Leaderboard

I think John is an affable guy. Easy to get along with genuinely likes Stone's dry sense of humor.

LOL you KNOW Schriffen saw the article from Sun Times and gave us a big "SOUTH SIDE STAND UP" just now to say FU to them. Love it.

Plenty of baseball announcers are boring. That in itself isn't a bad thing. Baseball is kind of a boring sport that requires a lot of time to fill. I have called football and basketball games going back to the early 90s, and get what it takes to fill dead time better than most, fully realizing that almost all of a baseball game is dead time. It isn't easy to figure out compelling stories to fill the time between downs on during a high school football game, let alone between every pitch of every MLB game for an entire baseball season. But I also realize that if you don't have the trust of your audience, you don't have an audience. There is a trust factor you establish with each listener to where they are giving up their time and looking to you to provide not only the details of a sporting event, but also a compelling reason to stay with you specifically for it, and not any of the other choices they might have. Hawk was who he was, but he was always honest. Jason was also who he was, but was a damned hard worker who also had a unique sense of humor. Neither one of them were willing to insult their audiences by telling them something that was obviously not true. Hell go back through the history of Sox announcers and there are some doozies, but all were fair. Could John figure this out? I am sure he could, but he also seems to realize that being real is probably what got the guy before him "fired" he might not be willing to try, and that's a shame.

This post along with WestEddys about Schriffen bragging over a solo home run that brings a score to 7-1 are both excellent points on why this guy is so annoying. You put off a lot of people when you are broadcasting to the fanbase like they are a bunch of idiots.

lol, hawk wouldn’t lie. He would just not say a goddamn word for an inning 😂

This is like saying "what difference does it make to anyone if Martin Perez is pitching for the White Sox, or Garret Crochet? They both are pitchers who throw left handed." People are play-by-play announcers for a living, people are baseball players for a living. There are different levels of quality among them, which can often be the difference in them being great at their job, or...not so great.

dream marriage

Maybe he has a year left on his contract and they figure to make a change after 2027, otherwise this is par for the course of White Sox brass willing to accept sub-mediocrity because it's already in place.

Until those who kicked Benetti out are gone, this is what this organization deserves

It would save my mute button alot of work if Beckham would follow this same rule.

Exactly. I know you have a job to do, but don't insult my intelligence either.

And I would argue that the initial premise that he knows what he is doing, is wrong.

Or calling 450 foot homers like they are wall-scrapers. 🤣 Amazing that Jerry was apparently concerned with how Benetti ate a Campfire Shake during the broadcast but he doesn’t care how clueless Schriffen makes himself look on a daily basis as long as he bows to the great Stone Pony. The guy made a joke about smoking a glizzy at both ends along with Bacon, a la “Lady and the Tramp”. WTF?!?

Unqualified? That's bulshit. Schriff is plenty qualified especially now with two full mlb announcing seasons under his belt. This sounds more like BS political complaints about DEI hires but anyway, too late, Schriff will be back next year and he earned it with a lot of hard work. Beyond all that, John is a great guy and has made the broadcasts fun to watch despite the losing season. Not easy to do.

Sox 8-4 on Friday Night All Access.

yeah, these Friday night games were actually really good this year.

Stoney actually made him legit laugh tonight. It was a great broadcast.

nice to see Taylor finally come in and throw strikes

Thats still a pretty damn good OBP , 20 of 45. Thats why you see him look at so many on 3-2. .444444

Lol they aired a guy with a "Sell the team Bozo" shirt for a sec as they cut to break. Also a guy doing a good Schriff/Beckham reenactment

They should

Barons up 8-4 going to the seventh

Bullshit. The fucking Chicago Cubs exist and draw three million people a year from all over the fucking world, with basically zero parking lots. So do professional franchises all over the United States and the rest of the world. There might be some people too scared or afraid to learn about public transit, but it isn't like the Sox are disappearing into a void that literally no one can adjust to. It's not that fucking hard to go to somewhere that you can't easily drive a car to.

The parking is pretty great but it shouldn’t be the selling point of a stadium.

Parking argument seems absurd to me. This isn't some field out in the middle of nowhere. It's reasonably well served by CTA from what posters have said, if not perfectly, well enough. How many people would stop coming if they couldn't just park within 500 feet of the stadium? Like 10% of the people that come out? 50%? I don't know, maybe our crack PR team could do some market research. The Mariners for all their failures have done a good job of making the area around Safeco a fun tailgate area and pregame spot. Did they close some parking lots? Sure did. The parking lot is now a vendor area and it's fine. Granted Seattle and Chicago are vastly different cities geographically and transit wise but I don't think many fans give half a crap about less parking. They want fun, things to do, people looking like they are having fun. You what doesn't look like fun? Giant parking lots.

Schriffen is a perfect reflection of this organization. This includes how it hires unqualified people for top positions and how it has given Sox fans an utterly crappy product.

Stone used to be that guy, but he hasn't been for a while now. Even Jason could bring it out of him at times. Jason was the best we had at engaging Steve, and it was still hit or miss. Honestly, I don't think Steve respects John at all. He treats him like crap.

I like Stone, I think he has a wealth of baseball knowledge and I enjoy listening to him talk about baseball. He's definitely a grumpy old man at this point. I don't know what the point of the food in the booth spotlight is, but anytime that happens Steve pretty much says it looks like the worst thing ever and refuses to try it, quite the advertising if that's what they are going for. I never liked Benetti, mainly because of how corny he was, but Schriffen just takes it to another level. Whether that be referencing Vargas' hand placement for months on end even after his streak cooled way off and he wasn't producing, calling plays like they are clutch moments in the playoffs during a game where the Sox were totally non competitive, the whole lady and the tramp bit (cringe), or when they were in Seattle talking about that space needle walk and Schriffen literally says "No chance, you couldn't get me to do that." and then about 10 seconds later "Alright guys, if you pay for me ill do it."

Sox down by 5 runs. Schriffen: “Do you give him the 3-0 green light here?” 🤣 So true about Stone needing to be engaged and pushed to do his job by a good partner. Otherwise, he will just coast. Seems like Jerry has given him a job for life and he knows it.

What's really crazy is that John's story about being a D1 pitche before blowing out his arm is almost surely, 100% made up. Nobody that would have been at that level would be so ignorant about basic baseball. Nobody has ever really pressed him on it.

No guarantees at all, just the reality of how much worse can Ishbia be than what we've been seeing basically since 2007.

Yeah, look no further than the difference between Hawk and Schiff in how the promote/d the team. Hawk was positive AF, yet wasn't going to lie to you.

I did see that live and it was Beckham that made that awkward in my opinion.

Being positive is fine, but there's a way to do it that feels authentic and not like you're being sold a defective product. He's improved since last season, but until he can do this effectively it'll remain a rough broadcast.

More like the majority opinion.

Totally agree buddy. Spot on

If you exclude the losing streaks, this is a great team! We aren't talking about a single game skewing stats here. This is a team that is 25-31 since the ASG, and closing in on their 3rd straight 100 loss season. Even if they avoid that history this is not a good baseball team, nor even a mediocre one.

Genuine progress? Anyway you spin it, this is three (Three!!) 100 loss seasons in a row. I find it hard to celebrate anything at this point.

Playoff Hagen Smith has been an absolute joy to watch tonight. Thought he might go deeper, but he's done after 5 no hit innings. 2 walks, 10 Ks on 73 pitches. Struck out the side in the 2nd and 4th. Left with a 4-0 lead, Palisch took over out of the pen.

Wait, we talking Schriffin or Getz?

I think the problem with Schiff is that if you asked ChatGPT to create a White Sox PBP guy, John is what it would spit out. It's predictable, flawed, and overemphasizes things it shouldn't.

I agree. He didn’t deserve the job, but since he had no previous experience as a lead MLB announcer, he works for cheap, and does what he’s told no matter how obnoxious the request, like what was mentioned calling Vargas a star.

Schriff is better than last year, and I think he's put in a lot more work, but he's still pretty unlistenable. But Agrest is wrong that "sac fly RBI" is redundant. There are sac flies that advance runners without scoring them. Also, his mention of Boog Sciambi as a gold standard doesn't resonate a whole lot with me. One's mileage may vary, of course, but I find Sciambi to be cookie-cutter boring. Someone in this thread mentioned Amin, and he's excellent. We had a guy kinda like that (yes, I know his humor was not appreciated by some on the board), and let him walk.

Those two sentances hit the nail on the head. Even better let Stone go completeley.

Starting to sound like a mirror of real world politics. If you don't automatically support something 100% and pass the so-called loyalty test. Well, then you naturally must hate whatever IT is, instead of taking a more reasonable, nuanced position somewhere in the middle.

Chris, your current team still blows because you are a bad GM and they are about to lose 100+ games. Even a 20 win improvement over last season won’t be impressive considering you set the MLB record for losses last year. Give it up, Chris.

To paraphrase Derek Zoolander, "but why White Sox baseball?"

Agreed on all accounts. Except Benetti still can't tell when a home run is being hit until it's in the stands. Depth perception issue or something. I think Schriff has "tools" but hasn't developed them at all. He makes me laugh sometimes in a cornball sort of way. I like some of his calls. I thought we were getting a guy with actual hands-on baseball knowledge though considering he was technically a pitcher on the Dartmouth team....but damn.

The article says that Jon Sciambi is one of the best in the game. It couldn’t be more wrong. The rest of the article is worth about as much. He’s improved from being with Stone and I’m fine with him.