It's hard to believe that it's already October! The calendar year is almost over, and so is the Major League Baseball season, which has officially entered the postseason! Three teams - the Guardians, the Padres and the Red Sox - were eliminated while I wrote this blog.
This was an odd year of baseball viewership for me, as I've realized that the more children I have, the less control I have over what's on the TV at any given point of the day. Regardless, I'm going to break things down the way I have in my past MLB TV blogs, which you can refer to here, if you have nothing else going on today. To prevent myself from having to re-explain my thought process about everything for the umpteenth time, I will assume that if you've made it this far into the post, you're either familiar with my work in prior years or that you went back and read some of the old posts and now have a pretty good idea what's going on.
Are you with me? Very well. Let's proceed.
Stats Tracked on the Spreadsheet:
I didn't change anything that I was tracking on my spreadsheet this year, compared to what I was doing in 2024. As a reminder, here are the things that I kept track of for every game that I watched:
- Road team
- Home team
- Home or Road Broadcast
- 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 (although I think I'm getting less particular about this, unless something truly strange or interesting takes place)
Persisting Factors that Affected Viewing Habits:
- All broadcasts (including the opponent's broadcast options) for Arizona Diamondback and Colorado Rockies games are blacked out in Utah. As I have mentioned ad nauseum in the past, this is completely dumb.
- Any nationally televised games (FOX, ESPN, TBS, etc.) are not viewable on MLB TV.
- I work from home and now have three kids, so I basically can only but baseball on the big screen if the kids are 100% distracted by something else or if I'm trying to bore them to sleep, a tactic I successfully employed several times this season.
- I've been married for six years, and we have a lot of other stuff that we like to do or watch that isn't some random baseball game that my wife probably doesn't care about at all. (But my wife is super awesome and if I said, "Hey, I'd like to watch some baseball tonight, if that's ok," she would be totally fine with it.)
Untracked Games:
Back in the day, I used to have this bucket list project where I was trying to make it to all of the MLB stadiums. I would go to games on a practically yearly basis. However, as previously mentioned, I have a family now, so... yeah, it's been a second. My last baseball trip was in 2022, and I have no idea when I'll be able to make it to another one. Maybe next year. I thought I was making some pretty good progress - I've been to 17 stadiums, after all - but at this rate, I'll be that cute 86-year-old man that the official MLB social media channels post about, saying, "This adorable old man finally made it to all 30 stadiums. Look at him go!"
Now, on to the fun stuff!
Total Number of Games Watched:
- New year, same thought process: if all 30 Major League teams play 162 games a season, and if each single game counts as two "games played" (one game for the home team and one game for the road team), that equals a total of 4,860 games played.
- Accounting for ReGiOnAl BlAcKoUtS of the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies, as well as nationally televised games, I have been lowering the maximum amount of games I would have had access to down to 4,356 games per season.
- I watched a total of 35 baseball games this season, or a total of 70 "games played."
- This is 26 fewer games than I watched in 2024. Yiiikes.
- Based on the approximate number of 4,356 "games played" that I had access to, I watched about 1.6% of those games, a decrease of 0.8% from last year.
- This year's MLB season ran from March 27 - September 28, a duration of 186 days. For the past two years, I have been using the guideline that I could "reasonably" watch one baseball game per day. At this point, the thought of me watching one baseball game every day for 186 days is completely insane. There is no way that I could do that. So I'm changing things up this year. I think if I was really kicking butt, I could probably watch maybe a maximum of four games in a single week. Most of the games that I have been able to watch were day games, and those generally only happen on Wednesdays and Thursdays, so it definitely wasn't a productive season for me, comparatively speaking. So... let's see how this shakes up my stats.
- I watched a total of 35 games throughout the 186-day season. There are 26.5 weeks in 186 days. If I were to "reasonably" watch a maximum of four games every week for 26.5 weeks, that would be a "reasonably maximum" total of 106 games throughout the season. Thirty-five games out of a 106-game maximum comes out to just barely above 33% for the season - an increase of 1% from how much I watched last year. This is truly shocking to me. I honestly can't believe it.
- Here is the evolution of that percentage since 2018:
- 2018: 11%
- 2019: 26%
- 2020: 29%
- 2021: 17%
- 2022: 31%
- 2023: 27%
- 2024: 32%
- 2025: 33% - a (hilariously unexpected) new record!
Cost Per Game:
This year, I mooched off of my brother Austin's MLB TV subscription, which he got for free through, I think, his cell phone provider. This means, gloriously, that I paid nothing for access to baseball this year.
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 (split cost)
- 2023: $2.94/game
- 2024: $2.42/game
- 2025: $0.00/game
Duration of Viewing:
Here is the breakdown of how long I watched each game, based on the definitions I established many years ago, from most often to least often:
- Full (8-9 innings): 11 games (31%)
- Most (5-7 innings): 9 games (26%)
- Partial (3-4 innings): 9 games (26%)
- Minimal (1-2 innings): 6 games (17%)
In a surprising revelation, I watched more "Full" games than any other duration this year. Typically, I think, "Most" has been my most common tendency.
Times Watched on the Team's Local Broadcast (Out of 35 Games Watched):
Here is this year's leaderboard for how many times I intentionally tuned into a team's local broadcast:
- Texas Rangers: 17
- Los Angeles Angels: 4
- Seattle Mariners: 3
- Chicago Cubs: 2
Cleveland Guardians: 2
Tampa Bay Rays: 2 - Baltimore Orioles: 1
Los Angeles Dodgers: 1
Miami Marlins: 1
Toronto Blue Jays: 1
Washington Nationals: 1
Times Watched (Total, Out of 70 Total Teams Watched):
Here is the breakdown of how many times I watched every team play, regardless of which broadcast I tuned into:
- Texas Rangers: 17
- Boston Red Sox: 4
Cleveland Guardians: 4
Los Angeles Angels: 4
Miami Marlins: 4 - Chicago Cubs: 3
Houston Astros: 3
Seattle Mariners: 3
Tampa Bay Rays: 3
The Athletics: 3
Toronto Blue Jays: 3 - Detroit Tigers: 2
Kansas City Royals: 2
New York Mets: 2
San Francisco Giants: 2
Washington Nationals: 2 - Atlanta Braves: 1
Baltimore Orioles: 1
Chicago White Sox: 1
Cincinnati Reds: 1
Los Angeles Dodgers: 1
Milwaukee Brewers: 1
Minnesota Twins: 1
Philadelphia Phillies: 1
Pittsburgh Pirates: 1
I watched 25 teams this year, which is honestly pretty good. There were five teams that I didn't get around to this season: the Diamondbacks and Rockies (because I couldn't), the Yankees and Padres (because I hate them), and the Cardinals (because I apparently just didn't care).
Also, it should be noted that the number of times I watched a team is not necessarily indicative of how much I like the team (other than the Rangers) but of how often it that team was playing at a time that was convenient for me to have watched them.
Overall Win/Loss Record:
- This year, teams I tuned in to watch went 21-14, which sets a new record for winning percentage in a single season. I went on two five-game winning streaks, and the most consecutive losses I saw was a three-game skid in August. Not bad!
- Running W/L percentage tracker:
- 2018: .534
- 2019: .625
- 2020: .410
- 2021: .492
- 2022: .404
- 2023: .490
- 2024: .590
- 2025: .666
Home/Road Split:
- I tuned into 18 home broadcasts (51%) and 17 road broadcasts this year (49%).
- When I watched a team's home broadcast, those teams went 11-7 (.611).
- When I watched a team's road broadcast, those teams went 10-7 (.588).
- Regardless of whose broadcast I watched, the home team went 18-17 (.514).
- Regardless of whose broadcast I watched, the road team went 17-18 (.486).
Editor's note: My gosh, I can't believe I keep track of ALL OF THIS STUFF every year. Am I insane??
W/L Records for Teams Whose Broadcast I Watched:
- Washington Nationals: 1-0 (1.000)
- Tampa Bay Rays: 2-0 (1.000)
Los Angeles Dodgers: 1-0 (1.000)
Miami Marlins: 1-0 (1.000)
Toronto Blue Jays: 1-0 (1.000) - Seattle Mariners: 2-1 (.666)
- Texas Rangers: 10-7 (.588)
- Los Angeles Angels: 2-2 (.500)
Cleveland Guardians: 1-1 (.500) - Baltimore Orioles: 0-1 (.000)
Chicago Cubs: 0-2 (.000)
W/L Records for Every Team I Watched, Regardless of Broadcast:
- Kansas City Royals: 2-0 (1.000)
San Francisco Giants: 2-0 (1.000)
Los Angeles Dodgers: 1-0 (1.000)
Minnesota Twins: 1-0 (1.000)
Philadelphia Phillies: 1-0 (1.000)
Pittsburgh Pirates: 1-0 (1.000) - Seattle Mariners: 2-1 (.666)
Tampa Bay Rays: 2-1 (.666)
The Athletics: 2-1 (.666) - Texas Rangers: 10-7 (.588)
- Boston Red Sox: 2-2 (.500)
Los Angeles Angels: 2-2 (.500)
Detroit Tigers: 1-1 (.500)
New York Mets: 1-1 (.500)
Washington Nationals: 1-1 (.500) - Houston Astros: 1-2 (.333)
Toronto Blue Jays: 1-2 (.333) - Cleveland Guardians: 1-3 (.250)
Miami Marlins: 1-3 (.250) - Atlanta Braves: 0-1 (.000)
Baltimore Orioles: 0-1 (.000)
Chicago White Sox: 0-1 (.000)
Cincinnati Reds: 0-1 (.000)
Milwaukee Brewers: 0-1 (.000)
Chicago Cubs: 0-3 (.000)
Miscellaneous Stats or Other Interesting Things That Happened:
- An MLB TV outage caused widespread issues for all users; it prevented me from watching the first inning and a half of the Rangers' Opening Day game. This was the straw that broke the camel's back, as far as me asking Austin if I could mooch off of his free subscription. I cancelled my subscription immediately (it wasn't scheduled to be charged for another day or two, at the time, so I cancelled and jumped over to Austin's account the following week).
- Hurricane Milton destroyed Tropicana Field, forcing the Rays to have to play all of their home games in a minor league stadium this year, so that was different. The Athletics - who dropped "Oakland" from their team name this year as they prepare to move to Vegas in 2028 - also played their home games in a minor league stadium.
- I watched a game on Father's Day.
- I watched a Cubs game in which airplane flyovers caused several brief delays in the game and even soared over the stadium in the middle of "Star Wars" actor Hayden Christensen performing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."
- I saw wins and losses in extra-innings games, and I saw walk-off wins and losses.
- I witnessed some of the most egregiously bad strike calls I can remember in my entire life.
- I saw a batter turn in for a bunt and get hit right between the eyes. It was nasty.
- I watched some late-season baseball with my newborn son, Corey.
Final Thoughts:
I am honestly quite shocked by a lot of these results. Granted, I think that bumping down my expectations for how much baseball I can reasonably watch probably really helps, but this ended up being a lot more positive than I expected it to be. I know that I didn't watch nearly as much baseball this season as I'm used to, but I've also just got a lot more stuff going on - and the fact that I didn't have to pay for MLB TV this year was probably a huge contributing factor in my dip in games watched. Had I paid for a subscription again, I would have put forth more effort, but hey - I think I've earned a little bit of free baseball. Huge shoutout to Austin for helping me out this season.
We'll be back at it again next season.
Until next time.
