2019 MLB Season (1 Viewer)

[Jeffrey D]

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According to my Red Sox fan friend, not a huge number of people are watching.

 

[Osato]

According to my Red Sox fan friend, not a huge number of people are watching.

I’m watching quite a bit. I just turned on game 4 tonight as I was out. I’ve had the first 3 games in though mostly from the start. I’m on the east coast and the games do go too late though. So I usually tap out around the 6th or 7th....

 

[Osato]

I’m watching quite a bit. I just turned on game 4 tonight as I was out. I’ve had the first 3 games in though mostly from the start. I’m on the east coast and the games do go too late though. So I usually tap out around the 6th or 7th....

I just saw the grand slam! Wow. Good time to turn in!

I like both teams so I’m just enjoying the baseball. It would be great for either side to win.

7 game World Series are always the best so maybe I’ll root for that.

 

[Malcolm R]

According to my Red Sox fan friend, not a huge number of people are watching.

The ratings aren't great. The last two World Series games have pulled a 2.6 and 2.9 rating, with just under 12 million total viewers.

By comparison, a regular season NFL game between Minnesota and Washington on Thursday had a rating of 3.9 and about 13.5 million viewers.

 

[Robert Crawford]

According to my Red Sox fan friend, not a huge number of people are watching.

That's because MLB has become so regional, unlike, the NBA and NFL in which fans across those two leagues would watch playoff games whether their team is in the playoffs or not. I don't know many Yankee fans that are watching this series.

 

[Walter Kittel]

Well, I'm feeling better about the series.

Biggest surprise for me was Urquidy's dominance on the mound. I sort of figured the 'stros bats would wake up, and they did tonight. Glad to see Bregman finally coming to life at the plate. I would put him behind only Altuve for dependability, so it has been surprising to see him performing below his normally excellent standards.

Best of three with two of the potential three in Houston, with Cole and Verlander getting second starts in the series.

Cole vs. Scherzer should make for an excellent game 5.

- Walter.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Well, I'm feeling better about the series.

Biggest surprise for me was Urquidy's dominance on the mound. I sort of figured the 'stros bats would wake up, and they did tonight. Glad to see Bregman finally coming to life at the plate. I would put him only behind Altuve for dependability, so it has been surprising to see him performing below his normally excellent standards.

Best of three with two of the potential three in Houston, with Cole and Verlander getting second starts in the series.

Cole vs. Scherzer should make for an excellent game 5.

- Walter.

It's baseball so I expected it wasn't going to be that easy for the Nationals. The pendulum shifts because starting pitching changes with each game.

 

[Walter Kittel]

True enough Robert. The Nationals certainly are capable of winning the series despite the Astros winning games 3 & 4. But I do think the Astros bats are coming to life, and that will make it a more difficult task for the Nationals. How well they perform against Scherzer will be a pretty good indicator of whether or not game 4 was a fluke, or a harbinger of what is to come.

- Walter.

 

[Robert Crawford]

True enough Robert. The Nationals certainly are capable of winning the series despite the Astros winning games 3 & 4. But I do think the Astros bats are coming to life, and that will make it a more difficult task for the Nationals. How well they perform against Scherzer will be a pretty good indicator of whether or not game 4 was a fluke, or a harbinger of what is to come.

- Walter.

I'm just saying don't get too comfortable as we've seen such series shift dramatically beforehand like it did in games 3 & 4. Right now, the Astros have the advantage so we'll find out if the Nationals can respond or not. The Astros are the better team which is why they were heavy favorites.

 

[Osato]

It’s been a good series so far. I like it when the teams and games even out.

This Mets fan will be watching tonight.

 

[Walter Kittel]

I'm feeling a little bit more comfortable. Cole pitched a great game tonight, and the Astros caught a break with Scherzer being sidelined with an injury. Springer hasn't had a great post season at the plate, but he crushed that pitch for the Astros' final two runs of the game.

It is pretty much up to Strassburg to keep the Nationals alive, since their offense has went dormant these past three games. Will they be able to reverse that trend in game 6 and get some runs? We'll see on Tuesday evening. If they do extend to game 7, I wonder if Scherzer will be available?

- Walter.

 

[MartinP.]

Instead of the Astros coming back to win 4 in a row, I want the Nationals to win the next two so that
there'll be a new World Series statistic, all games won by the opposing team.

 

[Jeffrey D]

Interesting scenario coming up Tuesday night- Verlander, who’s never won a World Series game, has the chance to win one and wrap up the series. I think he will win his first game.

A shame for the Nationals and their fans that they came up so small in their 3 home games.

 

[Malcolm R]

It's kind of bizarre that neither team seems to be able to win at home.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Man, the Pirates owner cleaned house by firing his GM this morning. He fired the team President, manager, pitching coach and bench coach the last 3 weeks or so. He sees what Tampa is doing down there with a limited budget.

 

[Robert Crawford]

For the last couple of years I've been complaining that the Yankees should fire their pitching coach Larry Rothschild because we've been acquiring these starting pitchers and none of them seem to improve once they start pitching for the Yankees. Well, Cashman finally did the deed today.

 

[Jack P]

Bad national TV coverage for decades has driven away a lot of fans from watching postseason games when their team isn't involved. For that, I blame a process that goes back to 1990 thanks to the worst baseball commissioner in my lifetime, Peter Ueberroth (Mr. Collusion).

One reason (among many) why baseball lost a lot of its popularity to the NFL in the late 60s was because the quality of national TV coverage changed dramatically starting in the mid-60s and for a decade NBC was the only network doing baseball and for ten straight years, Curt Gowdy was the sole face of baseball on TV. Great as Gowdy was, audiences after a while got sick of him due to the constant overexposure and the fact there was no announcing diversity.

Starting in 1976, the time when baseball entered a renaissance it also improved its TV coverage dramatically when ABC joined NBC in doing the games and rotated the World Series/Playoffs, which meant you were going to get an NFL level style of diversity in coverage and not be overexposed to the same voices year after year. In addition, CBS got the radio package which meant all three networks were involved in promoting the game.

Then Peter Ueberroth changed all that. In 1990 he struck a new deal that froze out NBC after 42 years of doing baseball, and ABC and gave the entire TV package to CBS who wanted it strictly to promote their primetime lineup. CBS also cut back on weekly Saturday broadcasts further diminishing the quality of network coverage. Baseball has never recovered from this with one bad contract after another that never brought back the glory days of 1976-89 when record ratings could be drawn for a Phillies-Royals World Series. In 1994-95 they had a stupid thing called the "Baseball Network" that removed Saturday games and had a bizarre regionalization format for the playoffs (which is why I couldn't see the great Yankees-Mariners ALDS Game 2 where I was living). Then from 1996-2000 they made a half-step back with the FOX/NBC package that at least brought back postseason rotation with the one drawback being NBC not doing any regular season games.

From 2001 onward though it has been awful with FOX as the sole carrier of network baseball and even they don't carry all the playoff games over the air any longer. And for 19 straight years, I've had to suffer Joe Buck and whatever you think of him as an announcer, after all these years of hearing only him as the voice of baseball, I'm more than sick of him in the same way an earlier generation got sick of Curt Gowdy year after year. Sane people would recognize that you need more annoucing diversity and multiple networks promoting the game. In an ideal world, the World Series the last quarter-century would be rotating between Buck, Costas and Al Michaels (that Michaels, the greatest baseball announcer on the network scene of his generation has been shut out of the game for 25 years is a disgrace) and a lot more people would be watching. If the NFL had Buck calling all the Super Bowls year after year, fans would start getting sick of that too.

 

[Malcolm R]

And for 19 straight years, I've had to suffer Joe Buck and whatever you think of him as an announcer, after all these years of hearing only him as the voice of baseball, I'm more than sick of him in the same way an earlier generation got sick of Curt Gowdy year after year.

Yes, I also dislike Buck as an announcer. Unfortunately, if he's not doing baseball playoffs, he's doing football, so I have to listen to him all over the place in the fall.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Hell, every baseball fan base dislikes Joe Buck as an announcer.

 

[Malcolm R]

Hell, every baseball fan base dislikes Joe Buck as an announcer.

Makes you wonder why FOX keeps him around, then, if he's that unpopular.