Harold Reynolds And Tom Verducci To Join Joe Buck In MLB On Fox Broadcast Booth

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mookiefl from St. Petersburg FL. USA under CC BY-SA 2.0 License

Big changes are coming to Fox's 2014 MLB On Fox telecasts.  Former player Harold Reynolds and current SI reporter and baseball pundit Tom Verducci will join Joe Buck as part of Fox's new 'A' team on MLB broadcasts.

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Caryn Rose under CC BY 2.0 License

Both Reynolds and Verducci will replace the recently retired and much scrutinized Tim McCarver.  I must say that while I'm familiar with Reynolds work as a studio analyst for MLB Network, it's been quite some time since we've been exposed to him as a color analyst, during which time he was criticized for his lackluster effort.  For the record, I like both individuals for the work they've done for both MLB Network and SI.

Reynolds has been characterized over time as being from the old school way of baseball thinking in his appearances on shows such as MLB Now and Clubhouse Confidential with Brian Kenny.  Both shows delve into the new way of thinking that involves the use of advanced metrics and statistics commonly referred to as Sabermetrics.  Sabermetrics attempts to measure the in-game activity of individual players and teams with the purpose of looking at future performance.

For the time being, I'm willing to hold passing judgement on Reynolds to see if he's improved as a color analyst. As for Verducci, I haven't seen enough of his work as a color analyst to have an informed opinion just yet.  I do think it's interesting that Fox has chosen to go the non athlete route in tabbing Verducci as one of the replacements for their broadcast team.  Maybe this is the start of something new for big time networks where they incorporate analysts who aren't athletes but actual sports writers who have a fresh passionate and intelligent perspective on the sports they cover.

Tim Musick
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