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The Terrible Marriage Between Baseball and Streaming: TRAINA THOUGHTS

Streaming deals will no absolutely nothing to "grow" MLB

Jimmy Traina

1. AppleTV announced Tuesday that its first Major League Baseball telecast will be the Mets-Nationals game on April 8.

This happens to be Max Scherzer’s first start as a Met. The game is exclusive to AppleTV+. It will not air locally in New York or Washington. It’s AppleTV+ or bust.

Some shortsighted people are adamant this is a way for baseball to “grow,” but most fans are angry that they won’t be able to see their team play. I have several thoughts about all of this, so here we go:

• The first game will be free. You don’t need to pay for an AppleTV+ subscription. You just need to download the app. That’s nice, but it’s still an inconvenience for many people.

• The game will not feature local broadcasters. So if you’re a Mets fan, you won’t have Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling calling Scherzer’s first start.

• It’s on a Friday night. If you want to go to a bar and watch the game or maybe check in on it while you’re at a restaurant enjoying dinner, you will most likely be out of luck unless the bars, which all have cable or satellite, have thought ahead and downloaded Apple TV+.

• Baseball fans already pay around $100 for a local cable or satellite package. Some baseball fans pay extra for the MLB TV package. Now they gotta pay for AppleTV+ and Peacock. When is enough enough?

• Putting games on AppleTV+ or Peacock won’t grow Major League Baseball. If a 25-year-old isn’t a baseball fan now, they’re not going to become one because they noticed that games would be on AppleTV+ on Friday nights. If you want to attract new fans to MLB, cut the length of the games, market superstars and put games on channels where more people can see them.

Streaming won’t do a damn thing to help the sport when batters step out of the box for 10 minutes after every pitch and pitchers take leisurely strolls around the mound after every pitch.

The best player in the game, Mike Trout, is basically a non-entity in this country. Major League Baseball can team up with every streaming service in the world, but if your best player doesn’t draw in viewers a la Tom Brady or LeBron James, you’re still screwed.

• I understand the desire to attract younger viewers, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of shutting out your older viewers. So many of you reading this right now are thinking, “This guy is such a moron. It’s not that difficult to use AppleTV.” Yes, for many people, this won’t be a big deal. But there is still a significant number of people who don’t use streaming services, and to just flippantly dismiss them is a mistake.

• As Chris “Mad Dog” Russo said (in his own unique way) on his SiriusXM show Tuesday, this is “baseball fooling around, and that’s dangerous.”

2. If Major League Baseball wants to "grow" the game, take a lesson from Japanese baseball. Tsuyoshi Shinjo is the manager of the Nippon-Ham Fighters in Sapporo. He made his home debut on Tuesday and entered the game in a hover craft!

Hover craft > airing games exclusively on a streaming service.

3. This week's SI Media Podcast dropped this morning and it features interviews with CBS’s Greg Gumbel and WWE superstar Seth Rollins.

Gumbel, who is in this 50th year as a sports broadcaster, talks about the challenges of doing studio for the NCAA tournament, how coverage of the tournament has changed over the years and what it’s like to work with Charles Barkley. Other topics discussed with Gumbel include his love of the Rolling Stones, his time doing sports radio at WFAN in New York, working with Bill Walton and Terry Bradshaw, what he thinks of the massive salaries current NFL broadcasters are making and much more.

Following Gumbel, Seth Rollins joins the podcast to talk about WrestleMania 38, his current story line where he has no opponent for Mania, his thoughts on AEW mentioning WWE superstars on their show, working with Roman Reigns, why Vince McMahon axed something Rollins wanted to do, how he’s handling fatherhood and more.

Following Rollins’s interview, Sal Licata from WFAN and SNY in New York joins Jimmy for the weekly “Traina Thoughts” segment. This week’s topics include issues with MLB’s streaming, JImmy’s visit to the diner featured on Seinfeld and reading reviews of the podcast.

You can listen to the podcast below or download it on Apple, Spotify and Stitcher.

4. It was announced Tuesday that the Lions would be featured on the next installment of HBO's Hard Knocks. On Wednesday, Good Morning Football debuted a "trailer" for the show.

Bovada also released some prop bets on the upcoming season of Hard Knocks.

Will The Word "Kneecaps" Be Said In Episode 1?
Yes +225
No -350

Hard Knocks 2022 - Will Dan Campbell Be Shown In The Weight Room Lifting Weights In Episode 1?

Yes +600
No -1200 

5. Where do we stand on Jets quarterback Zach Wilson wearing a Jets hat while enjoying a day at the beach? Power move or cheesy?

6. There's just something wholesome and charming about the greatest quarterback in NFL history using the played out Jonah Hill GIF.

7. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: Paul Herman, the actor who played Beansie on The Sopranos, has died at the age of 76. While the character appeared in only a few of episodes, they were certainly memorable thanks to Beansie’s feud with Richie Aprile.

Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina on Apple, Spotify or Stitcher. You can also follow Jimmy on Twitter and Instagram.

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Jimmy Traina
JIMMY TRAINA

Jimmy Traina is a staff writer and podcast host for Sports Illustrated. A 20-year veteran in the industry, he’s been covering the sports media landscape for seven years and writes a daily column, Traina Thoughts. Traina has hosted the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast since 2018, a show known for interviews with some of the most important and powerful people in sports media. He also was the creator and writer of SI’s Hot Clicks feature from 2007 to '13.

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