2022 MLB Season (1 Viewer)

[Robert Crawford]

Yesterday, I watched a Yankees spring training game with the pitchers and catchers using the PitchCom system. The catcher relies the signs by pressing buttons on a wristband. It signals to the pitcher what kind of pitch and location. The audio transmitter is in the pitcher's hat and he can receive the signs either in English or Spanish. IMO, it speeded up the pace of play as they don't have to be bother with extra signs to prevent sign stealing. I hope they adopt it next season.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Yesterday, I watched a Yankees spring training game with the pitchers and catchers using the PitchCom system. The catcher relies the signs by pressing buttons on a wristband. It signals to the pitcher what kind of pitch and location. The audio transmitter is in the pitcher's hat and he can receive the signs either in English or Spanish. IMO, it speeded up the pace of play as they don't have to be bother with extra signs to prevent sign stealing. I hope they adopt it next season.

What? No Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc? And do they use 128-bit encryption (of the wireless signal/data) to prevent sign stealing?

_Man_

 

[Jeffrey D]

A bit off topic- about a month after the Cubs won in 2016, MLB Network aired a program called Joy In Wrigleyville- touching stories about life long fandom. I DVRed this when it first aired, and have saved it. I watched it again last weekend- great show (except their brief coverage about the 2003 collapse- it still isn’t the fan’s fault). I assume that Harry Caray’s-
a local bar near Wrigley- was owned by Harry’s widow. There was coverage of her at the bar the night of game 7. My point in posting this is I would have loved to have been at any of the local bars/restaurants when the last out was made. Awesome atmosphere. Probably like being at one of the local joints near Fenway when the Red Sox won in 2004, or at a Philly area joint when Brandon Graham knocked the ball out of Brady’s hand in Super Bowl 52. A team that wins its first championship in forever can thrill their long suffering fans.

 

[Carlo_M]

Not sure if this is the correct place to ask this question.

I cut the cord this year. Just wasn't worth paying Spectrum a metric butt-ton of money for almost no ROI. When I had housemates and split it 3 ways it was fine but I'm not going to carry that stone by myself.

I am looking at the MLB.tv season pass + VPN route. My questions are for anyone here who subscribes to, or has in the past have subscribed to, MLB.tv season pass.

1. Did you use the VPN route to bypass the local blackout? Online advice seems to say it works.
2. Does MLB.tv subscription allow you to watch full games later, like time-shift DVR functionality? For example, I sometimes can't make first pitch, but assuming the VPN route works, I'd love to tune in 30 minutes into a game, start on minute 1, and then FF through inning breaks and eventually catch up?
3. Does MLB.tv subscription archive full games from the current season? Meaning if I can't watch today's game and don't have time to watch it until say 3 days later, can I still access it?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give. It's ironic, a bare bones Spectrum subscription with the lowest tier required to get the Dodgers is $80 a month, so $560 for the whole season. MLB.tv is $140 and NordVPN is $4 a month. So I'll save about $400 a year by going this route, assuming the questions for 1-3 are "yes". I've been googling for the answers but not getting any real solid replies.

 

[David Norman]

Some I can answer

I don't know much about VPN route, but I understand it's supposed to work. I'm blacked out of Braves, O's, Nats, and Reds but never tried any VPN workarounds.

MLB.TV does allow for DVR type function both today's game and previous days. I've never used the latter much, right now I can go back to the beginning of the season. You can start a game late and usually have the option of Watch from beginning or Watch live.

Even games subject to blackout you can go back and watch after the game is over for a couple hours.
MLB.com allows for Home or Road broadcast crews for most games as well as Radio/Audio Only replays. I even looked at the Apple+ exclusive game from last Friday night and was able to tune that game.

Some games are exclusives to Network, Apple+ and I don't think are available even as Archive games. I just looked and I can even get last year's games or further. I never knew that was possible, but it appears I can go back to Feb 2019 Spring Training.


MLB.com offers various subscriptions including cheaper deals at various times in the year -- Father's Day, Mid season, Labor Day, and the best deal (free) if you are TMobile subscriber via T Mobile Tuesday though the signup times for them may be done for this year unless they have more Tuesday's lined up.

Downside -- I find switching b/w multiple games to be a pain unlike cable or DirectTV Extra Innings which is literally changing channels. Watching FF, Rewind, Slo-mo is virtually impossible -- FF and the screen is blank until you hit play.
AppleTV has a way to flip b/w 2 games fairly easy though I still can't get used to the Apple Remote, ROKU I don't think has the Dual game choice. I've never watched on the PC or by Phone so can't answer you there.

 

[David Norman]

And just for MLB fun
Miggy Cabrera has 3 hits tonight giving him 2999 career hits (33rd alltime and 1 behind Roberto Clemente who has exactly 3000). Playing the Yankees in the Top 8th and Cabrera will be leading off the Bottom of 8th for the Tigers.

He also has 599 doubles (18th alltime), 502 HR (28th), 1807 RBI (22nd), 1509 Runs (69th), and 1202 BB (60th), and 5138 total bases (18th) just for fun.

Wouldn't it be cool to see hit #3000 and Double #600 simultaneously and a 4hit game against the Yankees.
Edit -- K in the 8th. Tigers down by 2 and Cabrera is 6th batter in the bottom of the 9th so outside chance he'll get another chance if Wild Chapman shows up tonight (not tonight, Good Chapman pitched again).



As great as he is, Albert Pujols is ahead of him by significant margins is almost every category and has an outside shot at 700 HR this season (as well as 700 Doubles, 2200 RBI and 1900 runs though that would require a better season than he's had in several years.). He has a great chance to get to 2nd in Total Bases with another 80 on the season passing Stan Musial (6134) -- Aaron with 6850+ is a bit out of range. Not surprising nobody has done 700HR /700 2B and only Bonds (762/601) and Aaron (755/624) are 600/600. I was a little surprised none or Ruth, Mays, Griffey or Arod had 600 doubles.

 

[Carlo_M]

Thanks David. That makes the package tempting. Not a big enough fan that changing between games is an issue. Just follow the Dodgers and those games are primarily what I’ll watch.

I watched them on Apple TV+ last Friday. Holy heck their broadcasters are horrible.

 

[David Norman]

Thanks David. That makes the package tempting. Not a big enough fan that changing between games is an issue. Just follow the Dodgers and those games are primarily what I’ll watch.

I watched them on Apple TV+ last Friday. Holy heck their broadcasters are horrible.

That I do agree with. Hopefully it was just Game 1 issues, but the Dodgers game it was nearly unbearable

I think they still offer a 3 day Free Trial if you want to try it and see if it works for you

 

[Carlo_M]

Technically that was the second week of broadcasting for Apple. I didn't watch week 1. A buddy did. When I texted him how horrible the Dodgers booth was (he was watching) he said the previous week's games were even worse.

Yikes.

Although if you're a glass half full kind of person you could say "well they did improve!"

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Yeah, the AppleTV+ broadcast personalities for the couple games (at least that Friday) were pretty awful/lame -- I missed the 1st Friday of these. At least some of them seem very "green" not just to baseball broadcasting, but baseball talk in general, and sounded like someone just plucked them out of the View or something (not that I ever watch that show), LOL...

_Man_

 

[MartinP.]

Technically that was the second week of broadcasting for Apple. I didn't watch week 1. A buddy did. When I texted him how horrible the Dodgers booth was (he was watching) he said the previous week's games were even worse.

Yikes.

Although if you're a glass half full kind of person you could say "well they did improve!"

The past two weeks Apple has had two games each Friday, sort of like an East Coast time start and a West Coast time start, so there's different broadcasters.

I watched the Dodgers/Reds last Friday and the later game the week before that. If those are the two your friend watched, I agree. That two weeks ago game, the announcers were the worst I've ever heard. Three people in the booth all trying to interject anything they can whether it was related to the game or not, and often it wasn't. Had to be the most annoying game I've ever heard announced. Most of the time it was like the game itself was an after thought. I almost mentioned it here, but thought I'd give the second week a chance first. I don't recall if any of the announcers in last weeks Dodgers/Reds airing were the same as the week before, but they were not ALL the same, I know that. So if there was any improvement, that was it! Note to APPLE: Sometimes two is, but three broadcasters in a booth calling a game is NEVER a good idea. I miss Vin Scully by himself.

 

[Carlo_M]

Of course it doesn't help that I was raised by the voice of Vin Scully. Kind of an unfair bar to hold others against. But they truly were terrible.

 

[David Norman]

Who were Apple TV commentators for Dodgers vs Reds game? Platform blasted for 'worst ever' broadcast

Fans flooded Twitter alleging that the bottom corner percentages were wrong every time and that the commentators were 'ignorant' and 'boring'

meaww.com

Many of teh comments got the announcers mixed up with the group from the early games (Melanie Newman (play-by-play), Chris Young (analyst) and Hannah Keyser (analyst), as well as field reporter Brooke Fletcher.
The commentators for the Reds/Dodgers game were Stephen Nelson, Hunter Pence, and Katie Nolan-- and on field reporter Heidi Watney.

I;m 99% sure the latter group was on the broadcast I heard -- male play by play, several folks making fun of Hunter Pence by name. Heidi Watney (Mlb.com veteran) was the only competent one of the four, but her time was extremely limited compared to the booth people. I find the comparison to The View to be somewhat interesting givne that Katie Nolan;s main gig the last few years has been a podcast on ESPN which has a much more general Social Media/Talk Show feel rather than a Live Sports feel. I saw her quite a bit on the Olympics this year I think and it seems most of here stuff was Human Interest stories rather than Sports Announcing. Many of those stories were quite well done, but it's a completely different deal than a live Broadcast.

 

[Osato]

Let’s Go Mets!

 

[MartinP.]

See you in June, Tim!
______

On the Apple broadcasts, I also don't like the continued Sports Betting references and statistics. It should NOT be on MLB broadcasts. Especially when MLB's banned Pete Rose for his indiscretions. How can we take you seriously?

A player's Vegas-style odds were shown, such as Pete Alonso's chance of homering (Yes +250, no -350).

The company doing this says: We devised approximately 15,000 ways to bet on baseball but will be measured in the rollout—with a plan “to use tech to pump up the right thing to bet on” so that fans aren’t inundated with options while scrolling through betting markets in the short interval between pitches. The idea is to provide enough context to help bettors make informed wagers. “That’s how we don’t overwhelm fans—by giving them the sports smarts that goes along with the bet, not just a slot machine.”

I just want to watch the ball games, MLB, not all this side crap.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Yeah, that's pretty ridiculous w/ the Vegas-style betting stuff.

IF they're gonna provide anything extra, maybe just some basic (or additional) sabermetrics and/or fantasy baseball relevant stuff might be worthwhile, but that's other stuff only relevant to gambling is just bad form... all while doing such a mediocre-at-best job at the actual in-game, fundamental coverage and analysis...

_Man_

 

[Robert Crawford]

Yankee fans are pissed! Besides their offense sucking big-time, the Yankees have a new deal with Amazon Prime Video in which 21 Friday night games can no longer be seen free on channel 11 WPIX, but only stream on Prime Video. The kicker is if you live in the NYC Metro area it's the only way you can watch those games.

Out of NYC market Yankees fans like myself with the DirecTV Extra Innings package have a couple of options to view those games. I can watch the other team's broadcast on Extra Innings. I can also stream the Yankees broadcast from Amazon Prime because the DirecTV Extra Innings package gives you the MLB.TV for free. I can watch the Yankees broadcast on my computer or mobile device. Or, I can watch it on my OLEDs with the AppleTV unit because you can link your DirecTV Extra Innings account to your MLB.com account. There is a MLB app that you can download which allows you to watch MLB.TV games on AppleTV. That was my preference for last night's game. The video presentation is excellent! Also, I can watch the replay of the entire or condensed game via MLB.TV either on my computer, mobile device or AppleTV.

One more caveat about Yankee games on Amazon Prime Video. If you're out of the NYC Metro area/footprint, you can't watch the Prime Video stream directly from Amazon Prime Video like you can, if you lived in the NYC Metro/footprint. Rules prevent Amazon from streaming Yankee games outside of that NYC footprint. That's no big deal because Yankee fans outside of the NYC Metro area would have to purchase a baseball package like MLB.TV or Extra Innings in order to watch Yankee games that are not broadcast on Fox, ESPN or TBS. Or, local broadcast of teams the Yankees are playing like the Tiger/Yankee games for me earlier this week.

 

[MartinP.]

MLB seems to screw the home team fans any way they can. After years of a majority of people in L.A. not having access to the Dodger games that was finally dealt with (sort of) during last season, they have the Jackie Robinson Day* 75th Anniversary game at Dodger Stadium on Apple+ to p.o. the fan base once again.

*I only found out rather recently that the Dodgers are to always be scheduled for a home game on that day. Did anyone else know that?

 

[David Norman]

Since I mentioned it earlier -- congrats to Cabrera for reaching 3000 hits (and 3001 later in the game) even if it wasn't his 600th double.

 

[Robert Crawford]

A shameful display by some Yankee fans today. I hope they get a lifetime ban from Yankee Stadium as they should be arrested too.