Baseball Broadcasters Impressions: San Francisco Giants

Continuing my Baseball Broadcasters Impressions project, today I take a look at the San Francisco Giants announcing team.

TV Announcers: Duane Kuiper, Mike Krukow, and Jon Miller for local station broadcasts

I might as well get my own announcers out of the way early in this project. I believe Giants fans have been truly blessed to have great announcers over the years. Whether it was Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons to Hank Greenwald and Ted Robinson, the Giants have always had great announcers.

I've been lucky enough to have watched Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow for over 15 years now on television. Kuiper is one of the best in the business because he's low key and will always drive the audience to Krukow's analysis over his own. Kuiper was once a player and like Pat Summerall with John Madden he never over steps his boundaries when announcing a game.

Kuiper is also one of those broadcasters who can be very quiet in the booth until something happens and then he erupts. It's actually quite amazing to listen to him in this respect. He can have a very normal indoor voice but if someone hits a long drive that should leave the ballpark, his voice and excitement level raises to 11.



Because of Mike Krukow's personality, he could work with pretty much anyone in baseball. He has a particular chemistry with Kuiper though because they were both players and were teammates. It's always enjoyable to listen to both of them talk about their own playing days.

Krukow is also at his best when he's breaking down pitching, which isn't surprising because Krukow was a former pitcher. I've honestly learned a lot about pitching throughout the years listening to Krukow. His insight on that position is top notch.


Krukow though does have his drawbacks. Two in particular, 1) his crutches 2) his refusal to criticize the players when they're doing poorly.

His first fault can ignore. His phrases like "grab some pine, meat" and "I wanna get that" after he see's food are both annoying and charming but can be ignored. He'll also say player x "looked good in the cage" which is really annoying when that player is Aaron Rowand and he strikes out.

Krukow's lack of criticism for this teams failures at the plate and coaching decisions is particularly annoying, especially recently with the idiotic Bochy lineups and veteran players not hitting. I'm not saying that Krukow just has to kill this team when they're not hitting, but for crying out loud stop being a cheerleader when this team isn't hitting. It's quite frankly embarrassing.

Radio Announcer: Jon Miller and Dave Flemming

Jon Miller is a legend in baseball for his countless years of putting up with Joe Morgan on Sunday Night Baseball. I'll always maintain though that Miller is at his absolute best when he's in the radio booth.

Radio announcers should be story tellers. There's a lot of dead air during a baseball game and it's nice when someone can tell a story during those dead spots in the game. It's why Vin Scully is so beloved. Jon Miller is the heir apparent to Scully in the great storyteller department.

For Dave Flemming it is quite amazing to see his star shooting. The Giants were Flemming's first MLB job and he's continued to rise from there. Flemming has taken over the Stanford football announcing gig, calls west coast basketball games for ESPN, and just filled in on a Fox Saturday broadcast. If Flemming wasn't announcing his school's football games, I wouldn't be surprised if another team scooped up Flemming for their lead announcer job. He's certainly ready for the number one spot.

What's been so refreshing about Flemming lately is that he's gave the Giants booth some youth when it comes to new technology and new numbers in baseball. It's quite amazing to listen to Dave talk about blogs, tweeting, and sabermetrics with Miller.