In a really fun little exercise, the crew over at Awful Announcing conducted a survey of fans from around the league to determine which teams had the best broadcasting crew. After a week of surveys, their data showed that Atlanta's team placed 21st (out of 30 MLB teams). The rating encompasses the play-by-play, color commentary, and special analysis of the team's television crew. For Atlanta, this team consists of: Chip Caray (play-by-play), Joe Simpson (color), Tom Glavine (analyst - select), and John Smoltz (analyst - select).
Here's what Awful Announcing's Joe Lucia had to say about the results:
Only the Nationals, Red Sox, and Yankees crews got more A votes outside of the top ten than the Braves. Analysts Glavine and Smoltz got rave reviews, while the regular duo of Caray and Simpson fared quite worse.
This is about in line with what I expected. I enjoy Glav and Smoltzie, but Chip and Joe are just "meh" to me. There are worse teams, to be sure, but their hostility towards advanced stats can be a turn off. That said, they have been much better this year in trying to understand/mention/explain advanced stats, but there's still a way to go. I prefer our radio team of Jim Powell and Don Sutton any day of the week.
In case you're curious, here's how the rest of the NL East fared:
So despite placing in the bottom third, Atlanta actually has the second highest-rated team in the NL East. Personally, I don't understand the lovefest with the Mets team; I find Darling and Hernandez annoying and often wrong. But hey, that's just me. The Phillies and Nationals are deservedly way down towards the bottom.
So what do you think? What grade would you give our broadcast team? Where do you think they place among other NL East teams? Are their other broadcast teams you prefer listening to when we play them? Sound off in the comments and let us know!
A big thank you to Joe for putting this all together and letting us quote it. Joe is a writer for The Outside Corner and Awful Announcing, as well as a great guy and (an added bonus!) a Braves fan. Give him a follow on Twitter.
If you'd like to check out the rankings in their entirety (and you should, they're really interesting) you can find them here.