With the 2017 World Series underway, in an era where TV dictates every major move sports make, Major League Baseball still seems to have it backwards. All summer long, baseball accompanies you on a warm sunny day at the ballpark, or by your side at night with a cold one after a long day at the office. But when the games really count in October, Baseball is missing its key audience — kids.
Baseball on television has become a very regionalized sport, where fans in Seattle may not know about Cubs’ first baseman Anthony Rizzo, or arguably the best player in the game, Mike Trout, playing for the L.A Angels, a team not on the radar of a Marlins fan in Miami. While this trend does great locally for the sport, this trend does nothing to grow the game throughout the country. So on baseball’s biggest stage, the playoffs, wouldn’t they want to showcase their most exciting players to the future generation of baseball fans?
The recent trend in playoff start-times would tell you MLB really doesn’t care as long as they continue to get the TV money in 2017 and beyond.
Changes in the game have caused the sport to become longer. Gone are the 2-hour Mark Buehrle 3-hitters, and in are the 5-inning starts by a $100 million dollar pitcher followed by a clown-car of bullpen arms, one if not two per inning. With the game trending longer, Major League Baseball needs to start playoff games at a time when the majority of the population, especially kids, can watch at least a majority of the game. But their vision of ‘Prime Time’ is skewed and hurts the viewing market.
A few years ago, Jeffrey Dorfman of Forbes, wrote an article describing how Major League Baseball is ruining the future of the game with late start times. I couldn’t agree with him more. While baseball may say they are remedying this by playing day-playoff games, that doesn’t work either.
Taking a look back at the Cubs vs. Dodgers NLCS schedule, trying to find some semblance of intense thought into the scheduling is hard to come by. The times were as follows:
Cubs at Dodgers 7:00pmCT/8:00pmET (Saturday)
Cubs at Dodgers 6:30pmCT/7:30pmET (Sunday)
Dodgers at Cubs 8:00pmCT/9:00pmET (Tuesday)
Dodgers at Cubs 8:00pmCT/9:00pmET (Wednesday)
Dodgers at Cubs 7:00pmCT/8:00pmET (Thursday)
Every game in the series lasted over three hours. And if we have any indications of what’s to come in the Fall Classic, just look back at Game 5 of the NLDS between the Cubs and Nationals, a 9-inning game that lasted 4 hours and 37 minutes. Yes, you read that right, 4 hours and 37 minutes.
If the game goes that long Tuesday night, a die-hard Dodger fan in New York would have to stay up until at least 12:30 a.m. to see the final out. Imagine that being the case for potentially the next three nights, and having school bright and early at 8 a.m. What kid can stay up for that, let alone their parents? The Cubs’ letterhead telling the teacher to ‘excuse’ their son or daughter due to the late game cannot be baseball’s answer.
Major League Baseball, however, thinks they have come up with new solution by starting playoff games during the day. Well, Commissioner Manfred, that doesn’t work either. NLDS games starting at 12 p.m.CT / 1 p.m. ET miss that audience because if you remember correctly, that would be lunch period in school. The Tuesday, October 17th matchup featuring both the NLCS and ALCS missed a major portion of the country’s kids who would love to watch Aaron Judge launch a home run over the wall, or Javy Baez making an electric play in the field. The Yankees vs. Astros game began at 4:00 p.m. CT / 5:00 p.m. ET and the Cubs vs. Dodgers game began at 8:00 p.m. CT / 9:00 p.m. ET. For the ALCS game, you are lucky if you get home in time from school for the game, and if you want to catch the nightcap, it began by the time your mom was yelling at you to go to bed. Major League baseball is losing out on growing its sport, as kids are not being allowed to see its greatest moments. And kids, Major League Baseball, not your parents, is to blame.
MLB: "We need more young fans interested in baseball?"
Also MLB: "Let's start two LA-CHI games with many popular stars at 9pm ET!"— Marcus Gilmer (@marcusgilmer) October 15, 2017
Just take a look at last years’ World Series. The year ended with the incredible culmination of 108 years for the Chicago Cubs, and the 10-inning Game 7 thriller lasted 4 hours and 28 minutes (including the rain-delay). An 11:30 p.m. CT / 12:30 p.m. ET end time on a school night? That’s just wrong.
There is a reason why baseball has an average age viewer of 53 years old. The games start too late and drag on into the wee hours of the night, cutting out a new generation who has already grasped onto the fast-paced 2-hour NBA.
The day games are too early and have low ratings, the night games are too late and prohibit kids from watching, so what can the MLB do?
First they can look at a time zone map. 47% of the country is on East Coast Time, followed by 32.9% of the country following Central Standard Time. Pacific Time is next at 14.1%; Mountain Time covers 5.4%, and Alaska/Hawaii accounts for .6%. While you were taught never to choose favorites, the East Coast and Central dominate the map. Why should they be penalized to please 14% of the market? If a majority 79% of the country has to stay up until almost midnight to watch the end of a playoff baseball game there is something terribly wrong with your growth plan for baseball.
Taking this into account, Major League Baseball should take a page out of the NBA’s playbook and play every other day. I know this idea goes against baseball purists, and I know the game needs to be played every night during the regular season for consistency purposes, but why not play every other day in the playoffs, giving players more rest for the duration of the postseason? There would not be as many pitching changes if pitchers simply had a day off in between games, which would allow starters to pitch longer, or bullpen arms to be more effective, which in turn would speed up the game. The ‘every other day’ mentality would allow there to not be the game-stacking issue we currently are seeing, where if ALDS Game 1 starts at 3:00 p.m., then NLDS Game 1 has to start at 6:00 p.m., then ALDS Game 2 has to start at 9:00 p.m. all in one night. The length of games is endless, they would probably have poor ratings because of odd start times, and out of market viewers for Game 3 wouldn’t even try to find it on TV. The fact that there are two LCS games on the same day this season, one starting during the school day and the other starting a little after 9 p.m., there should be no argument that this is the right way to schedule games.
The MLB postseason is the quickest of all the sports, spanning around a month. While cutting down the season is a whole different column, creating a NBA-like schedule, would allow fans to see each and every game at a normal time. However, I know this model would be difficult to execute due to the way baseball is played and for fear of angering baseball’s unwritten rules.
The other option would be to stop staggering games for fear of dividing viewership. If the MLB is so worried about dividing viewership by having two games on at the same time, they have a worse chance of even garnering an audience with a game starting at 1pm or 9pm.
One of the most exciting nights in Baseball history in the last 10 years, was Wildcard Wednesday in 2011, as the Red Sox squandered away a win in Baltimore followed by a game-winning homerun in Tampa Bay by Evan Longoria against the Yankees a few minutes later to clinch the AL. Wildcard spot from Boston. The same happened for the Cardinals as a win against the Astros set them up for clinching a playoff spot if disaster struck in Atlanta, and boy did it. The Braves blew an 8+ game lead and lost in the 13th inning to the Phillies, giving the Cardinals the N.L Wildcard.
What is the point of this story? The games all happened at the same time, allowing fans to flip from channel to channel, minute-by-minute watching the drama unfold with every pitch. Baseball needs to forget about having each game scheduled with its exclusive time and schedule them within a similar window. With the games being across two Fox networks, TBS and MLB Network, they can do it. Treat it like March Madness. Have the craziness and excitement of baseball all happen at the same time at 6 p.m. for the 79% percent of the country (sorry L.A). Or even start a game at 5:30 p.m., with the second game starting at 6 or 6:30 p.m., giving each a little breathing room like the unforgettable night in 2011.
Baseball can and needs to make these changes to open the game back up to the fans that will take the game to the next great level. Young fans are hungry for exciting sports and if they are given the chance, they can keep baseball as one of top sports in the country. If MLB does not make these changes, sadly, that average age of baseball fans will simply continue to increase, and that generation who grew up studying or sleeping through baseball games will have no idea how great the game is, as they simply never saw it.
