Last year, I had the insane idea to keep track of every single baseball game I watched using Major League Baseball's streaming service, MLB TV. I did so, and kept track of all of my viewing habits that you can find in a blog by clicking here.
I did the same thing in 2019 but decided to ramp up my findings with additional statistics. Here are the things I took note of any time that I watched a baseball game this year:
- Road team
- Home team
- Broadcast (which team's TV feed I tuned into)
- Winning team
- W/L result of the team whose broadcast I watched
- Duration of viewing
- 1-2 innings: "Minimal"
- 3-4 innings: "Partial"
- 5-7 innings: "Most"
- 8-9 innings: "Full"
- Any interesting notes about the game
Before we get down to the nitty-gritty, let's review a couple important things, including some stuff that I talked about in last year's blog, to present the broader scope of my investigation:
Factors That Affected My Viewing Habits in 2019:
- MLB TV imposes blackout restrictions on Salt Lake City viewers for any games played by the Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks, which means I can't watch Colorado or Arizona play at all, regardless of who or where they play.
- There are additional blackout restrictions for major, nationally televised games, such as "Sunday Night Baseball" or other big games aired by Fox, ESPN, etc., and those games are also unviewable on MLB TV.
- September was not a great month for my MLB TV viewing. I was busy doing other things, like running social media for FanX Salt Lake Comic Convention and, you know, getting married and moving and other miscellaneous adult tasks. I didn't watch any baseball between September 3 - September 26.
Untracked Games:
- I watched one Spring Training game on MLB TV, before the regular season started. I tracked this on my spreadsheet but will not be including it in my statistics for purposes of this particular blog.
- I watched a handful of the nationally televised games on TV; I did not count these as "games watched" in my tracker, so I technically watched a little more baseball than what I'm accounting for in this blog.
- During the 2019 season, I physically attended games in San Francisco, Cleveland and Cincinnati. I did not count these as "games watched," either.
Total Number of Games and Cost Per Game Watched:
- There are 30 teams in the MLB, each playing 162 games, for a total of 4,860 games in an entire season.
- I now realize that this number is actually counting each game (e.g., Orioles vs Yankees) as two games - one Orioles game and one Yankees game. To account for this, the number 4,860 should actually be divided in half to represent the number of actual 9-inning games that are played in a season: 2,430.
- (Note: This was not explained in last year's blog, although I believe the meaning of my message was not misunderstood.)
- The 2019 MLB season ran from March 28, 2019 - September 29, 2019, over a span of 186 days. It is not uncommon for there to be some days during the regular season when no games are played by any team.
- In last year's blog, I was a bit overzealous when I calculated the number of games I plausibly could have watched in one season. I ran the numbers as if I could possibly watch a maximum of two games per day for every single day of the season. That's just not realistic. Here are some notes about how I calculated things in 2019:
- Last year, I calculated that all Rockies and Diamondbacks games, plus nationally televised games, would be about 5% of the overall total of games played. Upon further consideration, Colorado and Arizona games (324 total) would account for 6.6% of total MLB games. I'm not sure how many nationally televised games there are per season, but it's safe to say that there is at least one blacked-out game per week of the season (we'll call it 26 weeks). This would add up to a total of about 7% (about 350 games) that I simply don't have access to.
- Although it is probably only reasonable to watch a maximum of one baseball game per day, there were some days where I did watch at least part of multiple games in a given day, even if I didn't watch all of the games from start to finish. This year, instead of multiplying the number of days in the season by 2 to determine the maximum number of games I could have watched, I will only multiply it by 1.5.
- If there are 186 days in the season and I multiply that by 1.5, as explained above, I am brought to a total of 279 games. From that, I'm subtracting 7% (Rockies and Diamondbacks games, plus 26 blackouts), and subtract an additional 5 games (to represent any nationally televised games that I actually did watch on TV). This brings the maximum number of games that I plausibly could have watched in 2019 to an even 248.
- In 2019, I watched at least a "minimal" portion (as defined above) of 65 games on the MLB TV app.
- This averages out to be about 2.6% of all games played for the entire league (2,430).
- Based on the plausible maximum number of games I could have watched, my calculations show that I watched about 26% of those games. Not bad!
- To calculate my "cost per game watched," I divided the dollar amount I paid by the number of games I watched on the app, which comes out to $1.85 per game. That's a dollar per game better than 2018!
Duration of Viewing:
- Based on the definitions previously listed, here's how long I watched the 65 games, listed in order of frequency:
- Partial: 29 games (44.6%)
- Most: 19 games (29.2%)
- Full: 9 games (13.8%)
- Minimal: 8 games (12.3%)
Overall W/L Record:
- Of the 65 games that I watched on MLB TV in 2019, the teams whose broadcast I watched were 40-25 (.615).
- Note: There were two "Game of the Day" broadcasts that I watched on the app, which featured a neutral broadcast team. In terms of the overall W/L record, I determined the wins and losses for those games based on the team that I wanted to win.
Home/Road Split:
- Of the 65 games I watched, the team I tuned in to watch played 41 home games and 22 games on the road.
- When I watched a team's home broadcast, those teams went 24-17 (.604).
- When I watched a team's road broadcast, the teams went 14-8 (.636).
- Note: I did not count the two "Game of the Day" games as either "home" or "road," which explains why only 63 of the 65 games were accounted for in this breakdown.
Times Watched (Total, Out of 130 Total Teams Watched):
- Texas Rangers: 19
- Cleveland Indians: 14
- Cincinnati Reds: 9
- Detroit Tigers: 8
- Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim: 7
- Seattle Mariners: 7
- Washington Nationals: 7
- Los Angeles Dodgers: 6
- New York Mets: 6
- Milwaukee Brewers: 4
- Minnesota Twins: 4
- Oakland Athletics: 4
- Pittsburgh Pirates: 4
- St. Louis Cardinals: 4
- Atlanta Braves: 3
- Boston Red Sox: 3
- Chicago Cubs: 3
- Kansas City Royals: 3
- New York Yankees: 3
- Philadelphia Phillies: 3
- Toronto Blue Jays: 3
- Chicago White Sox: 2
- San Diego Padres: 2
- Tampa Bay Rays: 1
- San Francisco Giants: 1
The Forgotten Five:
- Here are the five teams that I didn't (*or couldn't) watch a single time last year:
- Arizona Diamondbacks*
- Baltimore Orioles
- Houston Astros
- Colorado Rockies*
- Miami Marlins
- This is the second year in a row in which I did not watch the Miami Marlins a single time.
W/L Records for Every Team I Watched, Regardless of Broadcast:
- San Francisco Giants: 1-0 (1.000)
- Oakland Athletics: 3-1 (.750)
- Texas Rangers: 14-5 (.736)
- New York Mets: 4-2 (.666)
- Chicago Cubs: 2-1 (.666)
- Cleveland Indians: 9-5 (.642)
- Cincinnati Reds: 5-4 (.555)
- Los Angeles Dodgers: 3-3 (.500)
- Milwaukee Brewers: 2-2 (.500)
- Minnesota Twins: 2-2 (.500)
- San Diego Padres: 1-1 (.500)
- Philadelphia Phillies: 1-1 (.500)
- Chicago White Sox: 1-1 (.500)
- Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim: 3-4 (.428)
- Seattle Mariners: 3-4 (.428)
- Washington Nationals: 3-4 (.428)
- Atlanta Braves: 1-2 (.333)
- Boston Red Sox: 1-2 (.333)
- Kansas City Royals: 1-2 (.333)
- New York Yankees: 1-2 (.333)
- St. Louis Cardinals: 1-3 (.250)
- Pittsburgh Pirates: 1-3 (.250)
- Detroit Tigers: 1-7 (.125)
- Tampa Bay Rays: 0-1 (.000)
- Toronto Blue Jays: 0-3 (.000)
W/L Records for Teams Whose Broadcast I Watched (out of 63 games):
- Oakland Athletics: 1-0 (1.000)
- St. Louis Cardinals: 1-0 (1.000)
- San Francisco Giants: 1-0 (1.000)
- Texas Rangers: 14-5 (.736)
- Cleveland Indians: 9-4 (.692)
- Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim: 2-1 (.666)
- Seattle Mariners: 2-1 (.666)
- Cincinnati Reds: 4-3 (.571)
- Washington Nationals: 3-3 (.500)
- Atlanta Braves: 1-1 (.500)
- Los Angeles Dodgers: 2-3 (.400)
- Chicago Cubs: 0-1 (.000)
- Chicago White Sox: 0-1 (.000)
Other Fun Facts About Games I Watched:
- I watched the first game of the season (Mets @ Nationals). Robinson Cano homered in his first at-bat as a Met.
- I watched the final Opening Day at Globe Life Park in Texas.
- I saw Patrick Corbin's debut for the Washington Nationals.
- I watched three games that went to extra innings.
- I saw Bryce Harper's return to Washington as a member of the Philadelphia Phillies.
- I watched a game on Jackie Robinson Day.
- I saw a bunch of games that were won on walk-off hits, including one that ended on a grand slam, and one in which Cleveland's Carlos Santana hit his second walk-off winner in consecutive days.
- I watched a Dodgers game that my parents attended in L.A. It ended with a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 9th.
- I saw Rougned Odor get thrown out at home while trying for an inside-the-park home run.
- I watched the end of the game where the Angels threw a combined no-hitter in their first game after the unexpected death of their pitcher Tyler Skaggs.
- I saw several games that were affected by rain delays, including a game in Cleveland that was stopped twice - and ultimately ended prematurely in the 8th inning.
- I saw the Indians' Shane Bieber throw a complete game shutout with one hit on 102 pitches.
- I watched a 14-inning game from start to finish.
- I saw Cincinnati's Jesse Winker hit a home run on the first pitch of the bottom of the 1st inning.
- I watched a game during Players' Weekend.
- I watched the Rangers game in which they retired Michael Young's number. Texas overcame a 2-1 deficit in the bottom of the 9th to win, 3-2.
- I watched as the Reds celebrated long-time radio broadcaster Marty Brenneman's final home broadcast.
- In his final start of the season, I saw Texas' Mike Minor pitch 9.2 innings to end the year with exactly 200 strikeouts.
- I watched the final game played at Globe Life Park in Texas, on the final day of the season.
***
So there you go. Them's the stats. Bless and praise you if you actually read this entire post. Sure, it's nerdy. Sure, it doesn't really matter. Many may consider this a complete waste of time. But you know what? I'm paying money for this thing each year and I want to make sure I'm getting good value out of it. But whatever. Baseball is great and I love it. Like I said in 2018, at least now I can die in peace, knowing that all this pointless information is stored digitally online.
THE END
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