Report: The Orioles Removed Play By Play Announcer Kevin Brown From Their Booth For Simply Bringing Up Stats About How Bad The Team Was In Previous Seasons

Baltimore Sun. Getty Images.

Everything for the 2023 Orioles has come up sunshine and rainbows. Their injection of youth has taken over the American League and propelled them near the top of the sport. Adley, Gunnar, Hays, Santander, Bradish, Grayson the list goes on and on with how talented this roster is. It's August 7th and they have 70 wins! This of course is happening in spite of having one of the worst owners in the league, who in the offseason claimed he cared more about concerts at Camden Yards than raising payroll. Well, turns out the Angelos family couldn't help themselves and had to dip their hands in the cookie jar. 

The Baltimore Orioles’ lead TV play-by-play voice since 2022 on MASN has worked for the team in a variety of broadcast capacities since 2019, in addition to his work for ESPN (and no, he is not the former MLB pitcher, who did also play for the Orioles). Brown has been off the TV airwaves since calling the end of the team’s series against the Tampa Bay Rays on July 23. He shifted to radio for a series against the Philadelphia Phillies after that, and then has been off the air entirely since that series’ July 26 conclusion.

Awful Announcing has confirmed through multiple sources familiar with the situation that Brown has been suspended indefinitely, that it came after the Rays series, that he only wound up on the radio for the Phillies’ series thanks to another controversy about a different announcer’s apparel, and that the comment here seems to be what’s at issue. (source) 

Suspending your announcer for bringing up how bad you've been in the past to help explain how great you are now is bizarre. Maybe Kevin Brown phrased it poorly? Would still be hard to defend the O's, but let's go to the tape. 

THAT'S IT? You suspended the guy for stating facts during a segment your MASN crew titled "Trop-Ical Depression" and thought that was warranted? He's just reciting numbers on a screen. Baseball is a game that's built around these kind of trends, stats, and history. Bringing it up as the O's are on the brink of success they haven't achieved in six years is a bad thing? I can't comprehend how dumb a decision to suspend this dude is. What is happening? 

Glad we have our O's guy telling everyone this is a nothing burger. 

Get Kevin Brown back on the air immediately. Did the Orioles really think no one would dig into the voice of the O's being yanked off the broadcast out of nowhere? For the first time in years people are following this team on a nightly basis. They're under a bigger microscope than maybe ever and they suspended their top announcer for talking about stats. John Angelos is a special kind of thin-skinned asshole.