Nice to Met You: Keith Raad

Happy Cyber Monday! Until Midnight ET tonight you can get a yearly subscription to The Mets Newsletter at 20 percent off! To put it another way, you would only pay for eight months of the newsletter, but you get 12 months of access. It’s highway robbery, basically. 

When Wayne Randazzo left the Mets radio booth after the 2022 season, Keith Raad and Pat McCarthy stepped in to work alongside Howie Rose. Raad (along with McCarthy) has been on the WCBS and WHSQ airwaves for three years now, not to mention appearing on a semi-regular basis as a panelist on SNY’s Baseball Night in New York. But how well do we know him, really? I asked Raad 10 questions to get to know him a little better. 

I think everybody knows the part of your origin story where you broadcast games for the Brooklyn Cyclones. How did you get that gig?

Funny story about two Mets broadcasters in the making. In 2017 when I worked in Frisco, Texas for the RoughRiders (Texas Rangers), I had been in the minors for a few years and had read the writing on the wall about making in-roads and connections with the right people to be around the job you want. I was outside of Dallas working with people from the Rangers. It felt like the closest connection I had during my time in the minors thus far. I realized then that I wanted to work for the Brooklyn Cyclones and get in with a great organization and then with the Mets nearby and try the strategy in New York City. The broadcaster for the Cyclones was Jake Eisenberg who later worked with Howie Rose and Wayne Randazzo on WCBS and now has a great gig with the Kansas City Royals doing TV and radio. We knew each other, I DM'd him on Twitter to get the convo going that I would come back to the Cyclones and work as his assistant just to get rolling. It was all planned out until he departed that offseason for a full-season gig with the Winston-Salem Dash and I rose to the lead broadcaster. Just great timing. 

When you found out you were going to join the Mets radio booth, how did you celebrate?

My wife Kaitlyn and I did what we love to do, which is find a great restaurant and eat a great dinner. We lived walking distance and celebrated at Campagnola on the Upper East Side. Unforgettable!

You made the jump from broadcasting games for the Brooklyn Cyclones to the New York Mets in 2023. What was that transition like? (I personally would have been paralyzed with fear.)

I was ready for the challenge. It's no doubt scary because it's the start of something new. But by then I felt my on-air talents were ready enough to get started and I had heard from a lot of MLB broadcasters that I had "the sound." At that point it's a matter of learning, learning, learning. Even though I know the Mets it's about learning the people, places, and the league. How things work. And, of course, learning how to work with Howie Rose. 

Was there a specific moment when you realized ‘Okay, I got this’?

That first spring training game in West Palm Beach working with Howie for the first time was a moment I'll never forget. I was up early, prepping bios on anyone and everyone who would play or be on the roster. In Spring Training that's close to 60 players. Kinda crazy. Woke up early (did not really sleep) and took some deep breaths. Once Howie fired it over to me for my first inning of play-by-play, the training of the previous 10 years kicked in. The 10,000 hours theme kicked in and I just got rolling. But it was amazing to think that the way I called a ground ball to short in the minors was the same way I did it in the majors. 

What kind of scorecard do you use? I know Ron Darling and yours truly use the ones designed by Bob Carpenter, but everyone seems to have different ones.

Don't tell Bob but I ripped his scorecard! I used his book for a few years and then tweaked some things and sections to what works for me. I rebuilt a scorecard on Adobe InDesign that I use with added spots for starting pitcher bios and more note space. Not too different. I love seeing Ron Darling's book, Keith Hernandez's book, and Howie's book. The same game but all in a different language. 

You had to work solo for a Sunday night game in June when Pat McCarthy was informed his wife was having their child. Was that a challenge? It didn’t seem like you were too thrown by the situation, although you commented that it was a little weird once or twice.

Ha. That was another unforgettable game. Sunday Night Baseball. Howie was off so it was myself and Pat. Pat gets the call at 5:30 and bolts and here I am doing pregame "and we'll send it over to Keith for the game...thanks Keith! Okay that's the ballgame let's send it over to Keith for the postgame!..Thanks Keith! It was fun. Great, but felt like a lot of me! Happy to do it all of course but hoped that everyone at home listening understood why in the world only one guy was on the air for nearly five hours. 

Growing up, did anybody make fun of your last name? Or maybe it was embraced?

Some people think it's made up for broadcasting actually but it's definitely been an asset. People have fun with it. Our elementary school gym teacher called me Raad Dude and that stuck for many years. I've heard Raadical, Raad Man. It's all good. 

A decent amount of time has passed where recency bias might not be involved: Was 2024 the best non-championship season in Mets history? At the very least, was it the most entertaining?

What made 2024 so magical was the flip from low to high. Jorge Lopez's glove flip into the crowd was the very bottom while adding Jose Iglesias and going on the run as the best record in baseball from June on was magical. Certainly 1973 was amazing in Mets history in a season that fell just short. That team got insanely close. But the 2024 Mets have a special place in team history -- modern history -- because of the games down the stretch meaning so much every night and the vibes! OMG, Candelita, Grimace, and so much more memorable off the field moments that were part of the journey. 

Have you ever pretended to understand one of Howie Rose’s references to something that happened before your time, or have you always been honest with him about that?

If I did that I would have been called a fraud on day one! He fires off reference after reference after reference and it's tough when most of them fly over my head. However, when I learned that most of them fly over everybody's head "unless you're of a certain age -- a fossil!" like Howie would say then it made me much more comfortable. Also, what I've found too is that I am the audience on these most times. If every time Howie said "have you heard about this?" and I said yes, well there's no reason for him to jump into a great back story and the audience listening that doesn't know it gets nothing out of it. So I've played those straight every time. 

If you could change or create one Major League Baseball rule, what would it be and why?

Now that baseball is adding the ABS system to get the strike zone calls right, I'll fire a weirdo one at you. It's always bugged me that if a pitcher makes an error and that player scores, it's scored as an unearned run. Blasphemy! Pitchers should throw the ball into the crowd to lower their ERAs all day long. I'm joking but not really. Small one. I personally think the game is in a great spot with the pitch clock, the travel, the athleticism returning with the shift ban, and now finally the ABS system squaring any egregious calls. 

According to Will Sammon at The Athletic, Kodai Senga would rather stay with the Mets than be traded away to another team. Since he only has a limited no-trade clause (he can nix deals to 10 different teams), it’s not really up to him. But it’s nice that he wants to stay I suppose. It would be a bad look for the franchise if he wanted out. 

Manny Gómez, who was the Mets beat writer at NJ Advance Media until the end of last season, tweeted over the weekend “don’t read too much” into the Juan Soto/Francisco Lindor relationship.

The tweet was in response to Mike Puma’s already infamous article in the New York Post on Friday that we talked about in Saturday’s newsletter. I stand by my theory that this will end with Soto and Lindor wearing the same outfit on the first day of camp. 

New York’s Gaming Facility Location Board is going to award up to three casino licenses today. One of the remaining bidders is Steve Cohen’s Metropolitan Park project, which would put a casino near Citi Field, among other things. 

Desmond McGowan, who worked in the Mets analytics department with a focus on the MLB Draft, was poached by the Washington Nationals to lead their amateur scouting department.

Anthony DiComo will be hosting a Reddit AMA this morning.