The girls (my wife and daughter) love Goldy. They would hate to lose him. He’s fun. Very animated. You can tell he’s excited when his voice cracks. My wife says he grew up a Cards fan in StL.
The worst thing for me about baseball in 2023 is the end of the shift.
It’s the result of a bunch of Yankees fans in the MLB home office pissed off that the Astros keep fucking the Yankees’ girlfriends each postseason, so they think if they take away some of these newfangled strategeries that the Astros are good at and the Yankees suck at, they’ll somehow rules-lawyer their precious hometown favorites into not getting pantsed by a team with half their payroll yet again.
This sounds like ridiculous corncobbing until you find out about MLB giving the special “Goldilocks balls” during the regular season to the Yankees.
I hate the shift. I know, learn to hit it where they ain’t, but it just drips of intramural softball.
However, it came about because of the power game, and I don’t expect that to go away. Let’s see what happens to batting averages in the next few years.
I didn’t enjoy watching hits up the middle get easily gobbled up left and right. I really think this is a good thing.
The big winners out of the looming RSN collapse will be the owners with income streams unaffected by it. In particular, my guy in Queens. But we might see such disparity that MLB will need a harder cap.
As for RSNs themselves, good riddance. Root Sports might do a good job, but I wouldn’t know. They aren’t available for cord cutters. So when the blazers moved over two years ago, I lost any ability to watch them. And quickly, any reason to care about them (adopted teams just don’t have the same foundations of loyalty built-in, imo ). They play 10 minutes from my house and I can’t watch them anywhere but in-person.
Root getting swept up in all this would be some good karma.
Speaking of which, anyone know how SNY is doing? I believe they’re still owned by the Wilpons and I would love nothing more than to see that final nail go in the coffin. Providing the Mets broadcast team stays intact.
In general terms, I think all RSNs are in big trouble.
The reason the trouble with the RSNs that Sinclair bought from Disney is so acute is that Sinclair paid $10b for them 4 years ago, and all totaled, those networks have on order of over $10b in contractual obligations between now and 2032. To put it in a way that’s less corporate-speak friendly: Sinclair paid $10 billion to take on ~$10 billion in additional debt from assets that had no way of recouping that debt/investment.
That’s so lame
I’m so ready for blackout rules to die out.
I have the NHL streaming package and I live in Louisville, KY. I don’t have a team in my state. I don’t have a team within a two-hour drive. This is not Hockey Country.
But I’m blacked out from watching my Lightning play against either Nashville or Columbus, home or away. They’re my home teams. In Louisville, KY.
I’m also blacked out of any games they play on national tv, so I’m looking at almost a quarter of the season this year.
In northern Iowa, MLB has blacked out the:
Minnesota Twins
Milwaukee Brewers
Chicago Cubs
Chicago White Sox
St. Louis Cardinals
Kansas City Royals
Because you know, we really enjoy driving. This some bullshit
NBA League Pass not only blacks out the Blazers for me here in Northeast Portland (which makes sense in a world of shitty local blackout rules), but also the Sacramento Kings and Golden State Warriors. Sacramento is 8.5 hours away by car.
Thankfully, their support manually fixed my account to be allowed to see those two teams. If you haven’t tried asking, I would encourage you to do so.
That is crazy, but it also explains why Cub fans sometimes outnumber the Brewers fans in Milwaukee.
blackouts are such a terrible tool for a bygone era. MLB can take over this entire setup by just handling all the broadcasts themselves, though it kinda seems like they wanted to divest themselves of this headache (thus offloading all of the streaming tech and operations over the years, of which I had a short stint in).
I wish they could just keep it simple; control the operations of the broadcasts, but sell them to local markets, and if nothing is available, free up blackouts so locals can watch. With so many streaming platforms, you can adjust as local conditions warrant. Hell, charge more for streaming in non-blackout situations if you feel like it’s taking away from a local broadcast and spread the financial love to make up for it. This way you can serve all markets, and deal with those that have special deals because they’re pretentious assholes (like YES).
— Alan
I stopped watching or even keeping track of baseball solely because of blackouts.
Any sport that intentionally makes it impossible for fans to watch their local team can literally fuck off.
You realize all sports did this?
— Alan
I don’t have any trouble watching F1 through F1TV no matter where I am or the race is.
Completely different. You can’t compare single-event weeklies to a sport that offers up to 16 games a day for two-thirds of the year, in 25+ different major markets where viewability and access can be rapidly different.
— Alan
Then I guess what I’m saying is until MLB decides to make baseball viewing a similar experience I’ll pass.
Which given they built the best streaming technology around from the ground up in the form of MLBTV is more than a bit of a laugh.
Apparently Goldsmith has reconsidered and will be staying in Seattle.
And the Cardinals are looking like they’ll possibly poach Chip Caray from the Braves now. Which, at least would also be a fun story (Chip went to high school in STL and his grandpa Harry was the longtime radio voice of the Cardinals.)
My wife will be really happy about this.
And…official. Chip Caray is the new voice of the Cardinals.