MLB TV Viewing Stats - 2025

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:

1. Texas Rangers: 17
2. Los Angeles Angels: 4
3. Seattle Mariners: 3
4. Chicago Cubs: 2
   Cleveland Guardians: 2
   Tampa Bay Rays: 2
5. 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:

1. Texas Rangers: 17
2. Boston Red Sox: 4
   Cleveland Guardians: 4
   Los Angeles Angels: 4
   Miami Marlins: 4
3. Chicago Cubs: 3
   Houston Astros: 3
   Seattle Mariners: 3
   Tampa Bay Rays: 3
   The Athletics: 3
   Toronto Blue Jays: 3
4. Detroit Tigers: 2
   Kansas City Royals: 2
   New York Mets: 2
   San Francisco Giants: 2
   Washington Nationals: 2
5. 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:

1. Washington Nationals: 1-0 (1.000)
2. 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)
   
3. Seattle Mariners: 2-1 (.666)
4. Texas Rangers: 10-7 (.588)
5. Los Angeles Angels: 2-2 (.500)
   Cleveland Guardians: 1-1 (.500)
6. Baltimore Orioles: 0-1 (.000)
   Chicago Cubs: 0-2 (.000)

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

1. 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)
   
2. Seattle Mariners: 2-1 (.666)
   Tampa Bay Rays: 2-1 (.666)
   The Athletics: 2-1 (.666)
3. Texas Rangers: 10-7 (.588)
4. 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)
5. Houston Astros: 1-2 (.333)
   Toronto Blue Jays: 1-2 (.333)
6. Cleveland Guardians: 1-3 (.250)
   Miami Marlins: 1-3 (.250)
7. 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.

MLB TV Viewing Stats - 2024

Another baseball season has come and gone, which means that it's time for me to crunch some numbers and, for no other reason than to satisfy my own curiosity, see how many games I watched this year. This is the (*counts on fingers*) SEVENTH YEAR?!? that I've done this, which is crazy, but it actually is a pretty helpful way of helping me determine whether I'm getting any value out of my subscription.

I won't go into great detail to explain a lot of how and why I do the things that I do, but if you're really curious, you can go back and check out some of my older MLB TV blogs.

Anyway, let's get down to business.

Stats Tracked on the Spreadsheet:

Basically nothing changed on my spreadsheet this year, although I did add one extra column to (hopefully) help me more easily keep track of whether I watched the home team or the road team's broadcast. Here's a quick refresher on what I kept track of for each game that I watch:

• 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

Persisting Factors that Affected Viewing Habits:

• All Arizona Diamondback and Colorado Rockies games are blacked out in Utah. It still 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 during the day is not watching sports.
• I've been married for five years now, which means that my first priority of entertainment at night can't be watching sports, either.

Untracked Games:

As was the case last year, I can't remember any games that I watched that were not broadcast on MLB TV. For the second year in a row, I didn't go on a baseball trip, so I didn't watch any MLB games in person. Maybe next year.

Total Number of Games Watched and Cost Per Game:

• I'll use the same basic explanation that I gave last year: 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 61 baseball games this season, or a total of 122 "games played."
• This is 10 more games than I watched in 2023.
• Based on the approximate number of 4,356 "games played" that I had access to, I watched about 2.8% of those games, a 0.5% increase from last year.
• This year's MLB season ran from March 28 - September 30, a duration of 187 days. For the past two years, I have been using the guideline that I could "reasonably" watch one baseball game per day. I mean, I probably could. Do I watch one game per day? Of course not. But I probably could. For most of this season, it would probably reasonable for me to watch one game per week. But we'll just keep going with it, I guess.
• I watched a total of 61 games throughout the 187-day season, which is 32% of the maximum number of games that I reasonably could have watched - a 5% increase 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%
• 2024: 32% - A new record!
• This year, I ended up paying the full cost of the subscription (my brother Austin is a big Dodgers fan but currently lives in South Carolina, which would have him staying up until like 2 in the morning any time he wanted to watch a game on the west coast, so I don't really blame him for not wanting in this year). As usual, I divided the cost of my subscription by the number of games that I watched, which came out to about $2.42 per game.

Let me take a break here and say something. I am extremely proud of myself for running this cost down this year. I realized in about mid-August that I was not watching much baseball - and that my cost per game was, at that point, more than $6 per game watched, which would absolutely not make this subscription worth it in the future. On August 25, I watched my 24th game of the season, meaning that I went on a freaking tear and watched at least a minimal part of 38 games in 36 days. In that span, I lowered my cost per game by almost $4 per game, which is absolutely crazy. Heeeeeeeeck yeah. Anyway, very proud of myself. Now, where were we?

• 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

Duration of Viewing:

The following is a breakdown of how long I watched each game, based on the definitions I established many years ago, in order of duration:

• Most (5-7 innings): 21 games (34%)
• Partial (3-4 innings): 18 games (30%)
• Full (8-9 innings): 13 games (21%)
• Minimal (1-2 innings): 9 games (15%)

Times Watched on the Team's Local Broadcast (Out of 61 Games Watched):

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

1. Texas Rangers: 23
   
2. Cleveland Guardians: 6
3. Seattle Mariners: 5
4. Atlanta Braves: 3
   Baltimore Orioles: 3
   Los Angeles Dodgers: 3
   Washington Nationals: 3
5. Cincinnati Reds: 2
   Miami Marlins: 2
   Philadelphia Phillies: 2
   San Diego Padres: 2
   San Francisco Giants: 2
   Tampa Bay Rays: 2
6. Kansas City Royals: 1
   Los Angeles Angels: 1
   Toronto Blue Jays: 1

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

Here is a breakdown of how many times I watched all of the other teams play, regardless of which broadcast I tuned into:

1. Texas Rangers: 23
   
2. Seattle Mariners: 10
3. Cleveland Guardians: 7
   Tampa Bay Rays: 7
4. Chicago White Sox: 5
   Oakland A's: 5
   San Diego Padres: 5
5. Atlanta Braves: 4
   Baltimore Orioles: 4
   Los Angeles Angels: 4
   Philadelphia Phillies: 4
   St. Louis Cardinals: 4
   Toronto Blue Jays: 4
   Washington Nationals: 4
6. Chicago Cubs: 3
   Detroit Tigers: 3
   Houston Astros: 3
   Kansas City Royals: 3
   Los Angeles Dodgers: 3
   Miami Marlins: 3
   Minnesota Twins: 3
7. Boston Red Sox: 2
   Cincinnati Reds: 2
   New York Mets: 2
   Pittsburgh Pirates: 2
   San Francisco Giants: 2
8. Milwaukee Brewers: 1

There were three teams that I didn't watch a single time this year: the Diamondbacks and Rockies (because I couldn't), and the Yankees (because I hate them).

Overall Win/Loss Record:

• This year, teams I tuned in to watch went 36-25, which is all right with me. The teams I watched had some hot streaks and some cold streaks, but I feel like I got to see some pretty good games, overall. This was my second-highest winning percentage since I started tracking this stuff, and my best season since 2019.
• Running W/L percentage tracker:
• 2018: .534
• 2019: .625
• 2020: .410
• 2021: .492
• 2022: .404
• 2023: .490
• 2024: .590

Home/Road Split:

• I tuned into 25 home broadcasts (41%) and 36 road broadcasts this year (59%).
• When I watched a team's home broadcast, those teams went 20-5 (.800), which is totally insane.
• When I watched a team's road broadcast, those teams went 16-20 (.444).
• Regardless of whose broadcast I watched, the home team went 40-21 (.656).
• Regardless of whose broadcast I watched, the road team went 21-40 (.344).

Editor's note: For the record, that was probably the fastest that I have ever done that math.

W/L Records for Teams Whose Broadcast I Watched:

1. Los Angeles Dodgers: 3-0 (1.000)
   Philadelphia Phillies: 2-0 (1.000)
   San Diego Padres: 2-0 (1.000)
   San Francisco Giants: 2-0 (1.000)
   Los Angeles Angels: 1-0 (1.000)
   Toronto Blue Jays: 1-0 (1.000)
2. Cleveland Guardians: 5-1 (.833)
3. Atlanta Braves: 2-1 (.666)Seattle Mariners: 3-2 (.600)
4. Texas Rangers: 12-11 (.522)
   
5. Cincinnati Reds: 1-1 (.500)
   Miami Marlins: 1-1 (.500)
6. Baltimore Orioles: 1-2 (.333)
7. Kansas City Royals: 0-1 (.000)
   Tampa Bay Rays: 0-2 (.000)
   Washington Nationals: 0-3 (.000)

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

1. Los Angeles Dodgers: 3-0 (1.000)
   Minnesota Twins: 3-0 (1.000)
   Boston Red Sox: 2-0 (1.000)
   San Francisco Giants: 2-0 (1.000)
   Milwaukee Brewers: 1-0 (1.000)
   
2. Philadelphia Phillies: 3-1 (.750)
   St. Louis Cardinals: 3-1 (.750)
3. Cleveland Guardians: 5-2 (.714)
4. Detroit Tigers: 2-1 (.666)
   Houston Astros: 2-1 (.666)
5. Texas Rangers: 12-11 (.522)
6. Atlanta Braves: 2-2 (.500)
   Cincinnati Reds: 1-1 (.500)
   New York Mets: 1-1 (.500)
   Pittsburgh Pirates: 1-1 (.500)
7. Los Angeles Angels: 2-2 (.500)
   Toronto Blue Jays: 2-2 (.500)
8. San Diego Padres: 2-3 (.400)
9. Chicago Cubs: 1-2 (.333)
   Miami Marlins: 1-2 (.333)
10. Seattle Mariners: 3-7 (.300)
11. Baltimore Orioles: 1-3 (.250)
12. Oakland A's: 1-4 (.200)
13. Kansas City Royals: 0-3 (.000)
    Washington Nationals: 0-4 (.000)
    Chicago White Sox: 0-5 (.000)
    Tampa Bay Rays: 0-7 (.000)

Man, what a horrible year for the Rays. Yikes.

Miscellaneous Stats or Other Interesting Things That Happened:

• The first game I watched this season was former Rangers color commentator CJ Nitkowski's first game as a Braves broadcaster. I knew I recognized that voice!
• I saw big innings, like the Rangers scoring 10 runs in the second inning in a game early in the season. I saw bad defense, like the Astros' back-up third baseman having four errors in a span of three or four innings.
• I saw controversial calls! I saw walk-off wins and losses! I saw blown leads to terrible teams, including the Chicago White Sox - the worst team in MLB history! I saw big comeback victories! I turned games off that I should have kept watching! And I almost certainly kept watching games that I should have turned off!
• I saw the Braves get shut out for the first time in over a year.
• In a rather strange series of events, I turned a game on in the third inning and the first two pitches I saw were hit for home runs by the opposing team. Lovely!
• I teams' season opener. I watched a game on Father's Day. I watched a Dodgers game last week that my parents and brothers were attending.
• I watched a Guardians game in which Emmanuel Clase tied the franchise record for saves.
• And speaking of history, most impressively, I was watching the game when Shohei Ohtani passed the 50 home run/50 stolen bases club, in which he posted an absolutely ABSURD stat line of 6/6, 3 HR, 4 R, 10 RBI, 2 SB. This performance pretty much single-handedly saved my fantasy baseball season and led me all the way to the championship, so... Shohei? Thank you. From the bottom of my heart.

Final Thoughts:

Last season, I ended my blog by saying, "Next year, I better either split the cost or just watch like a dozen more games to make me feel better about myself." Well, I watched 10 more games this year than I did last year, and I feel pretty good about myself. I feel good about myself because I really, really slacked this year. I don't know exactly what the cause was - probably that the WORLD SERIES CHAMPION TEXAS RANGERS just weren't very good this year - but I realized in mid-August that I had a long way to go in order to make this subscription worth it. And you know what? I think I did a pretty good job, there in the final month and a half of the season.

That's about it. I'll be watching the playoffs a little bit, most likely, but not with anywhere near the anxiety or engagement as I did last year. As long as the Astros don't win, everything will be ok.

Until next time!

MLB TV Viewing Stats - 2023

 

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:

1. Texas Rangers: 21
2. Tampa Bay Rays: 10
3. Cincinnati Reds: 3
   Seattle Mariners: 3
4. Miami Marlins: 2
   Washington Nationals: 2
5. 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:

1. Texas Rangers: 21
2. Tampa Bay Rays: 10
3. Seattle Mariners: 6
4. Chicago White Sox: 5
   Toronto Blue Jays: 5
   Washington Nationals: 5
5. Boston Red Sox: 4
   Miami Marlins: 4
6. Cincinnati Reds: 3
   Cleveland Guardians: 3
   Detroit Tigers: 3
   Los Angeles Angels: 3
   New York Mets: 3
   Oakland A's: 3
   Philadelphia Phillies: 3
7. Baltimore Orioles: 2
   Chicago Cubs: 2
   Houston Astros: 2
   Milwaukee Brewers: 2
   San Francisco Giants: 2
8. 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:

1. 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)
2. Tampa Bay Rays: 6-4 (.600)
3. Texas Rangers: 12-9 (.571)
4. Washington Nationals: 1-1 (.500)
5. Cincinnati Reds: 1-2 (.333)
   Seattle Mariners: 1-2 (.333)
6. 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:

1. Milwaukee Brewers: 2-0 (1.000)
   Pittsburgh Pirates: 1-0 (1.000)
   San Diego Padres: 1-0 (1.000)
2. Atlanta Braves: 3-1 (.750)
3. Detroit Tigers: 2-1 (.666)
   Los Angeles Angels: 2-1 (.666)
   New York Mets: 2-1 (.666)
   Philadelphia Phillies: 2-1 (.666)
4. Tampa Bay Rays: 6-4 (.600)
   Chicago White Sox: 3-2 (.600)
5. Texas Rangers: 12-9 (.571)
6. 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)
7. Toronto Blue Jays: 2-3 (.400)
8. Seattle Mariners: 2-4 (.333)
   Cleveland Guardians: 1-2 (.333)
   Cincinnati Reds: 1-2 (.333)
   Oakland A's: 1-2 (.333)
9. Washington Nationals: 1-4 (.200)
10. 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!

MLB TV Viewing Stats - 2022

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:

1. Texas Rangers: 19
2. Tampa Bay Rays: 7
3. Cleveland Guardians: 5
   Los Angeles Angels: 5
   Miami Marlins: 5
4. Seattle Mariners: 4
5. Washington Nationals: 3
6. Philadelphia Phillies: 2
7. 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:

1. Texas Rangers: 19
2. Los Angeles Angels: 9
3. Cleveland Guardians: 8
   Miami Marlins: 8
   Tampa Bay Rays: 8
4. Seattle Mariners: 7
5. Oakland A's: 6
6. Washington Nationals: 5
7. Chicago Cubs: 4
   Chicago White Sox: 4
   Houston Astros: 4
   New York Mets: 4
   Philadelphia Phillies: 4
8. Boston Red Sox: 3
   Minnesota Twins: 3
   San Francisco Giants: 3
   Toronto Blue Jays: 3
9. Atlanta Braves: 2
   Detroit Tigers: 2
   St. Louis Cardinals: 2
10. 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:

1. Atlanta Braves: 1-0 (1.000)
   San Francisco Giants: 1-0 (1.000)
   Toronto Blue Jays: 1-0 (1.000)
2. Cleveland Guardians: 3-2 (.600)
   Los Angeles Angels: 3-2 (.600)
3. Tampa Bay Rays: 4-3 (.571)
4. Seattle Mariners: 2-2 (.500)
5. Washington Nationals: 1-2 (.333)
6. Texas Rangers: 4-15 (.211)
7. Miami Marlins: 1-4 (.200)
8. 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:

1. San Francisco Giants: 3-0 (1.000)
   Toronto Blue Jays: 3-0 (1.000)
2. Detroit Tigers: 2-0 (1.000)
3. Kansas City Royals: 1-0 (1.000)
   Milwaukee Brewers: 1-0 (1.000)
   New York Yankees: 1-0 (1.000)
4. Oakland A's: 5-1 (.833)
5. Houston Astros: 3-1 (.750)
   New York Mets: 3-1 (.750)
6. Seattle Mariners: 5-2 (.714)
7. Los Angeles Angels: 6-3 (.666)
8. Cleveland Guardians: 5-3 (.625)
   Tampa Bay Rays: 5-3 (.625)
9. Philadelphia Phillies: 2-2 (.500)
10. Atlanta Braves: 1-1 (.500)
11. Boston Red Sox: 1-2 (.333)
    Minnesota Twins: 1-2 (.333)
12. Miami Marlins: 2-6 (.250)
13. Chicago Cubs: 1-3 (.250)
14. Texas Rangers: 4-15 (.210)
15. Washington Nationals: 1-4 (.200)
16. Baltimore Orioles: 0-1 (.000)
    Cincinnati Reds: 0-1 (.000)
    Pittsburgh Pirates: 0-1 (.000)
17. St. Louis Cardinals: 0-2 (.000)
18. 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.

Playstation Wrap-Up 2021 - FINALLY

Getting my "Playstation Wrap-Up" report was a real pain, for 2021. Some weird error on Playstation's website made it literally impossible for me to even see my stats for days, once they finally released the information to curious gamers. So that was frustrating. Then, when I finally got my numbers to show up, I just had a lot of other stuff going on. I went on a big vacation and was busy with a few other personal projects and hobbies, so here we are, two months later, and I finally have time to blog about it.

With no further ado, let's just jump right in and see how much gaming I did last year.

Total Hours:

Playstation says I played 1,203 hours in 2021. That's about 200 hours less than 2020, but 2020 was a really weird year where nobody really went outside, so cut me some slack.

As I've pondered previously, I'm not sure how accurate that is, and I think the math backs me up. Hear me out: Playstation also reports that I played on 355 days last year (11 more than in 2020). I divided that out, and it comes to a little less than 3 1/2 hours per day, every day last year but 10. That's a lot of playing, if that's true, and I can absolutely guarantee you that I didn't play video games for 3 1/2 hours nearly every day of 2021.

I think, rather, as I have speculated in the past, that this report may actually be pulling the number of hours that my Playstation was powered on, which would make more sense because (until recently) I have used my console to watch all of my movies and for all of my streaming services. Working from home, I know I have watched a ton of movies and TV (I mean, did you see my list of basically everything I watched for two years??).

Also, if a game is on but paused, does that count as "playing"? Probably, right? But what if I have a game on and I pause it to go eat food for half an hour? These are the things I think about because I'm weird.

This would throw into question the breakdown of time I spent playing PS4 titles vs PS5 titles, which is a fun statistic, but... I guess I'm just confused on what's actually being counted here. I don't know.

Anyway, Sony thinks I played a ton of video games last year, which is not entirely incorrect, just not entirely accurate, either. Also, I hardly played any of those hours "online" because I don't like being "pwned" by youths.

Games Played:

So, it appears that I played 38 unique games last year. Sounds reasonable. That, interestingly, is down 21 games from 2020, which is wild.

Retaining the top spot, as no surprise at all, is the newest installment of the "MLB The Show" franchise - and there's a good reason why I played so much of it this year: they paid me to do so. Yes, it's true. I was part of a paid research project that compensated me for playing "MLB The Show 21" a certain number of hours per week. Then, I'd have to answer a few questions about how I played and what I liked. It was a lot of fun, and I figured that if I was going to be playing the game anyway, they might as well pay me for it.

Up a spot from last year is the "NBA 2K" franchise, which is basically cut-and-paste, year after year, but the Jazz were playing really well and I needed my virtual basketball fix.

Speaking of "cut-and-paste," "Marvel's Avengers" debuts at number three this year. I spent 75 hours grinding out slightly different variations of the exact same missions, over and over and over and over again. Gamers and critics alike have maligned "Avengers" for its repetitive quests, but I put in a lot of hours before I realized how "Pay To Win" and dependent on its blind loot boxes it was becoming. I don't play it a lot anymore - I haven't played it at all since they brought Spiderman in as a DLC character - but I suspect that I'll go back to it at some point to clean up the trophies and try for that elusive "100%" completion rate.

"Watch Dogs: Legion" - number four last year - was a game I crushed during the second half of my paternity leave. Let's just say, that's a game that I probably couldn't have played if it wasn't for paternity leave and a sleepy child. Hoo boy, that dialogue was spicy. Awesome game, though. Sixty-one hours of walking around and randomly recruiting anybody I wanted to join my resistance movement. I was furious when my original team member died by, like, falling off a balcony or something. When they say "YOLO," they mean it.

The surprise of the year is the "Final Fantasy VII" remake, which I snagged as a free Playstation Plus game and, apparently, and into which clocked 57 hours. That was a very long game, I'll tell you what. Sheesh. Very long and a bit hard to master, but it ended up being all right. Little did I know that it was going to end of a cliffhanger. Does that mean I'm actually going to have to play the sequel?

Here are a few other games that I spent a lot of time playing last year:

• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2
• Need For Speed Payback
• Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
• Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy
• Riders Republic
• Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory
• Planet Coaster
• Hot Wheels Unleashed
• Sackboy: A Big Adventure

Trophies Earned:

Playstation says I earned 1,091 trophies last year and you know what? They're dang right, I did! Sadly, that's down from 1,410 trophies in 2020, but hey, that's still a ton, ok?

There are two major factors that affect the number of trophies I earn when playing games:

1. Having a co-worker that is a major "trophy hunter"
2. Marrying a wife with completionist tendencies

Basically, I'm held to a high standard, when it comes to completion percentages. My wife and I pride ourselves on being a "three-star family," a phrase we picked up from a friend while playing "Overcooked" on the Nintendo Switch. Basically, it's all or nothing. We aim for 100% and, whenever possible, we get it.

Here are the 14 games that I beat to 100% completion for a glorious Platinum trophy:

• Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales
• God of War
• Madden NFL 21
• Watch Dogs: Legion
• Ether One
• MLB The Show 21
• Far Cry 4
• Ratchet & Clank
• Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
• Hidden Agenda
• Overcooked: All You Can Eat
• Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy
• LEGO Dimensions
• Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory

That's a weird list. A couple of those games were purely just me going back to clean up some percentages on games that I thought I could finish. "Ether One," in particular, is a game I regret going back to. I probably played it one time, years ago, when it was free, but once I booted it back up, I just had to keep going. "Hidden Agenda" was another weird one that required me to play with multiple controllers, phones and tablets to complete. Why am I the way that I am? Who truly knows?

Some of those games were a lot of fun, though. The "Ratchet & Clank" games were both a blast. I'd never played that series before, and I remember thinking they were some of the most fun I'd had with games in a while. Just really unique, fun storytelling, and a great time to play. "LEGO Dimensions" was one of the dreaded toys-to-life games that I fell in love with a few years back (and spent way too much money on). It hasn't aged very well, and there are much better LEGO games that don't require me to get out a bunch of little figures to play every time, so I wrapped that one up and traded the disc back in to GameStop for like $1.25. I'll keep the little minifigs, of course. Can't be parting with those beauties.

I'm very proud of myself for completing a "Madden" game for the first time. Sports games are notoriously tough to "platinum," so a hearty pat on the back for me there.

"Melody of Memory" is a rhythm-based "Kingdom Hearts" game that I wasn't sure I'd ever pick up, but once I did (and realized that I actually liked it more than anticipated), I knew what had to be done. I spent hours and hours grinding out the achievements until I finally got the hang of it enough to beat some of the most difficult levels on the most difficulties. For instance, behold my perfect, nearly immaculate run of one of the trickiest songs in the game, which I recorded for posterity:

Yes, that's really me playing. I still can't believe I pulled that off. Ugh, what PTSD I just had while re-watching that clip.

Analysis and Conclusion:

Playstation didn't give quite as detailed of a breakdown for 2021 as they did in 2020, which is disappointing, so I don't have any other pointless numbers to crunch or tedious stats to mull over, but it was a nice little stroll down memory lane.

Video games have provided a really good amount of entertainment and leisure for me during the pandemic. Thankfully, life is a bit more "normal" now than it was a year ago, but having a kid has also resulted in me staying home more frequently than I did, years ago. It's nice to have something to help me pass the time indoors, and I'm grateful for websites and companies that keep track of all these ultimately meaningless things that I do when I have time for them.

One of the best things about the games I played in 2021 is that I was able to play a lot of them with my wife. In fact, she has even earned a couple platinum trophies, herself! Some of the most fun we had last year was beating the "Overcooked" collection together and, although it won't reflect in the report until next year, there were a couple other games we beat cooperatively, too. What a good sport. What a cool wife.

I don't want to put any pressure on myself but we're now three months into 2022 and I just hit my sixth platinum trophy of the year, so I'm on pace for a record-setting review when the new year rolls around. I guess we'll see what happens.

*****

What games have you been enjoying lately? We'd love to chat about them. Hit us up in the comments, follow us on Twitter (here and here), find us on Facebook or, heck, why not add us on Playstation and join us on our quest for greatness?

Until next time.

MLB TV Viewing Stats - 2021

So, I do this terribly nerdy thing, where I watch a lot of baseball games and keep track of a bunch of totally meaningless statistics that I know nobody else cares about. I've blogged about my findings for four seasons, now, so it's just become a tradition and I have to do it. Otherwise, all that data is actually good for nothing and a complete waste of my time.

More than anything else, I just need to get this information down, in black and white, so that I'm at peace with myself and my ridiculous obsession. I don't expect anyone to read this blog, but nevertheless, here it is, anyway.

I won't explain too much more. If you've made it this far, you probably know what you've gotten yourself into, so let's just get down to the nitty-gritty and break down all these numbers.

All the Stats You Never Knew You Needed:

I kept track of all the same stats I've monitored for the past few seasons, which are as follows:

• 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. It's stupid, given that I live in Utah, but that's just the way it is.
• Any nationally televised games (FOX, ESPN, TBS, etc.) are not viewable on MLB TV.

Untracked Games:

• I watched a few nationally televised games, including the MLB All-Star Game and the "Field of Dreams" game, which were not available through MLB TV.
• I attended games in Miami and Tampa Bay and watched them with my own, actual eyeballs, without the assistance of modern technology. Both home teams won those games, for the record.

Total Number of Games Watched and Cost Per Game:

• The 2021 MLB season ran from April 1, 2021 through October 3, 2021 - a total of 183 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).
• Because of the ridiculous regional blackouts for Rockies and Diamondbacks games that I've mentioned ad nauseum in previous blogs, I would not have been able to watch any of the 324 games played by either of those two 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.
• I will be less generous this season and only subtract 4 "games played" for each week of the regular season to account for nationally televised games (one game on Sunday night and one during prime time on any other day of the week). If the regular season was roughly 25 weeks long, that would be a total of 100 nationally blacked-out games.
• This brings the total number of games played that I would have had access to down to 4,406.
• I watched a total of 65 baseball games this season, or a total of 130 "games played."
• Based on the approximate number of 4,406 "games played" that I had access to, I only watched about 2.9% of those games.
• 4,406 games played, over a course of 183 days, divides out to 26 "games played" (13 individual games) on a given day.
• In the 2020 season, I estimated that I could hypothetically have watched about two games per day, due to the fact that I'm still working from home. I won't change that number this season.
• If the season was 183 days long and I could have watched a maximum of two games per day, that's a total of 366 baseball games that I potentially could have watched, if that's all I did every day.
• I watched a total of 65 games throughout the season, which is 17% of the maximum number of games that I reasonably could have watched.
• Here is how that percentage has developed since 2018:
• 2018: 11%
• 2019: 26%
• 2020: 29%
• 2021: 17%
• Dividing the number of games watched by the amount I paid for this year's subscription, I spent about $1.83 per game, 14 cents less than last season, and my lowest cost per game since I started tracking all this nonsense.
• For reference, here is how my cost-per-game ratio has shaped up over the years:
• 2018: $2.85/game
• 2019: $1.85/game
• 2020: $1.97/game
• 2021: $1.83/game

Duration of Viewing:

Based on the definitions previously listed, here's how long I watched the 65 games, listed in order of frequency:

• Full: 25 games (28.5%)
• Partial: 21 games (32.3%)
• Most: 15 games (23.1%)
• Minimal: 4 games (6.2%)

Times Watched (Total, Out of 130 Total Teams Watched):

For the first time, I think, since I became a subscriber to MLB TV, I watched every team in the league, other than Arizona and Colorado. Here's how many times I saw those 28 teams in action, regardless of the broadcast I watched:

1. Texas Rangers: 14
2. Washington Nationals: 12
3. Cincinnati Reds: 9
   Tampa Bay Rays: 9
4. Philadelphia Phillies: 7
   Pittsburgh Pirates: 7
   
5. Detroit Tigers: 6
   Los Angeles Dodgers: 6
   Seattle Mariners: 6
6. Cleveland Indians: 5
   Los Angeles Angels: 5
   Miami Marlins: 5
   Minnesota Twins: 5
   
7. Atlanta Braves: 3
   Baltimore Orioles: 3
   Boston Red Sox: 3
   New York Yankees: 3
   Oakland A's: 3
   Toronto Blue Jays: 3
8. Houston Astros: 2
   Kansas City Royals: 2
   Milwaukee Brewers: 2
   New York Mets: 2
   San Diego Padres: 2
   San Francisco Giants: 2
   St. Louis Cardinals: 2
9. Chicago Cubs: 1
   Chicago White Sox: 1

Times Watched on the Team's Local Broadcast (Out of 65 Games Watched):

Here's how often I intentionally tuned in to watch a specific team on their local broadcast:

1. Texas Rangers: 14
2. Washington Nationals: 12
3. Cincinnati Reds: 9
4. Tampa Bay Rays: 6
5. Miami Marlins: 4
   Seattle Mariners: 4
6. Cleveland Indians: 3
   Los Angeles Dodgers: 3
   
7. Los Angeles Angels: 2
   St. Louis Cardinals: 2
8. Baltimore Orioles: 1
   Detroit Tigers: 1
   Kansas City Royals: 1
   New York Mets: 1
   Pittsburgh Pirates: 1
   San Diego Padres: 1

Overall W/L Record:

• The teams whose local broadcasts I watched in the 2021 season went 32-33 (.492). Although that percentage is a bit better than last year, I'm still not making the playoffs with a sub-.500 record
• Running W/L percentage tracker:
• 2018: .534
• 2019: .625
• 2020: .410
• 2021: .492

Home/Road Split:

Editor's note: For some reason, I had a very difficult time calculating this next part.

• Of the 65 games I watched, the team I tuned in to watch played 35 home games (53.8%) and 30 games on the road (46.2%).
• When I watched a team's home broadcast, those teams went 17-18 (.485).
• When I watched a team's road broadcast, the teams went 15-15 (.500).

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

1. Atlanta Braves: 3-0 (1.000)
   Kansas City Royals: 2-0 (1.000)
   San Diego Padres: 2-0 (1.000)
   San Francisco Giants: 2-0 (1.000)
   St. Louis Cardinals: 2-0 (1.000)
   Chicago White Sox: 1-0 (1.000)
2. Los Angeles Dodgers: 5-1 (.833)
3. Cincinnati Reds: 7-2 (.777)
4. Tampa Bay Rays: 6-3 (.666)
   Boston Red Sox: 2-1 (.666)
   New York Yankees: 2-1 (.666)
   Toronto Blue Jays: 2-1 (.666)
5. Los Angeles Angels: 3-2 (.600)
6. Detroit Tigers: 3-3 (.500)
   Houston Astros: 1-1 (.500)
   Milwaukee Brewers: 1-1 (.500)
   New York Mets: 1-1 (.500)
7. Washington Nationals: 5-7 (.416)
8. Cleveland Indians: 2-3 (.400)
   Miami Marlins: 2-3 (.400)
   Minnesota Twins: 2-3 (.400)
9. Seattle Mariners: 2-4 (.333)
   Baltimore Orioles: 1-2 (.333)
10. Philadelphia Phillies: 2-5 (.286)
11. Texas Rangers: 3-11 (.214)
12. Pittsburgh Pirates: 1-6 (.143)
13. Chicago Cubs: 0-1 (.000)
    Oakland A's: 0-3 (.000)

W/L Records for Teams Whose Broadcast I Watched:

1. St. Louis Cardinals: 2-0 (1.000)
   Baltimore Orioles: 1-0 (1.000)
   Kansas City Royals: 1-0 (1.000)
   New York Mets: 1-0 (1.000)
   Pittsburgh Pirates: 1-0 (1.000)
   San Diego Padres: 1-0 (1.000)
2. Cincinnati Reds: 7-2 (.777)
3. Cleveland Indians: 2-1 (.666)
   Los Angeles Dodgers: 2-1 (.666)
4. Tampa Bay Rays: 3-3 (.500)
   Miami Marlins: 2-2 (.500)
5. Washington Nationals: 5-7 (.416)
6. Seattle Mariners: 1-3 (.250)
7. Texas Rangers: 3-11 (.214)
8. Detroit Tigers: 0-1 (.000)
   Los Angeles Angels: 0-2 (.000)

Fun or Otherwise Noteworthy Things that Happened When I Watched:

• I watched two games on Opening Day. In the first, Miguel Cabrera hit his 350th career home run - in the snow. In the other, the Rangers and Royals both scored five runs in the first inning.
• I watched the first Texas Rangers game at Globe Life Park to allow fans inside. The Rangers played in the stadium last year, without fans, and fans were allowed to attend playoff games there last year, but the Rangers finally got their long-awaited homecoming.
• I saw a controversial walk-off hit-by-pitch, in which Michael Conforto of the Mets leaned into a pitch in the strike zone with the bases loaded.
• I watched a game on Jackie Robinson Day, Father's Day, Canada Day and "Joe Morgan Day" in Cincinnati.
• I saw Vlad Guerrero Jr. hit three home runs in a game, including a grand slam.
• I watched the bottom of the 9th inning as the Orioles finished off their franchise's first no-hitter in 30 years. I also watched the final inning and a half of Wade Miley's no-hitter. There were a lot of no-hitters this year, so I figured I should probably tune in to see how a couple of them ended.
• I saw the Reds blow a five-run 8th inning lead, then come back to win by three in the 9th.
• I watched Max Scherzer blow an 8-0 Nationals lead, punctuated by Mad Max giving up a grand slam to a relief pitcher. The Padres won on a walk-off in the 9th inning. It was painful.
• I watched several MLB debuts - most notably, Wander Franco's highly anticipated call-up for Tampa Bay.
• I watched a Miami Marlins game that my parents attended.
• Death, taxes and the Rangers losing on a walk-off grand slam. It happened again this year, and I witnessed it.
• I thought I'd try to be the typical bad luck charm I've developed into by spoiling the Cardinals' monstrous winning streak at the end of the season, but alas, they ended up winning their 17th straight game. They were hot, at the time.
• Unfortunately, I saw the Yankees clinch a spot in the AL Wild Card race. Despite all of the wild scenarios, including a potential four-way tie (NYY, BOS, TOR, SEA), the least fun thing ended up happening, and the Yankees ended up playing the Red Sox in the Wild Card Game.
• I tuned in for six consecutive losses, late in the season, and that many losses in a row are not very fun to sit through.

Final Thoughts:

Another baseball season has come and gone. In the end, I have determined that the teams I like most were really, really bad this year. I try not to cherry-pick the games I watch, so I don't intentionally tune into games where the outcome is all but determined, but man, my teams were terrible in 2021.

Baseball is a great sport. I really do love it, and it's been so nice to just be able to turn a game on in the background while I work. There were many days and weeks when I'd open up the ESPN app to see if there were any day games coming up, and it was a joy when there were a few games that I could tune into. I've now been to 16 Major League Baseball stadiums. This year's adventures took me out to Florida, so it was exciting to watch a handful of Rays and Marlins games, before and after my trip.

I sometimes wonder whether I should keep subscribing to MLB TV. Looking at these stats, where it's like... Geez, I watched the Rangers 14 times and they only won three games... that makes it tough. But hey, despite another year of sub-.500 watching, the stats show that I did get the best value out of my MLB TV subscription, at least as long as I've been keeping track of all this nonsense.

If any of you dared read this blog, first of all, I truly commend you for pitying me so much. Second of all, thanks for reading. If nothing else, this blog justified me opening my phone and logging a few metrics at the end of the final out.

Farewell.

THE END