Thankfully for Philadelphia Phillies fans, spring training has finally gotten here. Over the course of the next week, we will begin to get news out of the early spring training workouts and, hopefully, some answers to questions regarding how the Phillies new acquisition look and how the team plans to handle the bulk of their roster. However, we DID get some news about the future of Phillies broadcasts on radio and TV.
It was announced yesterday that long-time voices of Phillies broadcasts Tom McCarthy and Scott Franzke each received multi-year contract extensions. Each of their deals is for at least the next five years and both have done play-by-play for the Phillies for nearly 20 years. It sounds like the color commentator positions for Phillies broadcasts has yet to be firmed up, though.
More Phillies News
Elsewhere in the world of the Phillies, we had a fun story about Bryce Harper making a fan's day. While traveling through an airport in Phoenix, a fan approached him for an autograph for his hat. Neither party had a Sharpie to sign the hat, so Bryce just took his shoe off right there in the airport, signed it, gave it to the fan, and just walked through the airport with one shoe. Nicely done, Bryce....nicely done.
MLB News
We did have some news from around the league as MLB announced that they were adding a couple of other new rules for the 2023 season. In addition to the previously announced rules changes about the shift and the pitch clock, the league's competition committee announced that the "ghost runner" on second base in extra innings rule has been made permanent and that there are now limits on when teams can use position players as pitchers.
Over in St. Louis, the it was reported that the Cardinals were giving president of baseball operations John Mozeliak a two year contract extension. While the Cardinals haven't been back to the World Series in a bit, the Cardinals continue to compete and excel in the NL Central to the annoyance of, well, almost everyone and that is, at least in part, due to Mozeliak's stewardship.