Tuesday, October 8, 2013

ESPN Sweetspot is missing some good baseball

During the baseball season I follow the blogs / articles on ESPN's Sweetspot.  They are usually interesting and sometimes informative.  And, unlike most of ESPN, they seemed less focused on the New York, Boston and Los Angeles media markets.

Their MLB playoff coverage has relapsed.  As of today, Oct 8th, the playoff coverage (besides generic articles covering all the matchups) has six articles on the Dodgers/Braves Series:

  1. Where's Craig Kimbrel?
  2. Good move by Mattingly to start Kershaw
  3. Hanley great, Braves awful, Fredi messes up
  4. Braves-Dodgers: Managers key in Game 3
  5. Heyward delivers after Mattingly mistake
  6. Underrated McCann's last game in Atlanta?
There are three articles on the Sox/Rays Series:
I'm frankly surprised that Hollywood has takes over from ESPN's previous favorite Boston so quickly.

Can you explain this biased coverage by the quality of the games?  Was the Dodger's/Braves series incredibly compelling.  No.  Two of the games were close, but two were blowouts.  Did some player do something amazing?  Not really - as you can tell by the article titles, a lot of the talk was about the managers.  Ryu, who had a good regular season, disappointed on the national stage.  Sweetspot needed some excuse to talk about Hollywood and came up with them.  Need I add that the Dodgers "developed" most of their team with brute money, not skill?

Has the #2 rated series, Sox/Rays been compelling?  Sortof.  Game three was exciting, decided by a walkoff, well worthy of comment.  Game two was pretty good, game one was a slaughter.

The Bucs/Cards series has been compelling.  The first two games were slaughters, but each team took a win to Pittsburgh, where two close and exciting games went down to the wire.  And the whole story of Pittsburgh being in the playoffs for the first time in 20 years is compelling.  These are two very good teams who didn't buy all their players.

The series they haven't really covered, As/Tigers, has been the most compelling.  Game three was pretty good and had some fireworks.  Games one and two were incredible tense playoff baseball, each decided by one run, featuring awesome pitching performances by Max Scherzer (likely Cy Young), Justin Verlander (no introduction necessary) and rookie Sonny Gray who out-pitched Verlander and matched the exploits of Hall of Famer Chief Bender from over a century ago, 1910.  None of these pitching performances has been mentioned on Sweetspot.  None.  I repeat, Scherzer and Verlander each going 7 strong innings and striking out a small city - unmentioned.  A rookie matching a Hall of Famer from over a century past - ignored.  Though the Tigers offense is struggling, many As position players have had good offensive or defensive plays.  Not mentioned.

Not a shock from ESPN, but I'm calling BS.

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