[Ksyrup]

Man, I'm really loving Rob Neyer's blog. I watched the Yankees/Orioles game on Friday night and was stunned by how far the Yankees' announcers went out of their way to NOT make Derek Jeter look bad on a play he screwed up. I guess I shouldn't have been stunned, but it was so obvious and Kenny Singleton was right on top of it but didn't have the guts to say directly what he was suggesting, that I found it unbelieveable. And then I see that Neyer caught the same thing.

Man on first, guy bunts toward ARod and when ARod fielded it, he had an easy play to second to get the lead guy, except no one was covering second. On a play when both the 1B and 3B are charging, the 2B covers first, and the SS covers second. Well, Jeter didn't immediately move toward second, and by the time ARod realized his only play was to first, at that point Jeter went to cover third. Instead of pointing out Jeter's mistake, the announcers basically blamed Cano for not covering second and praised Jeter for alerting covering third. When Singleton mentioned that Cano's responsibility was to cover first, neither he nor Michael Kay made the obvious connection - Jeter failed to cover second.

And then in the fourth, on a delayed steal, no one covered second and the announcers basically made that point obvious, then failed to follow-up on who's fault it was (and it could have been Cano's, but it also could have been Jeter's, so they just let it go).

Glad to see I'm not the only one who sees/hears these things.