Do Baseball Announcers Ignore Reality?

Some ESPN announcers seem to have a very selective memory.

Last week NASN gave us three Spring Training games, but for some reason they won't be showing another baseball game until the 18th. So I've been watching once again an ESPN game between the Mets and the Indians from last Friday. The announcers keep telling me how Cleveland's Cliff Lee got knocked off the mound in the first inning. Only it really wasn't like that.

Lee got two quick outs, then gave up a double. The next batter hit a fly that the minor league center fielder chased and just missed. Not scored as an error, but a starting Major League outfielder would have caught the fly for the third out. Instead a run scored, but it wasn't the pitcher's fault.

Lee gets two strikes on the next batter, then throws a ball right down the middle (which the announcers point out) which the umpire calls a ball. The batter, who actually struck out for the fourth out of the inning, ends up with a walk...and the announcers later talk over and over again about the walk Lee gave up, which they know was actually a strike out.

The next batter hits a grounder past the minor league third baseman, which once again, a starting Major League infielder would have caught. That was the fifth out of the inning.

Apparently shaken up by this lack of support, Lee then issues a bases loaded walk (this time on a couple of very close pitches that certainly didn't mean he had lost his control) and as far as the ESPN announcers are concerned he didn't have his stuff.

Have the announcers been issued orders that the umps are always right, and never to refer afterwards to bad calls or poor plays unless the official scorer calls them errors? Fortunately for Cliff Lee his manager knows what happened, and it was only Spring Training.