Phillies

MLB Broadcasters Will Reportedly Be Calling Road Games Remotely

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Jun 5th, 2020 · 4:02 PM EDT

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Interesting story here, first reported via Bruce Levine at WSCR-AM and 670 The Score:

All MLB announcers( TV and radio) have been told they will be doing all 2020 road games from a local broadcast studio or home ballpark with monitors as their guide.

— Bruce Levine (@MLBBruceLevine) June 4, 2020

Tony Paul at the Detroit Free Press is also reporting this.

Broadcast crews typical travel with teams, and reducing the number of “essential” personnel at ballparks is the routine in a COVID-19 world, so this would make a lot of sense.

Locally, you’d have the Phillies crew do home games at Citizens Bank Park, per the norm, and then for road games I’d assume they just put them in the NBC Sports Philadelphia studio and call the game off a large monitor, which is what the Philadelphia Union and other lower budget teams have done over the years.

Obviously it would remove a bit of the “organic” feel from these road games. If the Phils are playing in Oakland, it’s not ideal to have John Kruk and Ben Davis and Tom McCarthy sitting on a desk 3,000 miles away, trying to make it work.

But it is what it is.