Phillies TV broadcast receives declining fan rating

For the first time in a couple of years, the Phillies television broadcast has slipped in fan ratings

Following up a Hall of Fame broadcaster after his untimely death is one of the hardest things for a broadcaster to do, and Phillies play-by-play voice Tom McCarthy has taken his role in strides since replacing Harry Kalas.

Paired with multiple color analysts with varying degrees of talent and entertainment, McCarthy has been among the better voices of the game.

Awful Announcing released their annual fan grades for every local television broadcast team in Major League Baseball. In their fourth year of having fans grade and rank broadcast teams, Awful Announcing had over 1,000 grades assigned to the Phillies broadcast team.

McCarthy and company finished 19th among all local broadcasts and received a consensus “B” grade from the voting listeners. It’s the first time in the four years of voting the Phillies team has gone backward in the vote after rising to 15th last year.

According to the data, 1,519 people graded the Phillies broadcast on the typical school grading scale. More than 16% gave the Phillies an “A” grade, while 14% rated it an “F.”

I’ve always found McCarthy to be well above average as a broadcaster, and calling several years of losing baseball is very tough. It’s also difficult to have seven different color analysts with varying degrees of experience, dating back to Wheels and Sarge to now looking at Mike Schmidt, Ben Davis, and John Kruk.

We’ll forget about Jamie Moyer’s one year in the booth, but mostly because we slept through it.

Davis and Kruk seem to work and play off of McCarthy well and while they each have their detractors. Something Kruk is too much of a downer and others think Davis tries a bit too much.

Overall the “B” grade is a fair one for the Phillies, and they dropped overall by thousandths of a point.