The San Francisco Giants’ broadcast team came up just short of the top spot in a national fan poll, finishing second in Awful Announcing’s annual rankings during Mike Krukow’s final season.
Awful Announcing released its latest survey on Wednesday, with more than 9,300 fans weighing in on all 30 MLB local broadcast crews. The site asks readers to grade each team on an A-to-F scale, then turns those votes into a grade-point average. The evaluation goes beyond the lead booth, too, taking in the full broadcast group - play-by-play voices, color analysts and in-game reporters.
For the Giants, that meant Krukow, Duane Kuiper, Dave Flemming and Jon Miller, along with fill-in voices Glen Kuiper, Javier López, Shawn Estes and Hunter Pence. Their second-place finish marked a step up from last year, when they placed third behind the San Diego Padres and the New York Mets’ crew. The Padres again claimed first place this year, while the Giants couldn’t quite ride the wave of Krukow’s looming retirement all the way back to No. 1, a perch they last held in 2023.
Still, the crew’s standing says plenty about how much fans value the Giants’ booth, especially with the team’s on-field product not giving them much help. Krukow and Kuiper have not exactly shied away from pointing that out.
“There are none better,” one reader said in their submission, per Awful Announcing. “It will not be the same next year without Krukow, but because of the other big three, it will still be great.”
The Giants finished with a 3.02 average, just behind the 3.07 posted by their NL West rival. Awful Announcing also noted that fan sentiment toward broadcast teams has slipped overall, especially over the past two years.
Even so, one thing has stayed steady across all nine editions of the survey: Krukow, Kuiper and company have remained near the top. They’ve earned four first-place finishes and have never finished lower than third.
That run will face a new test next season, when Krukow is no longer a regular presence in the booth for the first time since 1994.
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