3/27/09

Chris Carlin and Bob Ojeda: Your new pre- and post-game hosts on SNY

In the seemingly ever-revolving door that is SNY hosts, the Mets have two new ones this year for their pre-game and post-game shows. Chris Carlin, who is most likely known from WFAN and Loud Mouths on SNY, and Bob Ojeda, who spent five years with the Mets from 1986 to 1990.

From Bob Raissman:
When SportsNet New York executive producer Curt Gowdy Jr. tore the cover off Carlin, he liked what he saw inside. Liked what Carlin, often self-deprecating, had to say, too. First he hired him to co-host "Loud Mouths" with bug-eyed Adam Schein.

Gowdy is now really rolling the dice. Carlin, with no experience in a baseball studio, will be under the nightly microscope anchoring SNY's Mets pre and postgame shows. Bob Ojeda, who proudly admits to being a total TV novice, will sit next to him. The openings were man-made after SNY jettisoned the team of Lee Mazzilli and Matt Yallof.
It's not up to me to judge them -- I'll leave that to Raissman and Neil Best -- but to put an extremely abrasive Carlin with no baseball experience and a novice like Ojeda in front of millions of fans on the team's own network just doesn't make sense to me.

I've never been a fan of Carlin's, so that's where some of this stems from. He just irks me. I'm willing to see what Ojeda has to offer, though. Lee Mazzilli was great last year, as was Harold Reynolds and Darryl Strawberry.

All the best to these two hosts, because I know I'll be seeing a lot of them in 2009. And maybe, just maybe, Gowdy will tear the cover off me one day and like what he sees.