Kirk Herbstreit spends most of his year screaming about college football. But this week, he trained his fire on a different sport entirely. And he didn’t hold back.
The ESPN analyst went on an extended tirade on X this week, responding to former Yankees catcher Jorge Posada, who had called modern baseball “garbage.” Herbstreit not only agreed — he doubled down, hard.
“The game has been dying with the youth of America for YEARS and now is losing the core fanbase as well with this ridiculous product we’ve had to digest for the last 7-10 years,” Herbstreit wrote. “Bring back Small Ball and athleticism…this s*** dreadful!!!”
The rant didn’t stop there. He rattled off a series of complaints about the state of the game, from starting pitchers not going deep enough to the absence of clutch hitting in late innings.
“Where’s Tony Gwynn? Rod Carew? Wade Boggs? Ichiro?” he wrote. “Those guys wouldn’t exist in today’s ridiculous HR or K ‘launch angle’ game!”
What’s eating Herbstreit
It’s not just one thing. Herbstreit basically threw the entire modern MLB playbook into the trash. He went after the over-reliance on analytics, the shorter outings from starters, the lack of small ball and base stealing. In his view, the game has become a dull, predictable math problem instead of an athletic competition.
And honestly? He’s not alone in that opinion.
Posada kicked this whole thing off by saying you can’t judge Derek Jeter through a computer. Herbstreit clearly agrees. The former catcher’s comments, reported by NYY.NEWS, struck a nerve among traditionalists who think the sport has lost its soul to launch angles and exit velocities.
MLB keeps changing, fans keep grumbling
Baseball has undergone a ton of changes in the last few years. The pitch clock sped up games. The automated strike zone is being tested. Technology is everywhere now, from Statcast to computerized ump evaluations.
Some of it has worked. Games are shorter. The average fan doesn’t have to sit through three-minute stretches of a pitcher adjusting his hat. But the trade-off, at least according to Herbstreit and Posada, is that the game looks different. Less human. More like a spreadsheet with cleats.
Herbstreit’s rant hit a nerve online, with plenty of fans piling on to complain about three-true-outcome baseball — the tendency for every at-bat to end in a home run, a strikeout, or a walk. Others pointed out that the game has always evolved, and that today’s players are more athletic than ever.
Neither side is likely to convince the other. But when a guy like Herbstreit, who has a massive platform and watches sports for a living, says the product is “dreadful,” it’s not just hot air. It’s a sign that the divide between old-school and new-school baseball isn’t going away anytime soon.
MLB keeps tweaking the rules. The pitch clock is here. The automated strike zone is coming. Whether any of that satisfies folks like Herbstreit is a different question entirely.
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