NBC Sports Philadelphia’s Tom McCarthy will miss the Phillies-Braves series

A familiar Phillies radio voice will return to NBC Sports Philadelphia this weekend to call the team’s pivotal three-game series against the Atlanta Braves.

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Scott Franzke, the veteran radio announcer in his 21st season calling Phillies games, will take his talents to TV to fill in for Tom McCarthy while McCarthy makes his annual trek over to the NFL.

Franzke and John Kruk will call all three Phillies-Braves games at Truist Park, beginning with Friday’s matchup. On the radio, pre- and postgame host Gregg Murphy will fill in for Franzke alongside Larry Andersen, who’s making his first road trip of the season.

While McCarthy’s jump to football isn’t anything new — it’s his 13th season as a play-by-play voice for CBS — the timing is unfortunate. The Phillies have a chance to cut into the Braves’ narrow lead in the NL East, but weren’t helped by Jhoan Duran surrendering a ninth-inning homer Thursday.

Instead, McCarthy will be about five hours south in Jacksonville, Fla., to call the Jaguars’ Week 1 matchup against the Cleveland Browns. This season he’s paired with a new partner: former Indianapolis Colts and Seattle Seahawks running back Robert Turbin, whois in his first season as an NFL color analyst.

Among other things, the game features the controversial return of quarterback Deshaun Watson, a one-time Eagles trade target who was injured last season and was given the starting job despite criticizing Browns fans who booed him.

“As the former voice of their preseason, I’m kind of used to it,” McCarthy said of the antics that seem to perennially plague the Browns.

The rest of the season, McCarthy benefits from a Phillies weekend schedule filled with national broadcasts.

Next weekend, McCarthy will miss the final two games of the Phillies’ four-game series against the New York Mets. The first two won’t air on NBC Sports Philadelphia — Thursday’s game is being broadcast by Fox, while the Sept. 18 game will be part of the Friday Night Baseball doubleheader on Apple TV.

He’ll also miss the final game of the season, Sept. 27 against the Tampa Bay Rays, which will feature former Phillies pitcher turned broadcaster Cole Hamels. McCarthy will call the first game of the Rays series Friday, while Saturday’s game will be broadcast on Fox.

McCarthy’s schedule also benefited from this year’s late Labor Day.

“It worked out that I’m missing less games this year than I normally do because the NFL season’s starting a week later,” McCarthy said.

The Eagles are set to appear twice on CBS — Oct. 18 against the Carolina Panthers and Nov. 22 vs. the Pittsburgh Steelers — but McCarthy isn’t in line to call either and has yet to broadcast a Birds game on TV.

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“I would love to do an Eagles game. I think it’d be a hoot,” McCarthy said. “But it’s one of those things where I roll with wherever they send me.”

While social media tends to be a hateful cesspool of negativity toward announcers, McCarthy has been a prolific poster for years.

Sometimes that meant answering a fan’s question about why the Phillies game wasn’t on NBC Sports Philadelphia. Often it was a funny rebuke of a nasty comment. He’s also used Twitter, now X, to defend his allegiance to the Phillies because he spent a couple seasons calling Mets games and his son, Patrick, handles New York’s pre- and postgame coverage on radio.

But his last post on X was more than two months ago. Why the long silence?

“I just got to the point between the algorithms and all the negativity and all the stories that were untrue,” McCarthy said. “It wasn’t something I really wanted to be associated with it anymore.”

If you miss interacting with McCarthy on social media, you can always follow him on Instagram, where he posts photos from the broadcast booth and connects with fans. He also likes that his feed is focused on baseball and golf.

“I can reset it pretty quickly if I feel like it’s too, let’s say, political,” McCarthy said.

That is the combined total of Phillies’ wins and/or losses by the teams on the outside looking in that are needed to secure at least the third wild-card berth and a spot in the playoffs.