Postseason baseball is upon us, which means a couple things: time for us all to rally around and unanimously cheer against the Yankees and Astros and, less importantly, the hour is upon us in which I write the most tedious, painful, practically pointless blog of the entire year. It's time for me to tally up a billion different numbers and put together the statistics to brag to myself about how much MLB TV I watched over the past six months.
Listen, I know that absolutely nobody cares about this yearly series of posts except for me. It's actually mind-numbing for me to have to do it. Unfortunately, I'm an individual that is obsessed with keeping track of stuff like this and I just have to keep doing it. I can't shake it. It has become part of me.
If you've randomly stumbled across this blog, I'm warning you now: you don't have to continue. You can stop right now. But if you have absolutely nothing better to do with your morning or day or evening, or if it's perhaps 3:15 in the morning and you just can't sleep, go ahead. Read on. Indulge in these meaningless stats I've jotted down. And, in advance, I thank you for spending a few minutes of your time reading over this slave labor produced by my poor, poor brain and fingers.
Stats Tracked on the Spreadsheet:
If you're somehow new to these MLB TV posts, I'll give you a really quick introduction to what on earth is happening. I subscribe to MLB TV, which lets me watch most so-called "out of market" baseball games. I'm in Utah and they think that I'm "in the market" for two teams, but I'll complain about that in just a second. Every time I watch a game, I use a Google Docs spreadsheet to keep track of a few stats about every game:
- 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
Persisting Factors that Affected Viewing Habits:
- As usual, MLB TV blacked out all home games for the Arizona Diamondback and Colorado Rockies. Once again, I (neither a resident of Arizona nor Colorado) was unable to watch any game that involved either of those teams.
- Any nationally televised games (FOX, ESPN, TBS, etc.) are not viewable on MLB TV.
- New this year is the fact that my son is old enough to know that "Paw Patrol" and "Spidey and His Amazing Friends" are way more exciting than a random baseball game in the middle of the workday, so I spent a ton of time watching children's programming instead of watching sports whenever I felt like it.
Untracked Games:
- Any games I watched through any other source than MLB TV was not tracked on my spreadsheet, including any nationally televised games.
- I attended a game in Houston this summer, in which the Astros soundly thumped the lowly Oakland A's.
Total Number of Games Watched and Cost Per Game:
- This year, the MLB regular season ran from April 7, 2022 through October 5, 2022 - a total of 182 days.
- A 162-game schedule for all 30 Major League teams equals a total of 4,860 games played - if each single game counts as two "games played" (one game for the home team and one game for the road team).
- As always, regional blackouts for Rockies and Diamondbacks games are not watchable, which takes away access to any of the 324 games played by either of those teams.
- As I've done in the past, I'll estimate that there were 30 more games where I might have been interested in watching the opponent of either the Rockies or Diamondbacks.
- This year, I am subtracting 6 "games played" for each week of the regular season to account for nationally televised games (one game on Sunday night, one during prime time on any other day of the week and one on Saturday morning). If the regular season is roughly 25 weeks long, that adds up to an approximate total of 150 nationally blacked-out games.
- This brings the total number of games played that I would have had access to down to 4,356. I think my calculations are pretty generous.
- I watched a total of 57 baseball games this season, or a total of 114 "games played."
- This is eight fewer games than I watched in 2021.
- Based on the approximate number of 4,356 "games played" that I had access to, I watched about 2.6% of those games, a 0.3% decrease from last year.
- 4,356 games played, over a course of 182 days, divides out to 24 "games played" (12 individual games) on a given day.
- For the past two seasons, I estimated that I could hypothetically have watched about two games per day. Because, as I said, I spent a heavily increased amount of time watching whatever my son wanted instead of turning on baseball in the middle of the day, I am lowering the maximum number of games I reasonably could have watched per day to one. (This doesn't mean I couldn't watch more than one; it just means that it wouldn't be reasonable for me to do so - and certainly not more than one game for every day of the season!)
- I watched a total of 57 games throughout the season, which is 31% of the maximum number of games that I reasonably could have watched. (That's actually pretty impressive.)
- Here is the evolution of that percentage since 2018:
- 2018: 11%
- 2019: 26%
- 2020: 29%
- 2021: 17%
- 2022: 31%
- This year, I split the cost of MLB TV with my brother - something I would positively love to continue doing in the future. This means that I only spent half the amount of money on the service as I have most years in the past. By dividing the number of games watched by the reduced amount I paid for this year's subscription, I spent about $1.14 per game, 69 cents less than last season, and a new personal record.
- Here is how my cost-per-game ratio has developed over the years:
- 2018: $2.85/game
- 2019: $1.85/game
- 2020: $1.97/game
- 2021: $1.83/game
- 2022: $1.14/game
Duration of Viewing:
The following is a breakdown of how long I typically watched each game, based on the definitions previously discussed, in order of duration:
- Most: 26 games (46%)
- Partial: 19 games (33%)
- Full: 8 games (14%)
- Minimal: 4 games (7%)
Times Watched on the Team's Local Broadcast (Out of 57 Games Watched):
Here is the leaderboard for how many times I intentionally tuned into a team's local broadcast:
- Texas Rangers: 19
- Tampa Bay Rays: 7
- Cleveland Guardians: 5
Los Angeles Angels: 5
Miami Marlins: 5 - Seattle Mariners: 4
- Washington Nationals: 3
- Philadelphia Phillies: 2
- Atlanta Braves: 1
Boston Red Sox: 1
Cincinnati Reds: 1
Pittsburgh Pirates: 1
St. Louis Cardinals: 1
San Francisco Giants: 1
Toronto Blue Jays: 1
Times Watched (Total, Out of 114 Total Teams Watched):
I watched 26 out of the 30 teams play this year. The four teams I didn't watch were the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies (of course) and the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres. Here is a breakdown of how many times I watched all of the other teams play, regardless of which broadcast I tuned into:
- Texas Rangers: 19
- Los Angeles Angels: 9
- Cleveland Guardians: 8
Miami Marlins: 8
Tampa Bay Rays: 8 - Seattle Mariners: 7
- Oakland A's: 6
- Washington Nationals: 5
- Chicago Cubs: 4
Chicago White Sox: 4
Houston Astros: 4
New York Mets: 4
Philadelphia Phillies: 4 - Boston Red Sox: 3
Minnesota Twins: 3
San Francisco Giants: 3
Toronto Blue Jays: 3 - Atlanta Braves: 2
Detroit Tigers: 2
St. Louis Cardinals: 2 - Baltimore Orioles: 1
Cincinnati Reds: 1
Kansas City Royals: 1
Milwaukee Brewers: 1
New York Yankees: 1
Pittsburgh Pirates: 1
Overall Win/Loss Record:
- This year, the teams I specifically tuned in to watch went 23-34 (.404). That's not great. It was my losing-est season in the past five years. Actually, the fact that so many of the teams I like were so bad this year was probably the second worst deterrent from my desire to watch, behind the fact that my toddler would rather watch something computer-animated, and preferably with lots of talking puppies. Let's hope that there is only one way to go from here - and that's up, baby. Up.
- Running W/L percentage tracker:
- 2018: .534
- 2019: .625
- 2020: .410
- 2021: .492
- 2022: .404
Home/Road Split:
Editor's note: This, again, remains the most difficult category to calculate, for some odd reason. I think I had to count it four times - twice with the assistance of my wife. It's pathetic on several levels.
- Of the 57 games I tuned into during 2022, the team I wanted to watch played 30 home games (53%) and 27 road games (47%).
- When I watched a team's home broadcast, that team went 16-14 (.533).
- When I watched a team's road broadcast, that team went 7-20 (.259). Big yikes.
- Regardless of whose broadcast I watched, the home team went 36-21 (.632).
- Regardless of whose broadcast I watched, the road team went 21-36 (.368).
W/L Records for Teams Whose Broadcast I Watched:
I watched a lot of losing baseball this year. Here are the final win/loss records for the unfortunate teams for whom I intentionally turned on my TV or mobile device:
- Atlanta Braves: 1-0 (1.000)
San Francisco Giants: 1-0 (1.000)
Toronto Blue Jays: 1-0 (1.000) - Cleveland Guardians: 3-2 (.600)
Los Angeles Angels: 3-2 (.600) - Tampa Bay Rays: 4-3 (.571)
- Seattle Mariners: 2-2 (.500)
- Washington Nationals: 1-2 (.333)
- Texas Rangers: 4-15 (.211)
- Miami Marlins: 1-4 (.200)
- Boston Red Sox: 0-1 (.000)
Cincinnati Reds: 0-1 (.000)
Philadelphia Phillies: 0-1 (.000)
Pittsburgh Pirates: 0-1 (.000)
St. Louis Cardinals: 0-1 (.000)
W/L Records for Every Team I Watched, Regardless of Broadcast:
- San Francisco Giants: 3-0 (1.000)
Toronto Blue Jays: 3-0 (1.000) - Detroit Tigers: 2-0 (1.000)
- Kansas City Royals: 1-0 (1.000)
Milwaukee Brewers: 1-0 (1.000)
New York Yankees: 1-0 (1.000) - Oakland A's: 5-1 (.833)
- Houston Astros: 3-1 (.750)
New York Mets: 3-1 (.750) - Seattle Mariners: 5-2 (.714)
- Los Angeles Angels: 6-3 (.666)
- Cleveland Guardians: 5-3 (.625)
Tampa Bay Rays: 5-3 (.625) - Philadelphia Phillies: 2-2 (.500)
- Atlanta Braves: 1-1 (.500)
- Boston Red Sox: 1-2 (.333)
Minnesota Twins: 1-2 (.333) - Miami Marlins: 2-6 (.250)
- Chicago Cubs: 1-3 (.250)
- Texas Rangers: 4-15 (.210)
- Washington Nationals: 1-4 (.200)
- Baltimore Orioles: 0-1 (.000)
Cincinnati Reds: 0-1 (.000)
Pittsburgh Pirates: 0-1 (.000) - St. Louis Cardinals: 0-2 (.000)
- Chicago White Sox: 0-4 (.000)
Miscellaneous Stats or Other Interesting Things That Happened:
- The main thing that was constantly on my mind this year was how many times I tuned in and watched a team lose. The longest losing streak of games that I watched was eight. It was truly, truly painful. The longest winning streak I experienced was four.
- The Tampa Bay Rays' first pitch of the season hit the opposing batter.
- The Texas Rangers homered in their first at-bat of the season. They went on to blow a 6-0 lead and lose, 10-8. In retrospect, it was only a sign of unfortunate things to come for the rest of the season.
- I watched the Cleveland Guardians put up six runs in a 9th inning, including a grand slam. That was fun.
- In a game between the White Sox and Mariners, extreme wind conditions in Chicago caused four routine, infield fly balls to be dropped, collectively, by both teams. It was crazy.
- I saw the Rangers hit a grand slam off of Shohei Ohtani, who had a great season on the mound and at the plate.
- I watched a game on Jackie Robinson Day.
- A Marlins-Nationals game in Miami was briefly delayed due to a false fire alarm.
- I watched nine walk-off wins - almost all of which, it seems, ended as losses for the teams I wanted to win.
- I watched Stephen Strasburg get absolutely lit up in his season debut, after months on the injured list. I promptly dropped him from my fantasy baseball team that night.
- I watched a terribly boring Phillies-Cardinals game, in which nobody scored until I turned it off.
- I got Bieber Fever as I watched Shane Bieber toss a complete game for the Guardians.
- In the midst of their incredible run, I watched the Seattle Mariners win their 14th straight game. By the way, I'm super happy for the Mariners, who made the playoffs this year for the first time since 2001.
- I watched a Red Sox game that my parents and brother Cody attended in Boston. The dang Red Sox had several perfect opportunities to win - they had runners on third with no outs in the 8th AND 9th innings and didn't get any runs out of it. They went on to lose to the Blue Jays in 10 innings.
- Mike Trout (proud member of my fantasy team) had a nearly historic streak of consecutive games with a home run snapped during a Los Angeles Angels game that I watched. He had homered in seven straight games and I think that eight games would have tied the MLB record.
- In the last game I watched this season, I watched as Oakland A's catcher Stephen Vogt homered in his final career at-bat. I'm not an A's fan (unless they move to Utah #MLBtoSLC), but that was pretty awesome.
Final Thoughts:
I've said it a bunch but I'll say it once more: this was just a tough, tough season for me, as a baseball fan. Because I live in Utah without a "local team" to cheer for, I watch a lot of different teams and, other than the Rangers, don't necessarily watch anyone religiously, but even then, it's just odd that so many of the teams I like would be so, so bad this year. It often wasn't fun to watch, but I do love baseball - and I knew that I'd eventually have to write this blog, so I wanted to make my stats look good.
These stats surprised me quite a bit. I honestly felt like I didn't watch as much baseball as I usually do, for a few different reasons. I was a few games short of the benchmark from last year, but I feel like I ended up having a pretty respectable year.
Random note: I just looked back at last year's blog and saw that the Rangers went 3-11 when I watched them last year. Combining that with this year's record, they're 7-25 in the past two seasons, which is quite atrocious. I know they've been bad, but I didn't realize they have been that bad when I've been watching. Gross.
One thing is certain: splitting the cost of the service with my brother was an incredibly wise decision. Hopefully he'll buy in again next season, too.
Finally, as has become an annual tradition, I sincerely respect and admire you if you actually read this entire post. It's like torture to have to do this every October, but it's a habit now and I just can't kick it.
Until next year, I guess. Farewell.
