{"id":2048,"date":"2026-01-06T20:38:24","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T20:38:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/?p=2048"},"modified":"2026-01-06T20:38:24","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T20:38:24","slug":"possible-candidates-for-nbcs-baseball-coverage-revealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/sports-media\/possible-candidates-for-nbcs-baseball-coverage-revealed\/","title":{"rendered":"Possible Candidates For NBC&#8217;s Baseball Coverage Revealed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Opening Day is coming quickly for Major League Baseball, and with a new home for Sunday Night Baseball in 2026, NBC appears to be zeroing in on a pair of young broadcasters to possibly be the play-by-play voice nationwide for their coverage.<\/p>\n<h2>Benetti, Brown Look To be Finalists For Play-by-play<\/h2>\n<p>Ryan Glasspiegel of <em>Front Office Sports<\/em> reported on Monday that <a  href=\"https:\/\/frontofficesports.com\/jason-benetti-nbc-baseball\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Detroit Tigers television broadcaster Jason Benetti looked to be the front-runner for the job at NBC<\/a>, but Andrew Marchand of <em>The Athletic<\/em> said Tuesday while Benetti is a candidate, he also mentioned <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/6946207\/2026\/01\/06\/clayton-kershaw-nbc-peacock-mlb\/?source=emp_shared_article\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Baltimore Orioles play-by-play voice Kevin Brown as a name also in the mix<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Benetti in ebtering his third year as the television play-by-play broadcaster for the Tigers.\u00a0 Prior to coming to Detroit, he was the play-by-play voice of the Chicago White Sox for eight seasons, plus broadcasted the Sunday Leadoff games when NBC held the rights on Peacock.\u00a0 He has also called baseball and college football and basketball for Fox Sports since 2022.\u00a0 His college football broadcast partner, Robert Griffin III, gave him a shining endorsement on social media upon learning of the report.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Jason Benetti has EARNED whatever he wants. Smart, funny, entertaining and always captures the moment. Welcomed me at Fox Sports with open arms. Made me better and showed the sports world that a booth doesn\u2019t have to sacrifice knowledge for entertainment. YOU CAN DO BOTH. <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/wRiljuBn7b\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/t.co\/wRiljuBn7b<\/a> <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/hlGyGQlQjM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/hlGyGQlQjM<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Robert Griffin III (@RGIII) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RGIII\/status\/2008384483943199190?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">January 6, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Brown cut his teeth with the Washington Nationals as the broadcaster of their AAA affiliate, the Syracuse Chiefs, in 2011 before become the radio broadcaster for the Orioles in 2019, eventually becoming the team&#8217;s television broadcaster in 2022.\u00a0 He also called high school and college football, hockey, and basketball on ESPN beginning in 2016.\u00a0 Brown&#8217;s most controversial moment came in 2023, when he was critical of the Orioles&#8217; poor road record at Tropicana Field and was suspended by the team.\u00a0 That led to chants of &#8220;Free Kevin Brown&#8221; at Camden Yards.\u00a0 He&#8217;d return to the booth after missing nearly three weeks.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Chants of \u201cFree Kevin Brown\u201d erupt at Camden Yards.<\/p>\n<p>This is the TBS telecast. I did not hear this on MASN. <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/OSchZsrwpc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/OSchZsrwpc<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 John Ourand (@Ourand_Puck) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Ourand_Puck\/status\/1689080907045412864?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">August 9, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Marchand also reports that NBC is eyeing recently-retired Dodgers left-hander Clayton Kershaw as a possible analyst for their studio coverage and could be in the booth for &#8220;a game or two.&#8221;\u00a0 NBC previously used the television color commentators for the individual teams when they last had baseball broadcasts, and could easily continue that practice.\u00a0 NBC Sports president Rick Cordella told <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsmediawatch.com\/2025\/12\/nbc-mlb-studio-robert-griffin-iii-nfl-broadcast-notre-dame-freeze-out\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">sports media writer Richard Deitsch last year<\/a> that the network was planning on doing an on-site studio show for their broadcasts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Opening Day is coming quickly for Major League Baseball, and with a new home for Sunday Night Baseball in 2026, NBC appears to be zeroing in on a pair of young broadcasters to possibly be the play-by-play voice nationwide for their coverage. Benetti, Brown Look To be Finalists For Play-by-play Ryan Glasspiegel of Front Office [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5660,"featured_media":2050,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[274,277,238,266],"tags":[432,75,430,431],"class_list":["post-2048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fox-sports","category-nbcsn","category-sports-media","category-networks","tag-clayton-kershaw","tag-featured","tag-jason-benetti","tag-kevin-brown"],"modified_by":"Steve Carney","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5660"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2048"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2052,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2048\/revisions\/2052"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}