You people need a villain to root against, don’t you?
Well, also, a playoffs without the Yankees and Red Sox is going to have some ratings issues. At least the Dodgers and Cubs are doing well.
And? Why the hell would I care about a possible decline in advertising revenue for Fox and the other broadcasters? They’ve already paid MLB for the broadcast rights. My experience of the games is not affected by how many other people are or aren’t watching, and I’m much more interested in having a finals series that piques my interest as a fan than a finals series that gets higher television ratings.
It’s pretty clear from discussions in baseball threads on this message board that many people who are truly baseball fans will watch the playoffs no matter who’s playing. I know that I’ll watch them no matter what, although my interest actually increases when some of the big teams are out of it, because that means that there’s a better chance of a long-time also-ran winning the World Series. That is interesting to me. If Yankees or Red Sox or Cubs or Dodgers supporters are so parochial that they won’t even watch the playoffs when their team is out of it, that’s their loss, not my problem.
Of course, there are some other factors that push against playoff ratings, including the ridiculously slow pace of the games, and the stupidly late starting time for east coast viewers.
Ratings are always important in regards to future broadcast opportunities. I remember the year I couldn’t watch the AL playoffs because they were on TBS, and my skinny cable streaming bundle did not have that channel (though I think they all have it now?).
If having an AL playoff without either the Yankees or Red Sox would mean I might miss seeing some of next year’s playoff games, I’ll gladly make the sacrifice.
Ratings will continue to go down as competing content increases. And yet, revenue continues to rise to record levels. Local broadcasting rights also continue to generate record levels of revenue.
I really don’t care about what sort of ratings the World Series generates. I want to know what sort of ratings your average Sunday Night Baseball game between an average Yankees team and a terrible Red Sox team makes versus, say, the red hot San Diego Padres and the Oakland As. I’d far rather watch the latter than the former right now, and it’s perplexing why ESPN doesn’t see that (it’s obviously ratings, but I’d like to see the numbers).
It’s easy to shit on ESPN, but they obviously know what makes them money (as their ridiculously high cable carriage fee indicates). The main issue, I find, with ESPN is that they prioritize the easy money over trying to build something that may benefit them in the long run (so bad Yankees vs. bad Red Sox over smaller market teams). Then again, maybe that’s the purview of MLB rather than a broadcast partner - because ESPN knows if someone offers MLB more money, that’ll be end of MLB on ESPN.
Agreed. They’ve been terrible the last 10 years about chasing the hot story, and just BEATING it into the ground. I remember how you couldn’t got 60 seconds on ESPN without either hearing about, or reading on the ticker about Tim Tebow or Johnny Manziel. It was excruciating. I know they went through a massive downscaling, laying off reporters and broadcasters left and right.
The only issue is that I don’t have much faith in FS1 (their main competition here - TBS is not going to go full in while they have NBA rights) to do any better. As an MLS fan, FS1 is far worse than ESPN in terms of the hot takes (though that’s mainly because they continue to employ Alexi Lalas).
I honestly didn’t think that was possible! I really don’t think I’ve watched anything on ESPN in years - the constant stream of screaming from Stephen A. Smith, Skip Bayless and Jason Whitlock turned me off. I’m just tired of the fight for the hottest take.
Of course he does. The Padres are just on fire this “season” so the wheels had to come off sometime. Idjit.
Skip Bayless is now on FS1 (he has a show with Shannon Sharpe… it’s worse than you could possibly expect). Jason Whitlock was also on FS1 until he was fired this summer. And FS1 has Colin Cowherd’s radio show for a few hours every weekday. They’ve decided to try to out talking head ESPN.
Brewers beat the Tigers 19-0, outhitting them 21-2 with 13 extra-base hits. Outfielder Travis Demeritte made his MLB pitching debut in the 9th and gave up four runs, so he now has a 36.0 ERA to go along with his .182 BA.
In the bottom of the first yesterday the Padres scored five runs on one hit. Walk, walk, walk, rbi hit by pitch, grand slam. It got me wondering what the most runs on fewest hits ever was. Someone on reddit pointed out a White Sox game in 1959.
Up 8-6 to start the top of the 7th, they scored 11 runs on 1 hit. Chicago White Sox vs Kansas City Athletics Box Score: April 22, 1959 | Baseball-Reference.com
E6, E5, single, walk, walk, walk, walk, ground out, walk, walk, walk, hit by pitch, walk, k, walk, walk, ground out.
No hitter? Perfect game? Triple play? Nah - that’s the inning I wish I’d been there to see.
Right now with one out in the bottom of the 8th, the Braves lead the Marlins 29-9. The modern record for most runs scored in a game is 30.
I knew this was going to be a chaotic year, but god damn the last few weeks had absurd scorelines all over the place. Seems like every time I see the ESPN ticker some team has scored 17+ in a game, or 9+ in an inning.
I chalk it up to fatigue based on the tight schedule. Teams are either overusing pitchers (along with guys seeing them more often on shorter breaks) or calling up guys who aren’t really ready to help rest the regular rotation/bullpen. No stats to back it up, just gut feel.
On the other hand, the Cubs/Brewers had a pitcher’s duel tonight. 6 total hits and 20+ combined strike outs. Brewers won on a walk-off sac fly unfortunately. The ump had a really loose zone which definitely helped the hurlers.
There are no good names on the Cincinnati Reds’ roster any more.
The 1905 team had Admiral Schlei (starting catcher), Cozy Dolan, Noodles Hahn, Rip Vowinkel and Orval Overall.
Overall won 18 games that year, but lost 23.* Rip Vowinkel went 3-3.
*he made up for it by going 23-7 in 1907 for the World Series champion Cubs.
To date, there have been 703 pitchers used, the 6th highest total in MLB history. (I just saw this this morning on Twitter.)
And that’s in only about the equivalent of about a quarter of a normal season. Extrapolated to 60 games, that’s 937 pitchers. However, I doubt that they could possibly use more than the about 830 pitchers used last year (in 162 games per team.)