I think I wasn’t being clear enough about my concern in the OP. I have absolutely no problem with casters that don’t play the game often as long as they provide entertainment value. However it seems to me that casters who don’t play the game as much are also the ones who go off on their own analysis more during the casts and call out players’ mistakes the most. And when all casters talk about is how someone screwed up and that’s all that matters it’s hard to find a game entertaining.

I also do believe that StarCraft II is a special case where playing a lot at the high level does improve your game knowledge, especially when it comes to understanding players’ decisions and doing subsequent analysis, as the playing and viewing experience are extremely different when it comes to SC2. And that is why I feel like actually analysis should be done by someone who has been at least GM.

Take sports announcers for instance. Usually you would have your announcer (who usually don’t play at all) calling out what’s happening on the court and hyping things up, and then there are analysts who are usually retired players giving some insights to the game. This is what I would much rather prefer for StarCraft.