Sporting News ranks Hawk Harrelson ahead of Rod Allen and Mario Impemba

Jesse Spector at The Sporting News is doing an ongoing series where he ranks various baseball broadcast teams. Tuesday he ranked Fox Sport Detroit's own Mario Impemba and Rod Allen. Of course, depending on where you stand on the matter, Spector may lose a ton of credibility in your view when you see that he ranked Hawk Harrelson and Steve Stone ahead of Mario and Rod.

Spector criticizes Rod Allen for "offering pablum about obviously better numbers being better and Verlander wanting to work ahead in the count the way that all pitchers do," but finds it positively charming when he quotes Hawk Harrelson as saying "I would say [the Red Sox] and Oakland are the two attitude clubs in the American League ... I mean they have ... the will to win," noting that "Harrelson is praising two of the most analytics-influenced organizations in baseball on the virtues of intangibles."

Still, even after noting Hawk's well-known warts as a broadcaster (the biggest one being that he doesn't actually call the play-by-play), Spector has ranked Harrelson and Stone at number five on his list of 12 teams reviewed, while Mario and Rod got ranked at number six.