Fox Coverage Drops the Ball

I'm not a fan of Fox's baseball coverage and last night was no exception.

First of all, I will give them credit for stumbling through the two hour rain delay. There were some moments of decent sports discussion and overall it could have been worse.

The biggest fiasco was the Heidi-esque handling of the coverage. With the rain delay causing the game to go significantly over the allotted time, Fox decided to switch the game to FX and put Nascar on the main Fox channel where it was scheduled to appear.

The announcers informed those watching the game that there would be a change about twenty minutes before it happened, but said nothing immediately before the switch. In the top of the ninth, in a critical situation, Fox suddenly cut away from the game without warning, leaving fans to frantically try to locate the game on FX. The game lasted about 10 total minutes longer. It certainly wouldn't have killed them to finish out the coverage where they'd started it. The cut away was poorly handled and reflects poorly on Fox.

One thing that constantly annoys me watching baseball on Fox is Joe Buck. He doesn't seem to know the game. When a pitch is delivered, he only tells you the location and result - whether it was high or low, in or out and a strike or a ball. He rarely if ever points out what type of a pitch it was, only if someone else mentions it first. A professional baseball play by play caller should have a reasonable ability to recognize pitches and call them out to the fans. ESPN does it, the guys on YES do it, but apparently it's too much for Joe Buck .