Count Anthony Lima as team Cowherd in the battle of Colin Cowherd versus seam heads. The FOX Sports Radio host came under fire from diehard baseball fans last week when he suggested that the Angels could get a significant number of picks in any trade for Shohei Otahni.
Awful Announcing pointed out that you cannot trade players for picks in Major League Baseball. That caused fans to pile on and question Cowherd’s qualifications for hosting a national show.
Tuesday on the Emerging Podcast Scene podcast, Lima told his 92.3 The Fan co-host Ken Carman that is a baseball problem, not a Cowherd problem. Lima says that it isn’t good for the league that the biggest name in sports talk radio doesn’t know the rules of the game the way he knows NBA and NFL rules.
“He doesn’t know something that I would think every hardcore baseball fan would know. That’s not happening in the NFL with the big stuff that matters,” he said. “I’m sure there are people that don’t know how many guys can line up on the line of scrimmage on a play or what tackle eligible is. But that’s different. Like talking about trades at the deadline, I mean, I think baseball does have an issue with its sport that the other two sports doesn’t have.”
Lima admitted that baseball is doing a good job of identifying and addressing some of its problems. The biggest problem the league still faces though is evident in Cowherd’s mistake.
“The problem baseball has is the average baseball fan does not know any other teams in baseball. They don’t know about the prospect system. They don’t know about arbitration. They don’t know how long it takes players [to get to the majors]. They don’t know when a player gets drafted, when are they ever going to see them. They just don’t know those things. You don’t have that issue in the NBA and in football where the average fan can name players on every team, almost every team, and they certainly know the mechanics, the main mechanics of the sport.”
Ken Carman disagreed. He said that teams not being able to trade players for draft picks seems like knowledge you should have if you cover sports. He said that he has gotten on the wrong side of baseball fans for this issue when he knew the rule and simply used the wrong word.
Lima countered saying that what Cowherd or anyone else should know is irrelevant. The problem for baseball is that he doesn’t know.
“It shows you the reason that they don’t know that is because nobody cares about the trade deadline in baseball. That’s not something that comes up on the average national radio show.”
