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Gary Cohen has been part of Mets broadcasts since 1989 and their television voice since SNY’s launch in 2006. For most of the twenty years since, the job amounted to calling the game and managing two strong personalities in Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling, who’ve handled hitting and pitching analysis, respectively, since day one. That’s changed. Well, sort of. Hernandez signed a three-year extension over the winter that cut his workload from 110 games a season to 91, following what he’s described as the same gradual-exit blueprint Ralph Kiner used at the end of his own Mets broadcasting career, and Darling still splits his summer and fall with TBS’s national coverage. Filling those gaps has fallen increasingly to Daniel Murphy, groomed as Hernandez’s eventual successor since he first sat in the booth during 2024 spring training, and Todd Zeile, whose fill-in work dates back further but has occasionally drawn the ire of fans — this writer included — for stepping on Cohen’s rhythm rather than complementing it. Someone has to let Todd Zeile know that he doesn’t have to talk after every pitch. He’s not bad as an analyst, but just talks way, way too much and keeps stepping on Gary Cohen’s toes. — Sam Neumann (@Sam_Neumann_) August 10, 2024 Zeile has gotten noticeably better at it since, sanding down the rough edges until he became someone SNY could call on short notice when Keith Hernandez’s back is ailing. Some of that credit belongs to Zeile himself, who’s clearly put in the work. But it’s hard to talk about any analyst’s growth in that booth without circling back to the man they’re all sitting next to. Hernandez has called Cohen the “maestro” of the operation for a reason. He’s the one who has to make the music sound the same whether it’s Hernandez, Darling, Murphy, or Zeile playing alongside him. Since 2023, Awful Announcing’s annual local broadcaster rankings have had the Cohen-Hernandez-Darling booth finish second, then first for the first time on a record vote total, then second again, and now third this year. The fact that the booth has stayed within a spot or two of the top is itself an answer to how much Cohen has to do with holding it all together. I spoke with SNY senior coordinating producer Gregg Picker and asked him whether he thought Gary Cohen was a big part of what’s allowed Zeile and Murphy to find solid footing in that rotating role, even though it wouldn’t be fair to hold them to the same standard Hernandez and Darling have built over 20 years. “I think Gary’s a big part of every part of the success that we’ve had,” Picker said. “I marvel at his ability to multitask. During the course of a game, he’s smart enough to steer the broadcast in a direction that’s a little bit different, and you’d have to really listen carefully to understand it, but there’s a lot of nuance to what he does.” “The broadcast he steers and orchestrates is different when it’s him and Keith versus him and Ron versus the three of them all together,” Picker continued. “And when you throw in people like Daniel and Todd when they fill in, he’s very sensitive to the fact that these guys aren’t in the booth a lot, and he tries to make them as comfortable as he possibly can. He uses little nuanced ways of doing that.” Picker pointed to Cohen’s in-game multitasking as the foundation everything else is built on. “His ability to multitask during a game is rather remarkable,” Picker said. “He’s calling the game, he’s interacting with his analysts, he’s keeping track of the pitches, he’s keeping track of what’s going on around the league, and I mean not just reading off the scoreboard. He’s looking at his computer to the point where he can let you know a specific play occurred in another game while he’s doing play-by-play. His expertise at his job is a huge part of our success, no matter who’s in the booth with him.”