It was mentioned above that Buck was a catcher at the major league level, and further, many other sports broadcasters, also played at the major league level as pitchers or what have you. It seems to me that what Buck (and the other announcers you decry in your post) is relating to is his own experience where pressure on the defense is concerned. After all, he was the catcher. The amount of distraction it caused him when a really fast guy was on first base is something wholly relevant to the game and understanding the psychology of players on the field.

That players at the major league level are able to fight past this distraction to the point that barely any difference shows on a macro scale isn’t really surprising–we’re talking about the best players in the world. If a famous concert pianist told you he found a piece particularly challenging and you replied “But I measured it and there’s barely any difference in the accuracy of your play from these other pieces” he would look at you like you are an idiot, and you would deserve it.

One of the problems I always had with FJM was their refusal to distinguish between Joe Morgan’s utter inability to grapple with the great mass of facts and figures at his disposal, and Joe’s very real, quite keen sense of the ebb and flow of the game, the attitudes of the players and his perceptions from his own time as a player. Being good at math and attaching abstract numbers to players isn’t really required to be good at playing baseball, and we should keep that in mind when listening to players’ experiences. The key is separating the points at which the player has absolutely no idea what he is talking about from what he does know. (Baseball journalists get less of a pass, as stat-tracking is supposed to be part of what they do.)

As an Angels fan for whom most games are broadcast in part by Rex Hudler, I’ve grown accustomed to doing this pretty much every night. Rex’s understanding of statistics and which stats matter and which don’t is paper-thin, but his intuitive grasp of things like a batter’s swing/hand position or a pitcher’s arm slot or a defender’s positioning is actually pretty good.

I guess my point with all this is that of the uncountable multitude of things Buck Martinez said over that series that were headache-inducing, relating the pressure put on the defense when a basestealer is on first seems kind of petty to complain about.

Pedro Feliz loves first pitch sliders at his shins, he offers at them more than any other hitter in the Phils lineup. Doesn’t mean he hits them well. Minus half a point for you on that one

So I think you have to give him credit there (unless you want to go about defining what a hard curve is and running the numbers again — something tells me that curves that don’t curve are the ones he probably feasts on, rather than the knee-buckling variety).