Los Angeles Angels Radio Broadcasters Won't Travel Again This Year
Maybe the Angels are saving every single dollar they have to try to sign Shohei Othani this offseason?
Or maybe the Angels, the franchise that hasn't made the playoffs since 2014 and has wasted the careers of Mike Trout and Ohtani, has made yet another misstep.
Sam Blum of the Athletic reports that the Angels won't send their English-speaking radio broadcasters on the road for the fourth consecutive season, citing money. This process started because of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and has continued until now. The Blue Jays join the Angels as the only teams to not send the English-speaking radio team on the road.
Blum's reporting is highly-recommended reading.
The story includes this note from Blum:
"“We found out that it’s not changing — we love our radio people, they do a great job,” Angels owner Arte Moreno said during a rare press session on March 18. “We just found that the economics — 40,000-50,000 miles is not going to change that experience.”
Blum's reporting also says that The Athletic spoke to an industry professional who said that the budget for a radio broadcast team was somewhere in the $185,000-$200,000 a season range. That is far less than the Major League minimum for one player.
Clearly, the Angels can afford to send broadcasters on the road. They are doing their fans a disservice, because broadcasters can't properly get the feel of a ballpark when they are calling games off a monitor from a remote location, and the broadcasters also can't properly see everything and are likely to make mistakes.
For an Angels team that is trying to convince the baseball world they are ready to compete in 2023, this is a complete amateur move.
The Angels open up the season on Thursday at Oakland -- and the Angels radio broadcast won't be there to call Shohei Ohtani's first start.
Really? Maybe if they sign Ohtani, every dollar saved will have been worth it, but if not? It's just a weak look from a team that has been weak for a decade.
