It’s not yet clear how Major League Baseball will look in 2022. But that isn’t quite the case for the Orioles’ television and radio broadcast lineups.
Baltimore’s full group of broadcasters for the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network and the Orioles Radio Network will return for 2022, according to multiple sources who were not authorized to speak publicly because the team has not yet announced the moves.
Roles will change, in some cases significantly, but the men and the woman who have called Orioles baseball over the past two seasons will all be back in 2022.
The most significant difference is Kevin Brown, in his fourth year calling Orioles games, will serve as MASN’s primary play-by-play broadcaster, replacing Scott Garceau. Brown is set to call about 130 games, according to The Athletic, which was the first to report the broadcasters’ returns, but that number is dependent on a full season being played. Amid the ongoing lockout imposed by the league on its players’ union, Opening Day could be delayed as soon as Monday.
Brown’s increased usage on MASN will see Garceau move into a role split between television and radio; the club’s flagship station changed from 105.7 The Fan to WBAL NewsRadio AM/FM in January. Garceau, a longtime Baltimore sports broadcasting staple who also spent 13 seasons calling Orioles games in the 1980s and 1990s, will perform play-by-play on both broadcasts as well as occasionally host pre- and postgame shows.
Melanie Newman and Geoff Arnold will also occasionally fill in for Brown on MASN in addition to radio play-by-play, which Brett Hollander will also handle on top of some pregame, postgame and sideline work for MASN. All three are in their third season on the broadcast team.
Newman will be the first woman to perform television play-by-play in team history; her work on the Orioles Radio Network gave her that distinction on the radio side in 2020. In July, she handled play-by-play for MLB’s first all-woman broadcast, doing so for an Orioles game against the Tampa Bay Rays broadcast on YouTube.
Former Orioles pitchers Jim Palmer and Ben McDonald will work alongside Brown as the color commentators on MASN broadcasts, with former Oriole Dave Johnson also rejoining the broadcast team for select television and radio appearances. This will be Palmer’s 30th season as a MASN analyst.
Rob Long will be MASN’s primary pregame and postgame host, while MASN writers Roch Kubatko and Steve Melewski will also make appearances on the network.
The stasis in the number of broadcasters is welcome after the past couple of seasons, which saw the Orioles work with a reduced lineup in 2020 before letting go of several familiar faces, including Gary Thorne, Jim Hunter, Rick Dempsey and Mike Bordick, before 2021.
The Orioles have yet to decide whether broadcasts for road games will be handled remotely, as has been the case the past two seasons amid the coronavirus pandemic. Rather than being live at the ballpark when the Orioles are not in Baltimore, the broadcasters have been at Camden Yards, calling the game off monitors showing various camera feeds from the other team’s broadcast crew.