SotT: Underground: MLB TV Viewing Stats

This is my sixth year of posting my MLB TV stats, so I'm going to shorten a lot of my long-winded explanations of what I do, how I do it, and what all this stuff means. Every time I watch a baseball game through my MLB TV subscription, I use a Google Docs spreadsheet to keep track of some stats about every game. This post will break all of that useless information down.

Welcome, friends, and thank you for joining me.

Stats Tracked on the Spreadsheet:

Nothing changed on my spreadsheet this year. Again, here's what I kept track of for each game that I watched:

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:

All Arizona Diamondback and Colorado Rockies games are blacked out in Utah. It makes no sense.
Any nationally televised games (FOX, ESPN, TBS, etc.) are not viewable on MLB TV.
I work from home and have two young children whose first priority of entertainment is not watching sports.

Untracked Games:

I cannot recall any games that I watched that were not broadcast on MLB TV. Also somewhat of note, for the first time in several years, I did not attend an MLB game in person.

Total Number of Games Watched and Cost Per Game:

This year, I'm going to spare you all the math I put into these calculations, but it suffices me to say that 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 the idiotic 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 51 baseball games this season, or a total of 102 "games played."

This is six fewer games than I watched in 2022.
Based on the approximate number of 4,356 "games played" that I had access to, I watched about 2.3% of those games, a 0.3% decrease from last year.

This year's MLB season ran from March 30 - October 1, a duration of 186 days.

Last year, I lowered the maximum number of games that I could reasonably have watched per day to one, which I think is totally reasonable. Of course, there were probably days when I might have watched part of multiple games, but that would definitely have been the exception, not the rule.

I watched a total of 51 games throughout the 186-day season, which is 27% of the maximum number of games that I reasonably could have watched - a minor dip from how much I watched last year.

Here is the evolution of that percentage since 2018:

2018: 11%
2019: 26%
2020: 29%
2021: 17%
2022: 31%
2023: 27%

Unlike last year, I unfortunately did not split the cost of MLB TV with my brother. (Long story short, we found out that he got it for free through T-Mobile the day after I my subscription automatically renewed. Bummer.) By dividing the cost of my subscription by the number of games that I watched, the math comes out to $2.94 per game - in the neighborhood of triple what I was paying per game last year and easily my worst ratio since I started keeping track of these ridiculous statistics.

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
2023: $2.94/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: 21 games (41%)
Partial: 14 games (27%)
Full: 11 games (22%)
Minimal: 5 games (10%)

Times Watched on the Team's Local Broadcast (Out of 51 Games Watched):

Here is the leaderboard for how many times I intentionally tuned into a team's local broadcast:

Texas Rangers: 21
Tampa Bay Rays: 10
Cincinnati Reds: 3
Seattle Mariners: 3
Miami Marlins: 2
Washington Nationals: 2
Chicago Cubs: 1
Detroit Tigers: 1
Houston Astros: 1
Los Angeles Angels: 1
New York Mets: 1
New York Yankees: 1
Philadelphia Phillies: 1
San Diego Padres: 1
San Francisco Giants: 1
Toronto Blue Jays: 1

Times Watched (Total, Out of 102 Total Teams Watched):

Once again, 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 (as always), the Minnesota Twins and the Los Angeles Dodgers (who I apparently have a habit of never watching). 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: 21
Tampa Bay Rays: 10
Seattle Mariners: 6
Chicago White Sox: 5
Toronto Blue Jays: 5
Washington Nationals: 5
Boston Red Sox: 4
Miami Marlins: 4
Cincinnati Reds: 3
Cleveland Guardians: 3
Detroit Tigers: 3
Los Angeles Angels: 3
New York Mets: 3
Oakland A's: 3
Philadelphia Phillies: 3
Baltimore Orioles: 2
Chicago Cubs: 2
Houston Astros: 2
Milwaukee Brewers: 2
San Francisco Giants: 2
Kansas City Royals: 1
New York Yankees: 1
Pittsburgh Pirates: 1
San Diego Padres: 1
St. Louis Cardinals: 1

Overall Win/Loss Record:

This year, teams I tuned in to watch went 25-26, which felt a lot worse than it actually was. The surprising thing is that my top two teams this year were the Texas Rangers and the Tampa Bay Rays, who were two of the best teams in the league all year long, so I would have anticipated watching a few more wins. Sadly, that wasn't the case, and I watched some pretty good teams lose a lot of winnable games. Thankfully, it wasn't quite as miserable as last year.
Running W/L percentage tracker:

2018: .534
2019: .625
2020: .410
2021: .492
2022: .404
2023: .490

Home/Road Split:

Editor's note: I said last year that this was, inexplicably, the most difficult category for me to calculate, but I got it right this year on my first try. I am proud. The home/road W-L numbers are tricky, though. I made some changes to my spreadsheet so that it's hopefully a little easier next year.

Of the 51 games I tuned into during 2023, the team I wanted to watch played 24 home games (47%) and 27 road games (53%).
When I watched a team's home broadcast, that team went 14-10 (.583).
When I watched a team's road broadcast, that team went 11-16 (.407).
Regardless of whose broadcast I watched, the home team went 30-21 (.588).
Regardless of whose broadcast I watched, the road team went 21-30 (.411).

W/L Records for Teams Whose Broadcast I Watched:

Detroit Tigers: 1-0 (1.000)
Los Angeles Angels: 1-0 (1.000)
Philadelphia Phillies: 1-0 (1.000)
San Diego Padres: 1-0 (1.000)
Tampa Bay Rays: 6-4 (.600)
Texas Rangers: 12-9 (.571)
Washington Nationals: 1-1 (.500)
Cincinnati Reds: 1-2 (.333)
Seattle Mariners: 1-2 (.333)
Chicago Cubs: 0-1 (.000)
Houston Astros: 0-1 (.000)
New York Mets: 0-1 (.000)
New York Yankees: 0-1 (.000)
San Francisco Giants: 0-1 (.000)
Toronto Blue Jays: 0-1 (.000)
Miami Marlins: 0-2 (.000)

W/L Records for Every Team I Watched, Regardless of Broadcast:

Milwaukee Brewers: 2-0 (1.000)
Pittsburgh Pirates: 1-0 (1.000)
San Diego Padres: 1-0 (1.000)
Atlanta Braves: 3-1 (.750)
Detroit Tigers: 2-1 (.666)
Los Angeles Angels: 2-1 (.666)
New York Mets: 2-1 (.666)
Philadelphia Phillies: 2-1 (.666)
Tampa Bay Rays: 6-4 (.600)
Chicago White Sox: 3-2 (.600)
Texas Rangers: 12-9 (.571)
Houston Astros: 2-2 (.500)
Miami Marlins: 2-2 (.500)
Baltimore Orioles: 1-1 (.500)
Chicago Cubs: 1-1 (.500)
San Francisco Giants: 1-1 (.500)
Toronto Blue Jays: 2-3 (.400)
Seattle Mariners: 2-4 (.333)
Cleveland Guardians: 1-2 (.333)
Cincinnati Reds: 1-2 (.333)
Oakland A's: 1-2 (.333)
Washington Nationals: 1-4 (.200)
Kansas City Royals: 0-1 (.000)
New York Yankees: 0-1 (.000)
St. Louis Cardinals: 0-1 (.000)
Boston Red Sox: 0-4 (.000)

Miscellaneous Stats or Other Interesting Things That Happened:

I saw big comebacks, I saw big chokes. I turned games off early and missed big comebacks and big chokes. I watched extra innings wins and suffered through extra innings losses. It's the circle of life.
I saw a Brewers player hit a grand slam for his first major league home run.
I saw a Rangers player get hit in the face by a pitch.
I watched the Rangers beat the Orioles at the hospital with my newborn son.
I watched the Rays tie Modern Era record for winning streak to start the season (13 games) and then watched them lose the next game, failing to break that record.
I also saw the Rangers and Mariners snap eight-game win streaks, because I'm just such a good luck charm
I watched a game on Jackie Robinson Day, the Fourth of July and Labor Day.
I saw some weird stuff, like when Vlad Guerrero Jr. threw his entire mitt to first base for an out after a grounder got stuck in his webbing, and when the Reds hit a "little league home run."
And - something I never thought I'd see - I watched Max Scherzer's debut for the Texas Rangers.

Final Thoughts:

Two things stick out: I didn't split the cost of the subscription this year, which essentially doubled my cost-per-game from the get-go, and I just didn't watch as much baseball this year as I wanted to or probably could have. Parenthood, man. Parenthood. There are just more important things that I need to be doing with my life, other than just watching baseball at all times. That, and I sometimes just get outvoted or overruled about what goes on the big TV. That's life, and that's ok.

But next year, I better either split the cost or just watch like a dozen more games to make me feel better about myself.

And... we'll see ya then, probably.

Go Rangers!

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Sunday, October 15, 2023

MLB TV Viewing Stats - 2023