The Los Angeles Angels are not going to get much slack on ESPN Los Angeles. The station may be a radio partner of the team, but that doesn’t mean the hosts are required to agree with the team’s decision regarding its radio broadcast.
In 2023, only the Angels and Toronto Blue Jays will keep their broadcast teams from traveling to away games. Team owner Artie Moreno said at a press conference that the broadcast experience does not justify the cost.
Thursday on ESPN Los Angeles, Travis & Sliwa blasted the team saying they were sending a very clear message to the fans.
“It is a giant middle finger to your fans,” Travis Rodgers said. “You’re telling your fans that listen to the games on the radio, particularly here in California where we have such a strong car culture, where people are in their cars a lot. We all commute. We’re all stuck in traffic, and if you’re a baseball fan, there is something very pleasant about listening to a baseball game on the radio.”
An article in The Athletic estimates that it would cost $200,000 for the team’s radio crew to travel to away games. Instead, Terry Smith and Mark Langston will stay back in Anaheim and call the action from the television feed.
Allen Sliwa is pleasantly surprised that the Angels are in the minority. He said that he expected between fifteen and twenty percent of Major League Baseball teams would quit sending broadcasters to away games after the Covid-19 pandemic changed the 2020 season.
Rodgers, on the other hand, was incensed by the amount of money Moreno is apparently trying to save.
“$200,000. Anthony Rendon makes $38 million per year,” he said.
Sliwa said the Angels’ radio broadcasts will feel like the MLB Playoffs that happened in a bubble in Texas in 2020 when so few people were in the stands. It was hard to feel any real energy at home. Rodgers said that on top of that, the broadcast will simply have a lower standard than those of other teams because there is so much that a broadcaster gains simply by being with the team on the road.
“You’re around the team. You’re with the players. You’re with the coaches. You’re with the executives.,” Rodgers said. “You learn things. You can add color to your broadcasts that you’re not gonna get if you’re around them half as much as your contemporaries and your colleagues. You’re telling your fans ‘I’m 100% okay with giving you a product that is less than 28 other teams out there. You don’t matter to me to give you the best experience possible when you’re listening to your favorite team on the radio because I want to save $200,000.’ That’s a rounding error in the economics of baseball.”
