9/1/2023 0 Comments Giants baseball commentatorSo I might be personally interested in it, but it’s more interesting if I’m a GM trying to put a team together. So I think that’s what all makes the game more sophisticated and whatnot, but at the same time it’s not what I think a lot of fans enjoy about the game. ![]() … I think (James) shined a light in the darkness and people followed him, even to the extent of people saying ‘Well, maybe we should be able to quantify how much ground a guy covers (in the field), how can we do that?’ And people figured out was to do it. He was the guy who said that batting average, home runs and RBI are not a good way to evaluate productivity. ![]() It was a big seller … he was kind of the godfather of analytics. Back in the 1980s, Bill James had his book, “Baseball Abstract,” and he didn’t even have access to the real stats and whatnot. Q: In an era of advanced stats and analytics, do you think it makes it harder for fans to keep up or is that a good resource to have?Ī: Well, I think it’s a really good resource and I think fans want all the information they can get. I would say, probably, all these other things are differences surrounding the game, but the player’s ability to go on the free agent market is one of the most significant changes in all that time. Fred Lynn and Jim Rice were the two great rookies in 1975 and it looked like they could actually go auction themselves off to the highest bidder after that year, after one year. The next year, you had (Dave) McNally and (Andy) Messersmith played out their contracts, then all of a sudden, guys were going to be free agents. (1974) was the first year that they had arbitration. We televised 24 games a year, that was it. We had two broadcasters, me and Monte Moore. … Now, it’s a big story if there’s any empty seats for a postseason game, like ‘What the hell happened, they have 48,000 seats and they only (drew) 47,000!’ … It was not unusual for (Oakland) to have 3,500 people on a weeknight. Baltimore drew (about) 930,000 that year as their home attendance. They were the two most successful franchises by far. They played Baltimore in the championship series, and Baltimore had been in the postseason year after year, going back to 1969. In 1974, my first year, Oakland had just won the World Series two straight years and they had almost all the same players back and they won it again for the third straight year, and their attendance for the year was 840,000 - their paid attendance at home. Q: What would you point to as some of the most positive changes you’ve seen in the game?Ī: There’s a lot more people at the games. Now, it’s almost every hitter there’s some kind of shift. It used to be that maybe Willie McCovey would be a guy that they’d shift for, sometimes Reggie Jackson, when I started, but that was very rare. If you had a lot of speed, you wanted to hit line drives and even ground balls were fine, because you could beat out a lot of them. It used to be that a good, flat swing was what you wanted to be a line-drive hitter. Now, with analytics, (hitters) have a lot of things where they try to train themselves to maybe hit differently or hit with more power or get the ball airborne more. … To me, that’s a very significant change in the game. Rollie Fingers was the closer and he threw (119) innings. Catfish Hunter threw (3181/3) innings and (23) complete games. The first year I did baseball, 1974, with Oakland, they were the best team in baseball, they had three (primary) starting pitchers who pitched every fourth day, (two) made 40 starts. What would you say have been some of the most significant changes you’ve seen in the game in your time covering it?Ī: Well for me, the main thing is about the way the game is actually played. Q: We’ve seen pace of play pick up, we’ve been through a steroid era and back. ![]() Miller sat down with USA TODAY Sports at Nationals Park in Washington to discuss some of the most notable changes he’s seen since entering the industry, as well as his personal career path and where he thinks it ends up. Miller, who got his start as a major league announcer in 1974, has been a prime spectator for some of the game’s most notable changes over the decades, including the dawn of free agency and the rise of advanced analytics. There are few more qualified to speak on baseball and how much it’s changed over the past half century than longtime play-by-play announcer Jon Miller. Do not duplicate in any form without permission.Watch Video: MLB home run record could be broken and other surprises of the season
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