Otto von Ballpark
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Everything posted by Otto von Ballpark
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Next are you going to question MLB's priorities based on the fact they allow their games to be delayed or even postponed by weather, unlike the NHL or NBA?
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Every MLB team plays virtually every day for 6 months, they don't need to set the whole national broadcast schedule 4 months in advance. The NHL and NBA need to determine it in advance because the teams don't play every night. They can't decide midseason to feature a certain club on their Sunday afternoon showcase if the team plays on Saturday that week instead. This is just scheduling logistics, not a failing of MLB. If anything, being able to pick more relevant late season matchups outweighs the advantage of being able to plan your TV watching months in advance.
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I edited my post. The current MLB.com schedule is basically just what has been confirmed. Later season matchups will be selected at a later date, but I assure you that ESPN is not just abandoning Sunday Night Baseball midsummer. Here is a decent rundown: http://awfulannouncing.com/mlb/2017-mlb-national-broadcast-primer.html Here is where I got 72 Fox/FS1 games: http://www.foxsports.com/presspass/latest-news/2017/02/22/fox-sports-set-for-22nd-season-of-major-league-baseball-coverage
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ESPN hasn't announced all of their specific games yet. But they broadcast 2 games per week all season, Sunday and Wednesday. Plus holidays. TBS broadcasts start in July. They usually have some good pennant race games in the final weeks, they announce those later too.
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Levi, I have no idea where you got 60. MLB has 72 games on Fox/FS1 this year, another ~50 on ESPN, and I think 13 on TBS. That is more like 135, without considering MLB Network.
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Nathan's conversion was mostly done in San Fran. He was a top setup guy there before he became our closer. Not that it refutes your point, but I wonder if most teams don't have a similar record in this regard. It seems common enough.
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Next Roster Move: Pitcher for Batter, but Whom?
Otto von Ballpark replied to caninatl04's topic in Minnesota Twins Talk
FWIW, Pressly could be optioned too. Like Gibson, I don't know if it is particularly likely or even advisable, but it is technically possible. -
If anything, the schedule length is a challenge that MLB has to overcome in this comparison. A national TV partner like ESPN knows that adding, say, a Tuesday night national MLB game is going to be going head-to-head with every team's local RSN that same night. Whereas the NBA and NHL have lighter daily schedules, half the teams in the league will be idle on any given day. That might help explain why MLB has a lower proportion of games on non-league networks than the NBA. It's not clear to me that MLB's present national broadcast strategy is appreciably different than those of the NBA or NHL, once you account for factors mostly out of their control like schedule length and the inherent nature of each sport (i.e. the superstar effects).
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The NBA fares better, with 165 regular season games on TNT/ESPN/ABC, although I note that was a new record rather than a yearly norm: http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/nba-tv-schedule/ This site says 90 regular season games on NBA TV (again, I welcome a better source if you have one): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_TV An absolute total less than MLB. MLB plays twice as many games so you might think proportionally the NBA would have an advantage, but I am not sure how important that is since their season schedules are both about 6 months long. A Sunday night national MLB broadcast shouldn't be considered less exposure than a Sunday night NBA national broadcast, just because those two MLB teams also played the previous day and the NBA teams did not. Obviously there are more factors -- I am sure national NBA games are more marketable because the star players are guaranteed more involvement, etc., but just in terms of the parameters of this debate, I don't think you can criticize MLB for significantly holding back their product nationally compared to the NHL or NBA.
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I just showed you that MLB has a national TV game on virtually every day for 6 months. How does the NBA or NHL clearly beat that? I count ~106 NHL games listed for NBC/NBCSN here: http://blog.timesunion.com/sportsmedia/2016-17-nhl-national-tv-schedule-nbc-nbcsn/17435/ That is less than the ~135 MLB games scheduled for ESPN/Fox/TBS. I see 80 regular season games quoted here for the NHL Network (if you have a better source, please share): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHL_Network_(U.S._TV_network) That is less than the 150+ we've seen for MLB Network. It wouldn't surprise me if these numbers were closer, but I absolutely don't see how the NHL has a significant advantage in national TV exposure.
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There are two separate games on MLB Network tomorrow, and 3 on Thursday. Check the schedule, it is not double counting those days. It is pretty easy to do with regular weekday afternoon games, which don't exist in other leagues. And of course late west coast games. And MLB Network is showing a live game every day for the rest of their announced schedule (through April), I am not sure where you are getting the idea that they take off multiple days every week. Maybe the same place that told you they broadcast zero games after April? They don't start games at the same time as ESPN or Fox games, but they do broadcast games at other times on those days see this weekend for example. I really don't get this stark difference you continue claiming between MLB and NHL in national TV deals/exposure.
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I had the car radio on 96.3 for the Twins game the other today, and turned it on this afternoon and it defaulted to 96.3. My wife has driven the car in between and probably listened to the station by default too. That would be less likely to happen if I had a free online stream of my baseball games -- I might not even know it's frequency or call sign. I'd know it only as an app that I would open exclusively for Twins games, and my wife wouldn't know it at all. (For those that don't know, the Pohlads own the Twins flagship radio station 96.3) My parents live in a rural area, and vacation in another, each covered by only one Twins network affiliate, and they don't have a smartphone (and if they did, they wouldn't use it for streaming). They are a dying breed, but they are still an audience that is best served by a robust affiliate network to be reached by the Twins and their advertisers, and they still probably outnumber out of market Twins fans looking for free radio streams. (And like it or not, even without free online streams, MLB probably reaches Twins Daily posters and their children plenty.) I am sure it is trending toward more streaming, but we are still relatively early in the trend, really. The iPhone is just turning 10 years old, after all. That's fine if you personally don't want to pay it (I probably wouldn't either), but I wouldn't draw any sweeping conclusions about MLB's motivations and future based on Gameday Audio still costing $20.
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Is that even true, though? As I pointed out, there is a game or two or three on MLB Network every day, at least 150 but perhaps as many as 240 in total for the season. 72 regular season games on Fox networks. At least 50 (2 per week plus holidays) on ESPN. That's 270-360 games, or an average of 1.5-2 per day all season. And that's just national broadcasts, if you get a regional sports network, you will get another 150+. I highly doubt that is significantly less than pro hockey or pro basketball.
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Hicks for Murphy trade: 14 months later
Otto von Ballpark replied to DaveW's topic in Other Baseball
How soon we forget his 3 HR spring training game! You of all people should remember spring training heroics, Intramural Legend! -
In regards to my post above, would you consider optioning Gibson?
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Gibson actually has two option years left. He has only been optioned in one season of his career so far (2013) and he won't have the right to refuse an option until late in the 2018 season, at the earliest.
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FWIW, that MLB Network blurb about 150 live games was written back in 2013, it appears. I wouldn't be surprised if it is higher now as the network has grown. They basically do at least one game a day for 6 months, and plenty of back-to-back games too -- just looking ahead a few days, I see 2 games on Wednesday and 3 more on Thursday this week. This page says "40 live games in April" which, when extrapolated, could put the season total closer to 240: http://m.mlb.com/network/shows/?id=live_games I think you are exaggerating the issue. Baseball is perhaps the strongest regional sport, largely a function of their history and long season and large stadiums, but it is doubtful that they lag the NHL in national presence, no matter how much free hockey radio you can consume. I think people have been making similar "baseball's future is doomed" arguments since the dawn of the sport. I don't like everything they do, but it's generally not a grand strategic failure -- it's usually just a matter of personal preference and a changing world.
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Would you move Duffey back to the rotation? Otherwise who would you bump to make room for Gibson's rotation replacement?
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Levi, the MLB Network schedule is only made maybe a few weeks in advance. That is why there are no MLB Network games listed yet after April, because they don't know what the games will be (they just simulcast local broadcasts, they don't produce their own, so they can do that). Once you account for that, I don't think MLB's TV presence is going to be meaningfully different than that of the NHL or NBA. http://m.mlb.com/network/about/ "MLB Network's live game coverage includes approximately 150 regular season games, two exclusive League Division Series game telecasts, more than 150 Spring Training games, and other special event game telecasts."
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MLB Gameday Audio also comes with a neat feature, the radio broadcasts are all synched with a pitch tracker. I actually might use that over the video feed sometimes so I can "watch" and conserve data. (Might be nice to avoid all the repetitive player close-ups too.)
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And the NFL, while obviously still able to deploy an in-market over the air strategy for their one game a week, doesn't have an easy solution for out of market fans, does it? Last I saw, NFL Game Pass did not offer any live games in the USA. Would you have to use DirecTV to get NFL Sunday Ticket?
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I was sharing what I thought was a fun anecdote. Lighten up, will ya? Where are you seeing a lot of NHL and NBA games that you are not seeing MLB games? Certainly not over the air, where the NHL and NBA at best get a token game per week on a Sunday afternoon. MLB will get a few of those this summer too. Cable? MLB games are all over ESPN, FS1, TBS (maybe just playoffs?), and MLB Network. Plus they offer a free game of the day every day all season long on their web site, no TV subscription or antenna required. On a daily basis, that free game plus the over the air all star game plus the wold series might make them the most accessible league for cordcutters (next to the NFL, who plays a significantly limited schedule).
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MLB and it's teams have never centrally distributed audio streams for free. I don't think you can hold them to the "free" standard set (likely not intentionally) by individual radio stations in the early wild days of the internet. The media arm of MLB has never seemed the price gouging type. MLB.TV has always seemed very competitively priced given the incredible amount of content they produce, they always do a free game of the day, and they have even made big late season games free to view (I remember watching the historic last day of the 2011 season in that fashion). And unlike the NHL, the MLB all star game and championship series are still both on free over the air TV. Heck, I remember visiting my brother in St. Paul, MN in 1991 and he had to order the North Stars Stanley Cup finals games on pay per view!
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At this point, I would need to hear some specifics about radio network affiliate deals in order to make any judgements here. This thread exists because people actually want to listen to baseball on the radio. I am not convinced the same market is there for hockey radio. The Twins product is also twice as large as the Wild's. So expecting the same freebies doesn't seem reasonable. The Vikings give away 16 broadcasts a year, on TV no less. Nobody uses that as a basis for demanding more free entertainment from someone else. FWIW, I was buying Gameday Audio no later than 2003-2004 so it is at least that old. I could still sometimes find some rogue station that forgot to turn off their web feed though.
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I don't know about the Wild's arrangement, but I do see the Twins radio network is over twice as large (104) as the Wild's (49). Why do you suppose that is? I suspect baseball radio is a more valuable property for those affiliates, and maintaining large affiliate exposure is more important for the Twins. Not only is baseball far better on the radio than hockey, it's basically multiple hours of daily advertising for their product, as opposed to the Wild who play a much more variable schedule. And you're on the west coast, right? And presumably you grew up in the midwest? 20 years ago, there would have been zero way to expose your west coast son to Twins baseball at all. So it's not really proper to say that the Twins are cutting off your son as compared to when you grew up. They are actually gaining with your son more than kids on the west coast 20 years ago, just because now it is possible to follow a team closely from that distance. Sure, maybe they could gain a bit more with your son with free online radio, but given the multitude of modern media exposure options, it's not clear that the incremental gains from free online radio would be worth that much. It could certainly be offset by the affiliate benefits I mentioned above.
