Blue Jays: Big change to the post-game show, ‘Jays Talk’ in 2019

After 17 years as the host of “Jays Talk”, the Blue Jays post-game radio show, Mike Wilner is passing the torch to Scott MacCarthur.

For those of us who have been watching and listening to the Blue Jays for more than a decade or two, there have been some pretty significant changes to get used to in recent years. No, I’m not talking about the (second) departure of John Gibbons, Alex Anthopoulos leaving for L.A., or even watching franchise stalwarts like Jose Bautista, Josh Donaldson, Edwin Encarnacion and many more leave for other teams.

I’m talking about the voices that we listen to, and for some of us, the voices that we’ve grown up with.

The biggest change to get used to was missing Jerry Howarth on the radio last year. For yours truly, the south of Howarth’s voice took me back to sitting in my Dad’s old car as a child, listening to the broadcast while we rolled down the highway. It was the voice that I managed to listen to for late night games, even when my folks thought I had gone to sleep (sorry Mom, that’s where the radio with the head phone jack disappeared to).

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As iconic as Howarth’s voice became for Jays fans, and as weird as it was to hear someone else, I have to hand it to the broadcast team of Ben Wagner, Mike Wilner, and Dan Shulman who made the transition a lot easier than I expected. I spend a lot of time on the road, and I quickly got used to listening to their coverage of the game, and the vast majority of the time I really enjoyed it.

Wilner might be best known for his work on “Jays Talk”, the post-game show that the Fan 590 often broadcasts after the conclusion of a game. And now that we’ve gotten used to the changes that happened last year, it looks like there is going to be another small tweak, as Wilner announced on Twitter earlier today that he will no longer be working on that segment, one that he’s been a part of for 17 years.

The torch has now been passed to Scott MacCarthur, who formerly worked with TSN. He’ll take over as the new voice of “Jays Talk”, and according to his own Twitter feed, he’ll also be the “third voice in the booth” for home games, joining Wilner and Wagner on the broadcast.

For some of you, this tweak in how things are presented will have little to no bearing, but it’s a fairly significant change for the die-hards to get used to. For what it’s worth, I’m sure I’m going to miss Wilner’s condescending tone on “Jays Talk”, even if it drove me nuts for years. There’s something comfortable about familiarity, which is probably why I’ve grown to genuinely enjoy the work of Buck Martinez and Pat Tabler on the television side, warts and all.