Tuesday, May 01, 2007

George Frazier is a friggin' idiot

I mentioned this earlier in the season, but it's worth repeating: George Frazier and Drew Goodman, the Colorado Rockies' broadcasting duo, combine to form one of the worst announcing teams in the history of Western Civilization. If you ever get the chance to listen to them... change the channel.

Not to sound like Charles Barkley, but first of all, they bicker with each other like a couple of schoolgirls. Frazier enjoys minimizing Goodman's thoughts with the ol' "Well, I don't agree with that Drew. When I played, you had to do it this way." Right out of Joe Morgan's book.

Second, Frazier is an idiot. It's that simple. I don't know if he even watches teams other than the Rockies. Here are a couple of examples from Monday night:

1) Discussing Pedro Feliz in the first inning (and I'm paraphrasing):
"Every time we come here we ask how Feliz is doing and everybody says, "Oh, he's struggling. He's really struggling."
Okay, sounds good George. What else you got?

"But I don't ever believe it. Every time we see him, he's smoking the ball. This guy simply wears the baseball out. He's a solid hitter."

Um, what? If by "wear the baseball out," (and that's a direct quote) you mean "swing wildly in incoherently at will," then I agree with you.

You see, George, Pedro wears your pitching out because your pitching sucks. The rest of the baseball universe understands that all you need to do is throw Feliz sliders in the dirt and he'll strike out or ground to shortstop.

2) Discussing Noah Lowry:

"Lowry was pretty much exclusively a fastball - changeup pitcher before this
season, but he's altered that this year and is mixing in more breaking pitches."

Sounds good. And?

"The reason he had to do that was because there is not much of a change in
velocity between his fastball and changeup. He needed to mix in something at a
different speed."

For chrissakes, George. Lowry's changeup is so good precisely because he has such a big change in velocity from his fastball. Do you even watch baseball? Lowry throws anywhere from 86-89 with his fastball, while his changeup (his best pitch) comes in anywhere from 73-75. That's a HUGE difference.

George Frazier on himself: "I'm awful. I'm absolutely awful."


About last night: I fell asleep while Kevin Correia was doing his best to blow the lead, but it looks like Kline, pitching for the first time since 2004 it seems, coaxed a big double play from Helton that saved the game. As you know, the bullpen is dead to me, so I really didn't have a problem falling asleep after Lowry left the game.

Russ Ortiz goes tonight against Taylor Bucholz. One thing I learned from the Rockies' knuckleheads last night: Giants' management told them that Tim Lincecum will be up as soon as one of the starters starts to falter. Did you hear that, Russ? That means you.

6 comments:

OZ said...

Do you think they'd move the pitcher that falters to middle relief or the Fresno? As much as I think Ortiz has been getting lucky, I don't think he belongs in AAA.

This is not a jab at Ryan, but I have never seen anything remotely close to as bad as the Grizzlies announcers. I think SNL doing a spoof on announcers would be better than those morons and their token chick doing the court reporting.

the butler said...

hey no worries man-

that's what we get for putting Michael Cage on there.

interestingly, our guy Don Poier (who was good) died a couple years ago- that's when Pete Pranica took over.

Lunatic Fringe said...

There are a lot of bad announcing duos out there. A LOT. Oz, our Kings announcers might be some of the worst in the biz. However, we are blessed with a great duo in Krukow and Kuiper. The one thing I hate about the DirecTV package, living out here in Colorado, is that I don't get a chance to hear Kruk and Kuip much. Typically I get the other team's announcers and am forced to poke my eardrums out with chop sticks after the game.

Andrew Staples said...

Ortiz won't be sent to triple A. He'll either be on the team or released.

This is in response to the Matt Morris post. Bochy leaves his starters in a long time, but I think he just thinks - my bullpen sucks - I'm staying with an out of gas starter. He's in a tough spot. Morris didn't have it on Sunday but he ran him out there for the 7th in a tie game? I think Morris is getting to the territory where he is exhusted after 80 pitches (60 curves).

I'm not a pitching coach or anything, but lowry's mechanics must be screwed up. He's been wild. It's kind of amazing it hasn't hurt him more than it has. I would say he has been "effectively wild" but that would be even more optimistic than Krukow.

El Person said...

Boy, am I glad I'm in the Bay Area.

Lunatic Fringe said...

Stapes, I think you're right. Morris seems to be reaching the twighlight of his career pretty quickly, and he's younger than my wife. He's pretty much done after 80 pitches and he's shown that pretty consistently.

OZ, if anything happens to Ortiz, it will be long relief. He won't go to AAA. I don't mean to pick on him, but he is the most obvious candidate to be replaced when the time comes.

El Person, be glad. Be very glad. Colorado announcers suuuuuuuck.