Jason Benetti explains how he left Fox early to become NBC’s MLB play-by-play announcer

After months of speculation that he was the leading candidate to become NBC’s lead MLB play-by-play announcer, Jason Benetti was officially announced for that role earlier this month.

Benetti, who is also the TV voice of the Detroit Tigers, had been doing play-by-play work for Fox Sports since 2002. However, when he got the call to be the No. 1 guy at NBC, he couldn’t say no.

Fox could have said no, though. And because his contract didn’t expire for several months, joining NBC could have been much harder given the timing. As Benetti tells it, the company was incredibly accommodating in helping make the transition happen.

“First of all, let me say, I had to get out of my contract at Fox a couple of months early, and all credit to [Fox Sports Executive VP/Head of Production & Operations] Brad Zager over there for being willing to let me pursue this opportunity,” Benetti said when asked how he got from Fox to NBC on a media call. “Had they not done that, it would have been very difficult to make this happen. So I thank Brad for doing that.”

Benetti, who had previously worked for NBC between 2021 and 2022, said that he and NBC Sports Executive Producer & President, Production, Sam Flood, also had an understanding regarding the possibility of MLB returning to the company.

“Sam and I always joked after 2022 — and he was serious, and it turned out I was, too — that if NBC ever got baseball back in this sort of state, that I would be on the list of people that he would call,” Benetti said. “And I firmly appreciate that.”

Benetti will work alongside a rotating collection of local analysts during Sunday Night Baseball, an arrangement that he finds very appealing.

“The format just makes a lot of sense to me. It makes a lot of sense that you would want to have the announcers that know the teams best. But also with the curiosity that baseball provides, there’s always another detail to dig in on. There’s always another stat to remember to think about,” he said. “And all of the conversation you can have with different people about the teams, there’s so many personality types who love baseball. And to have all those different personality types representative over the course of the season in the booth, I think, is phenomenally interesting.”

Benetti will be joined by Orel Hershiser and Luis Gonzalez for NBC’s MLB Opening Day call of the game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks on Thursday, March 26.