse role, pitching the second-most innings in the NL. He’s tied for the lowest qualifying ERA in the majors, equaling the Indians’ Shane Bieber, who’s the clear Cy Young front-runner in the AL.

The Braves hoped Fried would make a leap before the season. Even their most optimistic wishes couldn’t have projected this.

“It’s quite obvious to a lot of us who’ve watched him for so long,” Soroka said Wednesday, discussing Fried’s progress. “I always say, he’s got that change-up now, but if you got to watch video of him throwing in the playoffs in low-A in 2016, it’s obvious. His talent was much beyond where he was always kind of looked at. It was a matter of consistency for him, a consistent mindset. He’s found that.

“I think watching and talking to (friends Jack) Flaherty and (Lucas) Giolito (has helped) as well. We all watched (Giolito’s no-hitter Tuesday) night, that was special for him.

“Fried is a competitor. He wants to do the best he can. It’s been really fun to watch. He’s been consistent. He’s been attacking. He believes in everything he’s throwing. He does a ton of work off the field, too, as far as advanced work. He’s super-prepared when he goes out, and it’s showing. He’s proving that he’s going to be and can be one of the elite starters in baseball. And I think he will be for a while.”

If this Fried is here to stay, the Braves can rightfully dream of dual aces when Soroka returns in 2021. In the meantime, Fried will try to lead the Braves deeper into October than anyone imagined was possible earlier this month.

But dialogue around that lofty task, and the Cy Young award, will be left to reporters and fans. Fried isn’t keen on self-centered conversation. He’ll always deflect to the greater team discussion.

“I’m happy with how the year has gone, with the team,” Fried said. “We’ve had a lot of injuries. We’ve had an uphill battle. A lot of teams around have had to do it. For me, it’s just going out there and trying to win the game when I have the opportunity.” Producer of Braves telecasts prepared all her life for this job

Gretchen Kaney considers herself a lifelong Braves fan, literally.

“My mom used to tell me that I didn’t have a choice,” she said, “because my dad had the game on in the delivery room.”

As a kid in the 1980s, she became a fan. As a middle school student in the worst-to-first season of 1991, “I didn’t miss an inning.” She skipped school to attend the parade celebrating the Braves’ championship. “Braves baseball was an excused absence in my household back then.”

Little did she know then that she was preparing for a career.

Born and reared in Atlanta, Kaney is the producer of Braves telecasts on Fox Sports South and Fox Sports Southeast. She is in charge of the production of each telecast; her responsibility, basically, is to turn each game into a seamless show for Braves fans like herself.

“It’s still surreal, honestly,” Kaney, 42, said of her job. “This is not something I ever envisioned.”

After graduating in 2000 from Emory University, where she majored in Spanish and international politics, she was seeking an intern-type job for a year. “Because I’m such a huge fan, I thought, ‘Let me see what the Braves have,’” she recalled. She became a trainee in the team’s media-relations department. “That sort of changed my course. I ended up going to grad school (at Georgia State) for sports business.”

The trainee position opened doors to a production job at , and after five years there Kaney moved to the Fox regional networks in 2007.

Over the years, she has worked in various roles on the production teams for Hawks and Thrashers games, worked some and basketball games, did some golf tournaments for Turner, but her primary assignment throughout her career has been the Braves.

“That’s my passion,” she said. “That’s what I’ll always choose over anything if given the option.”

Fox Sports South/Southeast promoted Kaney to the producer’s role on Braves telecasts shortly after the end of last season. She was “thrilled” and “immensely grateful to everyone that helped me get there.” She knows of only one other woman who is the lead producer of an MLB team’s telecasts this season.

“I don’t know if I’m the first woman to produce Braves baseball full-time, but I’m certainly in a small group if I’m not,” Kaney said. “And I’m proud of that.”

When she got the producer’s job, she could hardly wait for the 2020 season to begin. “I wanted it to start the next day. I wanted to get going.” She had no idea then, of course, that the season would be delayed until late July by a pandemic and how different the season would be.

In a typical season, Kaney and the rest of the broadcast crew would work from the game sites, home or road. But amid the coronavirus pandemic, they are working all games from Truist Park because broadcasters aren’t traveling to road games in this shortened season, instead putting together the telecasts from camera feeds provided by the home team’s TV rights holder.

“It presents a unique set of challenges,” Kaney said. “I’d also say it has gone a lot better than I thought it would.

“There have been some things we wanted to do (on the telecasts) that we were not able to do, but nothing you’re going to hang your head about. We’re all figuring it out together. The 30 producers around the league and the 30 directors around the league are all in the same boat.”

Even at home games, the telecasts have COVID-related restrictions. The networks’ access to the team is much more limited than in past years, confined to Zoom conferences, remote interviews or phone calls. The crews are smaller in the production trucks, where masks are worn and social distancing practiced. Movement around the ballpark is restricted.

“I have not physically laid eyes on (Braves manager) Brian Snitker in person since February,” Kaney said. “I haven’t physically laid eyes on (announcers) Chip (Caray) and Jeff (Francoeur) in person this season. All of the communication is either on the phone or on headsets. Chip and Jeff can go to the booth and from the booth back to their cars. I can go to the (production) truck and from the truck to my car.

“I’m not complaining. I get it. I’m glad they’re doing all of this for safety reasons.”

Through her work in recent years, though, Kaney has gotten to know some of the stars she cheered as a child. She hasn’t been disappointed by the real-life versions.

“You’re scared sometimes to get to know your idols or the people you look up to,” she said. “I had a life-sized poster in my room for years, right on my closet door. And when I get to know him, he’s great. , , same thing. I would like to say for the record I don’t have the same obsession I had as a 13-year-old middle-schooler, but I cherish those relationships.”

The Athletic

Rosenthal: MLB pondering late-season contender lockdowns, postseason bubbles

By

From the start of summer training camp, players have made sacrifices to play through the COVID-19 pandemic. For the postseason, wants them to make at least one more.

As part of a plan to help players avoid infection, the league has informed the Players Association that it wants contenders playing at home the final week of the regular season to lock down in hotels, according to sources familiar with the discussions.

The idea of such a quarantine would be for players to get through the thick of the incubation period for COVID-19 before the expanded playoffs begin. The league is weighing whether to stage the best-of-three wild-card round in teams’ home parks and then move to controlled, bubble-like environments or enter bubbles from the outset. Either way, players would stand the best chance of reducing their chance of infection by leaving their families and residences and isolating in hotels as the regular season draws to a close, league officials and scientific experts say.

“If you’re going home to your family, you’re at risk,” a person with knowledge of the situation says. “Even if you do everything right, you can’t control what the people you live with are doing.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the incubation period for the virus is thought to extend to 14 days, with a median time of four to five days from exposure to the onset of symptoms. The league is awaiting input from the union on the lockdown concept and how families might fit into postseason bubbles, sources say. The union, which negotiated a $50 million bonus pool for the players and has worked closely with the league on health and safety protocols, is thought to be open to any ideas that will help avoid outbreaks of the virus and ensure the completion of the postseason.

One postseason plan under discussion, according to sources, is for the playoffs to be played at two of the three parks in Southern California: in Los Angeles, of Anaheim and in San Diego. The National League playoffs would take place at the two parks in Texas: Minute Maid Park in Houston and Globe Life Field in Arlington. The World Series likely would be in Arlington to help MLB and Fox Sports maximize television ratings from the Central time zone.

Other regions still might draw consideration. No plan will be final until it receives ownership approval. And for now, the sites for the wild-card round remain an open question. The advantage of playing the round at home parks would be to cut in half, from 16 to eight, the number of teams that would end up in bubbles. The more people who enter a bubble, the more difficult the environment is to control.

If a lockdown for the final week of the regular season was in effect, contenders either would finish on the road or by simulating a road trip at home, then continue in that mode for the entirety of the postseason. Such a plan would make it more feasible to play the wild-card round in home parks. The best-of-threes already are set to take place entirely at the home of the higher seed, requiring the visiting team to take only one flight to play the series.

No matter where the league chooses to play the wild-card round, the current plan is for the Division Series, League Championship Series and World Series all to be played in bubbles. During the postseason, players will be tested every day for COVID-19, sources say; during the regular season, they are tested every other day.

The goal is to get through the postseason without the type of outbreaks the Marlins and Cardinals experienced earlier in the regular season. Players always deal with elevated pressure in the playoffs. In this season of COVID-19, the sacrifices they make just to play in October might need to be greater, too.

Changing the narrative: The lack of diversity in baseball’s broadcastbooths

By Fabian Ardaya

José Mota was a ballplayer’s kid. As pre-teens, he and his brother, Andy, would rampage through the halls of Dodger Stadium hours before game time, shag fly balls, take hacks in the cage and raid the snack room before their father, longtime Dodger and former All-Star Manny Mota, would send them to the family section in time for the first pitch.

But Mota’s curiosity led him elsewhere. In the clubhouse, he paid attention to the questions reporters like Los Angeles veteran Jim Hill would ask the players. One day Mota received an invitation from Jaime Jarrín, the longtime Spanish radio voice of the Dodgers, who wanted to bring Mota up to the booth for a game. Upon hearing of the young Mota’s interest in the medium, Vin Scully offered an invite as well, even letting José count the icon back from commercial breaks.

Drafted in the second round, Mota spent more than a decade in the game as a player, with a couple of brief stops in the majors. But his focus shifted once he stopped playing. He got a degree in communications, parlaying that into a role on national Fox “Game of the Week” broadcasts. Since 2002, he has effectively served as a super-utility media presence for the Angels, calling and analyzing games in English and Spanish, doing television and radio.

In addition to Mota, the Angels boast one of two Latino lead voices for any major league club’s broadcasts in 2020 with . (Toronto’s , a former player and manager, is the other.) Rojas, son of former Angels manager , has spent nearly two decades in the industry and is entering his 11th season in the Angels booth. Mota and Rojas stand out because the vast majority of booths — the ones broadcasting, painting the picture and framing part of the narrative around the sport — are overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male, contrasting with a pool of players that is growing increasingly diverse by the year.

The lack of diversity in the booth has never been more evident than now, after Reds announcer was caught last week coming out of a break using a homophobic slur on the air. In his apology, Brennaman blamed his own ignorance for his use of the slur, another example of how background and experience reveal themselves in the on-air product.

“The booths are totally underrepresented,” Mota says. “Totally underrepresented, and there’s no reason why.”

Progress has been made, even recently in the wake of social unrest and reflection following George Floyd’s death in May at the hands of Minneapolis police. Major League Baseball this month hired Michelle Meyer-Shipp as its new chief people and culture officer, with part of her duties involving overseeing inclusion and diversity within the sport. Also this month Melanie Newman became the first woman in Orioles history to do play-by-play and Sarah Langs took part in an MLB Network Statcast-themed broadcast.

Despite these developments, baseball has been slow to change. Newman is one of only four active female broadcasters in baseball, joining Yankees commentator Suzyn Waldman, the Rockies’ Jenny Cavnar and ESPN’s . But since Mendoza moved off the top “” roster, only Waldman is a regular. There have been only four Black lead play-by-play voices ever for a major league team, including Mariners TV/radio play-by-play man and Astros radio voice Robert Ford. When Ford called the final out of the , he was only the second Black man to ever do so.

“I had been the first or second Black guy almost everywhere I’ve been,” Sims says. “I get asked what it’s like to walk into a baseball game or do any of the things I’ve done, and if I see anyone that looks like (me). I said, ‘Very, very, very seldom.’ On the writer’s side, that’s gotten better. But it’s not good.”

Baseball’s broadcast booths have traditionally been focused on their audience, not on the players whose stories they’re describing.

Most of the history of what we know about the Negro Leagues, for example, comes from historically Black newspapers and media. Spanish- language broadcasts in baseball took off as the game spread into more diverse population centers. But the core of baseball’s audience, and by extension its broadcasting booths, has historically remained within one key demographic.

“Baseball, in addition to being White, is very conservative,” says Todd Boyd, an author, media commentator, consultant and chair for the study of race and popular culture at the University of Southern California. “It’s a very conservative culture.”

This, Boyd says, has permeated the game. Much of baseball’s culture reflects its history and strictly adheres to unwritten rules and customs. Flashes of personality are frowned on. As recently as 2018, Braves broadcaster found himself in the news for chiding the Dodgers’ decision to wear T-shirts during batting practice. Showing up opponents is discouraged and solved either through intentional pitches or internal discipline. Up until Major League Baseball’s “Let the Kids Play” promotional shift, much of the unofficial policies from those consuming and participating in the sport clung to the status quo. And, as was the case before the color line was broken in 1947, that culture is primarily white.

Baseball has only six minority managers (Dave Roberts is Black and Japanese American; is Black; and Rick Renteria, Dave Martinez, Charlie Montoyo and Luis Rojas are all Latino) and even fewer general managers and lead decision-makers (San Francisco’s Farhan Zaidi is a Muslim Canadian American with Pakistani roots, Chicago’s Ken Williams and Miami’s Michael Hill are Black, and Detroit’s is Latino). The limited number of minorities in positions of power can be traced in part to the growing influence of Ivy League culture within the sport. A similar gap exists in the broadcast booths.

“The person broadcasting the game, they have the opportunity to define the narrative,” Boyd says. “They are narrating this experience for the people watching. Inevitably people calling a game bring their own ideas and issues and biases and such to what it is they’re broadcasting. So if you only experienced the sport through a White lens, it’s going to be limited in terms of how appealing that is to people outside a very narrow demographic.

“Different people with different backgrounds will provide different perspectives. So without that, I think it’s another reason why it’s not enjoyable for many people to experience the broadcast, because the narration of it is going to be so specific and from such a limited point of view. It could potentially even be offensive. … If all the people commenting and narrating the game have had similar experiences, then it’s going to exclude a lot of other perspectives and be kind of one-dimensional in its presentation.”

It also mirrors baseball’s worsening representation. The sport’s Black population was at 7.8 percent on Opening Day, according to research from USA Today, a far cry from where the sport was when Black stars such as , Dock Ellis, Dick Allen, Daryl Strawberry and Doc Gooden inspired the likes of Boyd, Sims and Ford to fall in love with the game. In 1981, Black players made up 18.7 percent of big league rosters. In the years since, that figure has declined steadily. But while baseball’s foreign participation has increased to 28.5 percent at the start of last season due to upticks in the league’s Latino and Asian population, the booths remain largely the same. For a game that is looking for ways to market its existing stars and has a bright future with promising talents like Ronald Acuña Jr., , Fernando Tatis Jr. and , that can limit whose stories get told, and how.

As the lone main national broadcast team that included multiple minorities last season, ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball” had a window of opportunity. As Jessica Mendoza put it, the broadcast’s weekly nature allowed her and her fellow analyst, former MLB star , to branch out and take chances on stories that intrigued them. For Mendoza — who in addition to being the first woman to ever call a baseball game on ESPN’s airwaves is also a Latina — that involved telling stories that related to her own background, sitting down with Cubs Willson Contreras to discuss how he focuses on baseball amidst the turmoil in his native Venezuela.

When Vladimir Guerrero first arrived as a free agent in Anaheim with the Angels in 2004, one of the first people he met with was Mota. The same went for Bartolo Colón, who’d win a Cy Young with the club in 2005. Each approached Mota in part out of trust, but also because, as a bilingual reporter with a Dominican background, he could speak to their experience and give them a voice. The ground rules, as Mota put it, were clear: He was not going to simply be their translator. And they had to be present, make their stories known, and allow the world a window into what made these ballplayers exceptional.

“When Vladdy came here, some people in Montreal were like, ‘Oh my god, you’re going to get a guy that doesn’t even talk,’” Mota says. “They use that to refer to the guy in a demeaning way. That was painful to hear. It’s our responsibility to help these guys, educate them on why they need to talk, tell stories. No one is ever going to question that. … I want it to be real.”

Years later, as Guerrero was giving his speech upon his 2018 induction to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Mota was there too, helping give Guerrero a voice once again.

The goal of a baseball broadcast, at its core, is to tell the story of the game. That goes beyond balls and strikes. The slow, steady flow of a game that prides itself on its pauses between pitches as much as it does the actual on-field action is ripe for storytelling, as some of the game’s iconic voices have done so eloquently. But in providing such a limited lens of experiences, it can stifle other perspectives. Angels mega-prospect Jo Adell, who is Black, outlined in a recent essay for how some of his struggles with race have seeped into the game he plays.

“Do you know how many times I was described as being a ‘raw and toolsy’ player?” Adell wrote. “Why are these words always used to describe black players, but never are we described as having a ‘high baseball IQ,’ an ‘advanced approach’ or ‘being low-risk’?”

The powerful stereotypes that can follow minority players not just in the scouting community may also influence those who are charged with telling their stories. Black players have “raw athletic ability.” Latin players, even those who avoid speculation about their “actual” age, are “lazy,” or don’t have a refined approach because they “hit their way off the island.”

It requires effort, compassion and a willingness to discover the full picture of stories so they can be translated properly. For the few minorities in a position to shape that narrative, their experiences prove critical.

Sims’ background was not in broadcast but print journalism. He covered everything from the North American Soccer League to college athletics for the Inquirer, then wrote for the New York Daily News before shifting into broadcast. By the 1990s, Sims was a regular on ESPN, working there for the better part of two decades before landing his current gig with the Mariners. He is now in his 14th season with the club.

Ford took a more traditional path. Inspired by the Mets clubs of the mid-1980s, he studied broadcast journalism at Syracuse and spent nearly a decade calling games in the minors before joining the Astros broadcast team in 2013.

“The way athletes of color are often talked about differently than white athletes are, that was something I was very cognizant of even before I became a broadcaster,” Ford says. “We’ve all heard them. … The average fan may see George Springer and how athletic he is, just how supremely talented he is, and I see that too. But I also see how hard he works every day. I also see how he’s one of the first guys at the ballpark every day. I think that definitely affects how I talk about him and how I talk about other players too. But yeah, I’ve always been cognizant of these various stereotypes about certain athletes. It’s something that I definitely try to avoid. To be honest with you, I feel like a lot of it maybe comes a little more naturally to me just because I’m aware of it. Being Black, I’ve experienced that and seen that.”

Representation alone is important, if only to gain perspective or hear stories. Take Sims’ experience from two seasons ago, when Black right- handed pitcher and the arrived in Seattle for a series in 2018. When Sims was on the field pregame, he saw Jackson and greeted him with an embrace.

“First time I met him, I say, ‘Hey man, I’ve always enjoyed watching you pitch,’” Sims recalls. “The second day of the series I forget who he was with but he came up to me and said, ‘Hey, my wife was saying, who is that guy you kept talking to?’ He said, ‘It’s just two Black dudes happy to see each other.’”

Mendoza didn’t think she would be a broadcaster. She was thrust into it, spinning off a career as one of the world’s most successful Olympic softball players into a livelihood calling college softball and baseball games for ESPN.

It wasn’t until , a former big league All-Star with no softball experience, came and joined her on broadcasts that the idea was floated to her to do the same for baseball. Eventually, she landed on broadcasts and, up until this year, rose as high as the lead “Sunday Night Baseball” crew. But while some criticism was surely to be expected for a trailblazer like herself, even she was blown away by some of the vitriol. “It was so strong,” Mendoza says. “I think that surprised me. I knew there would be resistance because there just hasn’t been a lot of women and I’m not naive to the fact that like anytime something’s different, there’s gonna be resistance. That’s what change creates, right? That backlash. So I was aware of that. I think it was just in the beginning just so much hatred from it really did blow me away. I had a hard time in the beginning of just people that were so angry with me because I was a female.”

But Mendoza’s niche came from following her passions. While some initial interactions were awkward — as she’d introduce herself in a new clubhouse, she’d find herself spending as much time explaining her own accolades and credibility as she did asking players about their approach and hitting mechanics — she settled into a groove and role that most of the minorities who are on-air find themselves in.

MLB Network’s crew of on-air talent is a diverse unit. Go to their page of personalities, and you’ll see a display of faces that includes former players like , , , Pedro Martinez, Carlos Peña and . But Reynolds and Darling are among the few examples of those who have found their way onto game broadcasts, Reynolds with Fox and MLB Network and Darling with SNY calling Mets games and TBS for national contests. But only as analysts.

While that list does include studio hosts like , Alexa Datt, , Kelly Nash, Stephen Nelson, Lauren Shehadi, Adnan Virk and , none has broken through to the network’s booths.

“I’m very lucky and happy to be working at a place whose front-facing talent (is diverse),” says Nelson, who is Japanese American. “Every place is trying to improve that right now.”

Nelson grew up in Southern California surrounded by local sports faces of color like Jim Hill and Mario Solis before attending Chapman University near Angel Stadium. As a student he’d go out to Rancho Cucamonga Quakes minor league games, taping his own broadcast while future Brewers radio voice Jeff Levering called the games for real. Since graduating, Nelson has risen through the ranks, landing a gig as a studio host at Bleacher Report before earning his current role with MLB and NHL Network.

“You go around the industry, and go to individual broadcast booths or studios from national networks to regionals to locals, if you do see a minority face, more often than not it’s a former player,” Nelson says. “I think that (has) created a framework for what teams, networks, and honestly even fans now, what they look for as the ‘prototype’ broadcaster, what that looks and sounds like. So, it’s the implicit bias of the broadcast industry.”

It’s precisely where Mota didn’t want to find himself pigeonholed — he’d studied communications at Cal State Fullerton in hopes of learning not only to analyze the game, but to be able to call a game as a play-by-play announcer or do sideline reporting. The subjectivity and archetypes in place continue to reveal themselves wherever Sims has gone to introduce himself in his decades in the industry, first in newspapers and all the way through to the booth.

“They just don’t look at us in that kind of role,” Sims says of viewers and hiring representatives alike. “They just think there’s no freaking way that it’s possible you can be good enough to do something like that. … It’s not like I know all these guys. I don’t go out to the country club. It’s not like I’m hanging out with these guys in boardrooms. But I think I’ve proven myself, time and time again over the years.”

It’s something that Rojas has grappled with both publicly in sharing a blog about his thoughts on representation in the industry but also privately in a case that hits to home. His youngest daughter is heading to college to study communications. Like Mota, Rojas grew up in the game following his father, briefly playing and coaching in the minors before getting into broadcasting, first with the Diamondbacks in 2003 and then the Rangers before joining the Angels for the 2010 season.

“She wants to be in front of the camera,” Rojas says of his daughter. “Right now, I think she’s thinking sideline reporter. She’s been in the truck and she’s hung out in the truck during the game. I said, ‘There aren’t many women directors. There aren’t too many women producers.’ I said, ‘Force the issue. Put yourself out there.’ She’s smart enough. She knows the game.”

The same, Rojas says, goes for play by play.

“I’m a big believer that whoever is the most qualified for the job, should get the job. I don’t care what the job is, in all walks of life … (but) there are so few minorities on my side of the broadcast that the minority sitting at home would realize that there’s so few of me looking back through the camera or through the television set, that maybe it’s not something for me.”

Adam Giardino, a longtime voice in the minor leagues before establishing himself with UConn athletics, wanted to do something meaningful. As he waited for his COVID-19 symptoms to subside – as of last month, he still had a lingering cough – he wanted to find a way to help solve the problem of systemic racism.

Giardino grew up in Massachusetts, in an overwhelmingly white area. He admits his experience with racial tensions has been limited. But as nationwide protests erupted following the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, Giardino wanted to find a way to get involved that wouldn’t put others at risk during the pandemic.

He had already noticed the lack of diversity while searching for freelance gigs in the New England area. And in more than a decade calling minor league games, Giardino did not recall a single broadcaster who wasn’t a white male. The poor pay and odd hours of a minor league broadcaster can be a form of gatekeeping, limiting the pool of candidates. With the minor leagues being a primary funnel for future big league gigs, it’s an issue that ultimately impacts Major League Baseball. “If these jobs are paying in a certain way that is excluding people who don’t come from a place with a family safety net – if that’s where all of our broadcasting voices are coming from, from upper-middle-class families, then we’re really not projecting the range of voices that impact sports,” Giardino says.

“It’s endemic. It’s never-ending. When I actually sit down and think about it, it’s problematic.”

So he emailed some of his peers. Over the span of that first weekend in June, the network spread. The broadcasters, most of whom had been furloughed or let go due to the canceled minor league season, began chipping in their own money. Then, Giardino officially launched a grant aimed at opening those doors to new Black voices within the industry. When fully underway, the program will give broadcasters a monthly $500 stipend totaling $3,000 in addition to their salary in order to provide an additional window of opportunity. As of last month, the group had already raised $25,000.

“There are so many guys in Triple-A right now that are so close that if any of them were to show up in a big-league radio booth in a couple of weeks and start calling a game, nobody would know that they aren’t a big-league broadcaster,” Giardino says. “They sound like a big-league broadcaster. It’s just a matter of pushing as many of these Black voices up the food chain and seeing hopefully that some of them will get these opportunities.”

Ultimately these decisions fall into the hands of those with hiring power. But too often, those in the industry feel they’re not looking deep enough.

“We have a decent number of historically black colleges and universities still around,” Sims says. “I know from doing a few games in those conferences that they have radio stations, they have dudes calling games on the radio. Why don’t you go recruit some of these guys? Give them an internship or something, and put them under your wing and give a chance? Take a listen.”

So what can be done? Major League Baseball’s diversity initiatives through the RBI program are a start. But it remains a little-known fact that the programs also offer broadcast courses. As baseball expands beyond the mold of solely hiring former players to important front office positions, the game could be doing more to promote the same in broadcast booths. Ford recommends implementing that on a teamwide basis, using clubs’ kids camps to also include a broadcasting component to show what opportunities are out there.

“Be about it,” Nelson says. “When positions open up, hire more broadcasters of color, hire more women. Invest in initiatives to improve racial and gender equality across sports, whether it’s the MLB youth academy, which has some broadcast camps. Does anybody know about those camps? Not enough, I can tell you that. Let’s build that out even more.”

Ultimately, it comes down to representation, opportunity and a commitment to something different. There are talented voices out there that go beyond the same faces shown for decades on baseball broadcasts.

“I think what you have to do is you have to go out and find people who are talented, who would be inclined to do this and pay them accordingly,” Boyd says. “There’s a reason that the overwhelming majority of the broadcasters in baseball are White. There’s a reason for that. That didn’t happen by chance. That happened based on the circumstances in society.

“It’s necessary to go in and create a situation where you can accommodate voices other than those currently in the broadcast booth, and then make the effort to go out and find talented people who could do this job and do it at a high level. I don’t really think it’s that difficult.”

ESPN 'You can't just not do it.' Inside baseball's mixed response to social justice movement, and what's next

By Jeff Passan

In the hours leading up to their scheduled game Wednesday night, some members of the and San Francisco Giants saw an opportunity. Already Aug. 26, 2020, had registered as one of the most significant sporting days in recent memory. A player walkout scuttled three NBA postseason games. Two other games in major league baseball had been postponed. This was the Dodgers' and Giants' chance to do more, to stand up against racial injustice in a meaningful way.

Amid the discussions, sources familiar with the conversations told ESPN, they considered something a number of players thought would be particularly powerful: the teams walking onto the field, like they were about to stage a game, only to turn around and leave before the first pitch, together, unified. In a sport that for so long has treated racial issues as a third rail, this would be an indelible image: a ball on the mound, players unwilling to use it because police shot a Black man in Wisconsin.

Ultimately, it would not happen. Too many players, sources said, were uncomfortable with an on-the-fly protest of that level -- with attaching symbolism to action. On this day, when the basketball world shut down and offered no clear path to a restart, the postponement of the game between the Dodgers and Giants would have to be enough. Getting baseball even to that point took years of work.

As remarkable as Wednesday was -- the sport that saw a single player take a knee to protest police brutality three years ago had three games shelved because of it -- it also illustrates how much more is possible. While Dodgers players followed the lead of their star , Mookie Betts, and committed to sitting out, other teams with Black players who opted not to play -- the (), Colorado Rockies (Matt Kemp) and St. Louis Cardinals (Dexter Fowler and ) -- carried on with their games. As passionate as Milwaukee Brewers and players were in their fervor not to play, one player leader on another team pushed back against the idea of postponements. "I'm not an activist," he said, according to a person familiar with the conversation who declined to name the player.

Still, the person sharing the comment said, it's important to understand how pervasive that sentiment remains around baseball -- how a sport that leans culturally conservative has been, and will continue to be, slow to embrace a social justice movement that contrasts with the worldviews of so many. In one clubhouse conversation Wednesday, a player asked: "What's the point of this?"

The cursory answers revealed themselves as day turned to night. slugger Dominic Smith knelt by himself during the national anthem. After the game, tears streamed down his face. "It was a long day for me," Smith said. He tried to compose himself, to talk about what it's like to live as a Black man in a world where Jacob Blake is in the hospital because of point-blank gunshot wounds.

"I think the most difficult part is to see people still don't care," Smith said. "For this to continuously happen, it just shows the hate in people's heart."

He tried to compose himself again, to make his real point.

"Being a Black man in America -- it's not easy," Smith said.

Dominic Smith: 'I think the most difficult part is to see people still don't care'

Mets slugger Dominic Smith gets emotional talking about social injustice in America and how he felt playing in Wednesday's game.

His words were a clear answer for anyone who asked for a point or purpose to Wednesday's protests. For Smith, it was a quite literal cry for help -- for those who might not agree with him or might not understand to recognize that his pain is not in vain, his tears not crocodilian. It was even clearer with the Milwaukee Bucks, who answered the what and why with lucidity: They wanted to speak with Wisconsin's attorney general and lieutenant governor and offer their voices and platforms to effect change in police accountability that so often becomes politicized. They went to the people who are likeliest to be able to help translate words into actions, a powerful next step that inspired the Brewers.

They've been in near lockstep with the Bucks on social issues. , the elite closer whose racist tweets sent as a teenager stained his reputation, was the first player on the team to speak up on social injustice, saying: "It's something that just can't stay quiet." During the team meeting to discuss the possibility of canceling the game, outfielder , a former MVP, was among the most fervent in advocating the importance of action, according to sources.

The Black experience in MLB

"There comes a time where you have to live it, you have to step up -- you can't just wear these shirts and think that's all well and good," Yelich said. "And when it comes time to act on it or make a stand or make a statement, you can't just not do it. And that's what we decided here today. Us coming here together, collectively as a group -- making a stand, making a statement for change for making the world a better place, for equality, for doing the right thing."

Yelich's words resonated. The Brewers are a team with one Black player, Devin Williams. They also play in a city 35 miles north of Kenosha, Wisconsin, where Blake was shot, and proximity mattered. When Brent Suter, the Brewers' reliever and union representative, broached the idea of not playing with players Mike Moustakas and , they were supportive. Moustakas and Miley had played for the Brewers. They recognized why this mattered so much to Milwaukee. So even if some players in Cincinnati's clubhouse wanted to play -- and they certainly did -- they weren't so much as asked their opinion. The Reds were going to be allies.

That, actually, was a clear takeaway from Wednesday: The baseball clubhouses with strong, outspoken leadership can accomplish things even in a sport in which a diverse ecosystem makes consensus almost impossible. Baseball players can't agree on what food to order, let alone the prevalence of institutional police brutality and systemic racism, and clubhouse environments have not typically fostered discussions about complicated subjects. And yet here were the Dodgers, coalescing behind Betts, with future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw at the forefront, saying: "As a white player on this team, how can we show support? What is something tangible that we can do to help our Black brothers on this team? Once Mookie said that he wasn't gonna play, that really started our conversation as a team as what we can do to support that. We felt the best thing to do was support that in not playing with him."

Inside MLB's Ivy League culture

The tangible efforts of Betts and Kershaw; of Yelich and Suter and Williams and Ryan Braun; of Moustakas and Miley and Amir Garrett; of the Giants and Padres who refused to accept forfeit wins; and of Dee Gordon and Taijuan Walker and and the Mariners -- they made MLB's response stand out. Numerous players expressed disappointment to ESPN that the league, in a statement, didn't offer support for players who chose not to play, saying instead that it "respect[ed] the decisions": "Given the pain in the communities of Wisconsin and beyond following the shooting of Jacob Blake, we respect the decisions of a number of players not to play tonight. Major League Baseball remains united for change in our society and we will be allies in the fight to end racism and injustice." It was a cautious response on a day that called for more. It also was reflective of a sport that does not face nearly the same level of pressure the NBA does from its players. The respect level between the players and commissioner pales compared with that in the NBA, too. Baseball remains stuck in that unfortunate place where some high-ranking officials want to do the right thing, where some team executives push for it, but where not enough owners have shown they believe in the fight for social justice for the sport to feel fully committed.

Even if the teams return as expected after a one-day absence, the consequences of Aug. 26 won't go away anytime soon. Consider: On Wednesday, Walker, Seattle's 28-year-old starter, was standing up in an emotional meeting with the Mariners, explaining why he believed it was necessary for them not to play. On Thursday, he was traded to Toronto. And on Friday, as Walker starts the intake process with the Blue Jays, the sport will celebrate Day.

Typically held on April 15, the day is meant to honor all of Robinson's contributions to baseball. It is largely ceremonial, even though there's opportunity for so much more. There is no greater time on the baseball calendar to show what the game can be, to go beyond videos and words, to fulfill the real legacy of Robinson, one that may still live on in baseball after all: actions.