This season, 6-year MLB veteran Will Middlebrooks got to be a part of the NESN network doing pre and postgame shows before games and he got to be an analyst in the booth for the end of the season. Even though he may not be a household name to people outside of New England, Middlebrooks wants to share his perspective of the game to fans that may be different from others:
Middlebrooks was a guest on The Jared Carrabis Podcast this week and he said that he feels he can look at the game differently because the game didn’t come as easy to him as it did for other former big leaguers currently in the media.
“There’s something to be said and I take pride in this. I see the game differently than a lot of players that are in the media because a lot of players that are in the media are Hall-of-Famers. MLB Network, they want Hall-of-Famers or not even just Hall-of-Famers, players that had 10-15 year careers and were really good players. ESPN, they want Hall-of-Famers. FOX, TBS, they want Hall-of-Famers…I enjoy hearing what those guys have to say, but the game looked easy to them.
“I’m not going to say they didn’t grind or went through their own battles, but not like most of us. Most of us, it’s a really hard game and it beats the shit out of you for years and mentally you just crumble….I just feel like that’s what’s going to help me in being critical of players because I can explain to you why they screwed up.”
While in the booth, Middlebrooks knows his audience may not lean highly on analytics, but he knows he needs to blend in advanced stats in order to get people to come to the game so that baseball has its next generation of fans.
“It’s finding that line for this audience. You think about Boston and Red Sox fans, there’s way more 70-year-olds watching than 20-year-olds. That’s Red Sox baseball. The older you get, the more you probably love it….They want nothing to do with me talking about launch angle. They probably throw up in their mouths when I bring it up.
“But, if you want to grow the game, you need the younger generation to be those 70-year-olds one day and right now is when you kind of have to grab them. I’ll mix it in and I’ll find ways to mix it in in that old-school way.”
If Middlebrooks does more games for NESN in 2023, he will always remember the advice Dennis Eckersley gave to him in the booth and Middlebrooks called that a special moment for him and not something to take for granted.
“He was so passionate. I felt like he didn’t feel he was in the booth. We were on cam for a lot of that and they eventually went off-cam and he was still talking for a little bit. I looked over and he’s in tears. This means so much to this guy. It would be disrespectful of me to not take this seriously and not put everything I can into it if I get to do some games next year just because of how much he cares. It was cool. It was special.”
