Kevin Brown talks Statcast broadcast 'mission statement'

Over the years, ESPN has done a number of statistics-focused Statcast alternate MLB broadcasts, but their last regular-season or playoff one was a wild card game in 2021. The idea of a Statcast alternate broadcast is now back, with the latest alternate feed debuting Sunday night for the Boston Red Sox-Los Angeles Dodgers Sunday Night Baseball game (8 p.m. ET). There, Kevin Brown, Mike Petriello, and Trevor May will call the Sunday Night Baseball Statcast Edition Powered By Google Cloud on ESPN2. ( The standard Sunday Night Baseball broadcast team of Karl Ravech, David Cone, and Eduardo Pérez will call the main ESPN feed.)

This week, Brown, Petriello, May, and ESPN vice president of production Phil Orlins spoke to media on a conference call about the new alternate broadcast here. Brown, also known for his work calling Baltimore Orioles local broadcasts for MASN, said the difference between a broadcast like this and a more traditional one is less than it used to be given the way Statcast data is integrated into most broadcasts in 2024, but he’s excited about the chance to really dive into it further with May and Petriello.

“I think it’s going to be less of a jump now than when I even five years ago started calling games with the Orioles,” Brown said. “Every local major league broadcast is supported by Statcast, and we get pitch mixes and we get replays and we get out spot pitch type and swing speed and all kinds of videos that the Statcast folks will send to us en masse and to every other local RSN. We do a lot of that stuff already. I’m interested in — I’m on everybody’s Baseball Savant page all the time, so I’m just naturally more interested in these sorts of things.

“It will be more of that, to state the absolute obvious. I think the difference in this is going to be, with the Orioles when I’m working with Ben McDonald or Jim Palmer, those guys are interested in this type of thing. Even though it’s been a while since they’ve played, they take time to learn about the modern game. They take time to talk to players and coaches and people in the front office. Obviously they don’t approach it with the same analytical bent that Trevor and Mike are going to do here, so I do think our conversations just by nature will be different.

“This will be a bigger diversion of my thesis and mission statement with a lot of these games that these numbers don’t have to be scary. Yes, we’re going to flood the screen with a lot of stuff that might look a little bit frightening to the casual viewer. That’s okay. My goal with Orioles games is to take numbers that seem bigger or scary and show people why these are relevant and why this matters to the modern game, and hopefully enhance their understanding of what is a collection of some of the greatest athletes in the world.

“I think we’re going to have more tools to do that here, but I don’t think it is necessarily a sizable leap from the usual stuff I do.”

Petriello is a veteran of many ESPN Statcast broadcasts over the years . He said the focus has always been making these entertaining as well as informing, and he’s excited to see what that looks like with a recent player like May in the booth.

“I just want to jump in on something Kevin said there. I’ve done like 15 or so of these shows over the years with ESPN, and the main premise has always been this can be fun and not scary and not an algebra lesson. People worry about this show is it’s just going to be reciting launch angles, and we’re not going to do that.

“I think it’s been like three years almost since we actually did a regular season game, one of these. Not a regular season but a real game, the 2021 Wild Card game. What I’m most interested in here is, because the previous games were with Benetti and Eduardo Pérez, and they were great teammates and good friends and all that, but having Trevor is such a different perspective from Eduardo. Obviously pitcher versus hitter is one thing; Trevor played as recently as last year, whereas Eduardo is much more old school. And they bring different things to the table.

“But I think that’s so exciting to me is that we can talk about this stuff and then also say, ‘Hey, Trevor, you played like 10 minutes ago; what was it like in the bullpen?’ And I think we’re going to get through a lot of that while also focusing on the game at hand. It’s still Red Sox and Dodgers, and we can’t lose sight of that.”

Orlins said the shift from Pérez to May shows how much the Statcast conversation has changed in the last few years, as Pérez was a former player interested in learning about these numbers, while May is one who had already dove deep into them before he began broadcasting.

“I viewed Eduardo when he did this role as awesome, and he was analytically curious, interested in everything we were doing,” Orlins said. “And I view Trevor as analytically immersed, and that’s just a change in the game and the way things have happened really since the birth of Statcast in 2015. That’s where we are today versus where we were in the late 2010s.”

Orlins said he’s thrilled with the group of commentators they have here.

“I couldn’t possibly be more excited about this group. I really thought a lot particularly about who would fill Trevor’s role. I talked to a number of people about it, and candidly the moment I really started listening to Trevor on MLB Radio and on his podcast that he’s doing, Rates & Barrels , I realized that he was in a completely different space than any recently retired ex-player out there.”

“Candidly, I can’t really even put into words, kind of mind-boggling his level of sophistication within the Statcast environment. It’s really more, to be honest, aligned with, like, Mike’s way of looking at the game and thinking about the game, in many cases mixing in his own player experiences.”

“Utterly crucial, this group. And really the single most important thing we do is the differentiated way we talk about the game and look at the game in a progressive manner.”

May said he was contemplating broadcasting while still playing, but he definitely wanted to do so from a perspective of bringing the statistics conversation forward.

“I’ve kind of been projecting myself in this direction for a while now. I knew that there was going to be some — I was going to do something in this area when I was doing playing, and so I kind of devoted myself over the last few years as I developed my own personal approach to using numbers to put things into action on a field, like that’s how I needed to use numbers, and if people are using those numbers to — if players are using numbers, which a lot of them are, most of them are now, then that is something that I think the viewer experience could really benefit from because it’s so interesting.

“And I think that people want to feel closer to the game, feel like they’re more — like they have a better understanding and they’re better able to predict what might happen and know why things are happening, and if guys are making decisions like this, that’s just something pretty — it’s not as complicated as it seems, and I’ve always been interested in how do we tell that story. So this is that direct opportunity.

“I want to be part of this — I don’t want to say transition, but this burgeoning understanding of how guys are making decisions, how teams are making decisions, so that our armchair GMs at home can be better armchair GMs. I just think that’s fun. I think that’s one of the major things that is fun about sports, and we see it with the NFL and fantasy football, and everyone likes to feel like they understand how decisions are made, and this is a great way to do it.

“I wanted to bring that in, but one thing I’ve always been fascinated with was not the what’s happening. I think we’ve done a good job with that in sports. I think that’s one of the best things about watching sports on TV, but now I think we can do a little bit better job at the why. Because there’s a lot of really interesting ways to tell those stories, and these two guys have been doing it already, and I just want to add my own context to that equation.

“I think I just feel like that’s the missing piece.”

While May’s done plenty of podcasts and digital media work before this, he said getting to be on linear TV with ESPN is a neat new step for him given his history of watching the network.

“First of all, I grew up on SportsCenter before school, so ESPN is a big deal in how I grew up with sports. It’s one of those things, like it’s part of a dream I think I had. Maybe I didn’t necessarily visualize myself being on TV per se, but I have definitely been very interested in media over the last decade or so. So that’s an opportunity you just don’t want to pass up.”

Brown said he’s thrilled to get the chance to work with May and Petrillo here, and to see where their conversations on this broadcast go.

“I’m excited and curious to see where the conversation takes us because while Mike and Trevor and I have been preparing for this for a while, this is going to be the first time the three of us work together. I’m anxious in a good way to see where the conversations take us.

“I have an idea of what I want to talk about. I have a lot of ideas about what I want to engage these two about. Obviously Trevor has such a unique perspective here. …Mike has been doing these kinds of shows for a long time, and Mike and I have done a couple of Home Run Derbies together. We just did one on Monday. So I love the way his mind works, I love the way Trevor’s mind works, I love the way they see the game.”

“I think finding the mix of play-by-play versus diving super deep into a particular pitch or pitcher versus hitter matchup for three, four batters, if the moment feels right for it, is what’s going to excite me and interest me.”

This alternate broadcast is a big shift from ESPN’s last alternate SNB approach, which was the KayRod Cast with Michael Kay and Alex Rodriguez. Orlins said both of those approaches work as a complement to the traditional feed, but he’s excited to again dive into a more progressive and stat-focused area.

“We design our primary broadcast to reach the largest group of baseball fans, baseball viewers. So we designed that to reach somewhat progressive, what we call die-hard viewers, as well as our traditionalists. And then we face a choice if we want to differentiate with an alt-cast, do we want to do something that’s designed for a more casual viewer? And there’s obviously been examples of that: two years of KayRod Cast , for example, other shows that are out there, Bird, Taurasi, and Manning, and other things that are on other networks.

“The other direction to go is to go to the die-hards directly, the new schoolers and the more progressive end of our viewers, and really attack it with something that’s designed to be progressive, innovative, and look to the future of the way people are—the most aggressive and sometimes younger baseball fans are approaching this. That’s what we’ve done in the past with this, and that’s what we are excited to be doing again here.

“As for our choice, like I said, we’ve done KayRod Cast the last couple of years. We wanted to take a different turn to it this year with Statcast and go on the more aggressive and progressive route with that. We’re happy to be able to do that for sure.

And Orlins said later in the call he thinks it’s important to have these kinds of broadcasts now, as they’re reflective of much of the conversation that happens inside the game.

“This is the way the game is played for the guys on the field, most of them,” he said. “There are maybe a few outliers who are raw and don’t want to be in the analytics space, but the vast majority of the people in the game, pitchers especially, but hitters, as well, are immersed in this. It is the way front offices make decisions. It’s the way game decisions are made.

“Maybe it’s a lofty goal, but I like to think that broadcasts and commentary are and should be aligned with the way decisions are made and players are developed and their skills are developed on the field. And to fail to do that is to fail to address how the game exists in a contemporary way.

“So I think it can almost be confusing when you don’t necessarily understand where broadcasts are in a way that’s aligned with the way front offices, managers and players are looking at the game. I think it’s an important goal to try to be in step with where the game has moved so quickly.”

The full call transcript can be read on ESPN Press Room here .

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