The White Sox have not provided many positives as we enter the All-Star break, and the product on the field isn’t the only one making the wrong sort of headlines.
In a recent poll conducted by Awful Announcing, a site dedicated to news and commentary related to the sports media industry, fans were asked to grade their local MLB broadcast teams. To very little surprise, the duo of John Schriffen and Steve Stone came in ranked 30th after an extremely rocky start to the post-Jason Benetti era. Awful Announcing says over 13,000 votes were cast in their entire poll, with only the Mets (573) receiving more responses than the White Sox (564).
As seen in the table below, 37.06% of those who participated handed NBC Sports Chicago’s team an “F” grade to go along with the lowest overall score of 1.15. This is quite the departure from last season where Benetti and Stone ranked 6th overall and captured an “A” grade with 46.84% of the votes. Oh, and speaking of Benetti, he has helped Detroit’s broadcast to skyrocket out of the cellar and into the top 10.
Are the results a little harsh for Schriffen in his first season calling MLB action? Maybe. Being the lead play-by-play man for a team in the third-largest media market is certainly no easy task, especially when you follow in the footsteps of Jason Benetti and Hawk Harrelson. Now add a historically bad team and a fan base pissed off to the extreme and you’re not in a great situation. All of that said, Schriffen still has had no shortage of self-inflicted flubs throughout the first half.
While Schriffen has deserved a pass at times, all of us can agree that it would be nice for the broadcast team to keep the headlines to a minimum. Let’s see how the broadcaster continues to navigate his first full season behind the mic following the All-Star break.
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Featured Photo: NBC Sports Chicago
Stone is such a legend that it sucks to see him ranked last. However, we all know it’s not because of him. The White Sox made so many terrible decisions for the 2024 season and adding Schriffen to the booth was definitely one of them…
Schriffen is a byproduct of Reinsdorf…. his little barbs against the local radio outlets and others, just tell me he is fetching pails of water for his master, Ebenezer Reinsdorf.
Ebenezer does not want someone the profile that Benetti rightfully earned. He wants another lackey that can be kept under thumb. Benetti might have been like that at the start of his tenure…but quickly grew out of that as time when on. He became more popular and that is faux-pa for Jerry… thus he was shown the door and bad mouthed when Jerry had his minion Brooks slam it shut.
Sox continue to receive the criticism that rightfully earn. They are a laughingstock run by miserable, nasty old man. If anyone should have a franchised stripped from them, Jerry is the poster child.
and all because Jerry didn’t find Jason funny. Jason is great and the new guy is just plain bad.