Haven’t Los Angeles Angels fans suffered enough already? Sure, they get to watch reigning American League Most Valuable Player Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout, perennially the best player in Major League Baseball, on a daily basis.
(OK, Trout only played in 36 games last season due to a calf injury. Fans also had to endure Albert Pujols playing far below his Hall of Fame standards for 10 seasons. Should we mention the two disheartening seasons Josh Hamilton played in an Angels uniform?)
Yet despite those stars in the lineup, the Angels have finished fourth in the AL West for the past four seasons and five of their past six. Halos fans have witnessed some spectacular, maybe even historic, individual seasons. But due to subpar pitching and disappointing sluggers including Justin Upton and Anthony Rendon, the Angels have only been to the postseason once in Trout’s 10 years as a full-time major-leaguer.
But early in the 2022 season, Angels fans must also deal with ownership that doesn’t want to send its TV broadcast team on the road with the team. In 2020 and 2021, keeping broadcasters remote because of COVID-19 concerns was a legitimate concern. But now, the intent is presumably to save money. In doing so, the Angels are embarrassing their broadcasters — notably play-by-play announcer Matt Vasgersian — and providing fans with an inferior product.
If you missed it, Vasgersian had a particularly awkward call during the seventh inning of Friday’s Angels-Rangers game. Jared Walsh smacked a ball to left field that the broadcaster thought was a foul ball judging from what he saw on screen. Then as the camera view switched to the outfield, Vasgersian realized the ball was carrying in fair territory and into the left-field seats.
“Check that, it’s hit well to the other way,” said Vasgersian, his voice rising an octave with excitement. “And it’s gone!”
No one would say that was Vasgersian’s finest moment as a broadcaster. Not only did he completely get the call wrong, but his excitement after seeing it was a home run seemed contrived. Maybe he was legitimately surprised upon learning that his initial call was badly incorrect. But it also came off as trying to make up for his mistake with amped-up emotion.
Vasgersian never would’ve flubbed that call if he was in the ballpark broadcasting. From the booth, he would have seen exactly where Walsh’s hit was going and provided viewers with the proper crescendo toward a home-run call as the ball carried toward the stands.
But since he was watching the action on a monitor in Secaucus, New Jersey, Vasgersian called it like he saw it, which looked like a ball hit back into foul territory. Most of us likely would’ve thought the same thing while watching the game. That’s why we depend on the announcers. They inform us where the ball is actually going. We trust them to tell us actually happening where we can’t see.
By not sending Vasgersian and his fellow broadcasters on the road with the team, the Angels are betraying the trust that fans have in the telecast. Viewers can’t rely on what Vasgersian is telling them in his play-by-play.
Listen to this call from Thursday’s Angels-Rangers telecast when Trout crushed a ball deep to center field. The drive turned out to be a 472-foot home run, a blast that would inspire awe and excitement in virtually any broadcaster. Yet Vasgersian was decidedly subdued, surely a far different reaction than if he was at the ballpark.
Again, Vasgersian was working the game remotely, watching the action on a monitor. He likely saw Rangers center fielder Adolis Garcia standing still and figured he was waiting to catch a fly ball. Instead, he stood still because Trout hit a rocket that there was no chance of catching.
Could Vasgersian have done a better job under such circumstances? Probably. For one thing, the camera pulling back with a wide view indicated that Trout’s fly ball was going far. He also could’ve listened to the crowd, which roared with excitement at what it was seeing.
(To be fair, spectators at baseball games sometimes overreact to a ball hit into the air. The ball looks like it could travel far off the bat. What do experienced fans often say in response? “Watch the outfielder. He’ll tell you where the ball’s going.” Well… Vasgersian was arguably doing that. Yet only when the ball ricocheted off the batter’s eye in centerfield did he realize it was a home run.)
By any account, it was a bad performance by Vasgersian, one that drew plenty of derision and ridicule on social media. The broadcaster knew it and owned up to the embarrassing broadcast with Sam Blum of The Athletic on Sunday.
“I’m embarrassed when I miss a home run call,” Vasgersian told Blum. “And nobody wears that harder than me. It’s like the worst thing that you can do in this business. It stinks for the fans. It stinks for the guy that hit it. It stinks for me. And everybody likes to make fun of the guy that gets something wrong.”
In his piece, Blum correctly directs blame at the Angels. It would be easy to fault Bally Sports West, but it’s not the network’s call on whether or not to send broadcasters on the road. Cobbling together a broadcast with Vasgersian from New Jersey and analyst Mark Gubicza from Santa Monica, California is the team’s decision.
Maybe the Angels should also be faulted for choosing Vasgersian to be their primary play-by-play broadcaster when he would have to miss games due to his MLB Network and ESPN obligations. But Vasgersian is no longer calling Sunday Night Baseball and devoting more time to the Angels was supposedly one of the reasons he cited for leaving.
If the Angels are realizing their mistake and quickly tried to recover from the embarrassment of the remote broadcasts by dispatching Patrick O’Neal and Gubicza to join the team in Houston, will they eventually want Vasgersian to broadcast on the road? And if he’s not able to because of his other obligations, will the Angels ultimately decide to go in another direction?
Those questions will obviously be answered in the weeks and months to come. What’s astonishingly clear now is that remote broadcasts don’t properly serve the audience when unnecessary. Vasgersian’s gaffes only highlighted what fans and sports media observers already knew.
Ian Casselberry is a sports media columnist for BSM. He has previously written and edited for Awful Announcing, The Comeback, Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, MLive, Bleacher Report, and SB Nation. You can find him on Twitter @iancass or reach him by email at iancass@gmail.com.
