A year ago during the NLCS, Fox Sports 1 aired a sabermetric themed companion feed to Game 1, featuring a variety of analysts in a roundtable discussion during the game. The “JABO presents…” broadcast received solid reviews across the board (including from myself), and continued the trend of second screen, alternate feed broadcasts across sports. A similar idea will be implemented next Wednesday afternoon by MLB Network during their broadcast of the 3:30 PM Astros-Giants game.
The broadcast will be presented by MLB Now, the daily panel show hosted by Brian Kenny. Kenny will be joined by Intentional Talk cohost Kevin Millar, SiriusXM radio host Jim Duquette, and Fox Sports baseball editor Rob Neyer (who also appeared on the JABO broadcast last year) to provide extra analysis in addition to the traditional game broadcast.
Astros at Giants presented by MLB Now will transition naturally from the studio throughout the local game telecast. With the focus remaining on the matchup between the defending World Series champion Giants and the AL West first-place Astros, Kenny will balance providing pitch-by-pitch information with group discussion, in-game interviews, leaderboard information from MLB.com’s Statcast tracking technology and MLB Network’s defensive alignment graphic, Shift Trax.
Local blackouts (obviously) are in effect, so fans in the Houston and San Francisco viewing areas will be out of luck if they want to watch. Also, the special broadcast will be streamed through MLBNetwork.com and MLB At Bat, but only with an authenticated login through verified providers (sorry, Comcast customers).
This is probably the best way to roll out an experimental broadcast – attaching it to a mid-week afternoon game in the heat of the summer between a pair of playoff teams. The overall viewership for Astros-Giants, despite each team contending for the playoffs this year, probably wouldn’t have been all that high, and injecting something new into the presentation could end up drawing a few extra eyeballs.
This could also help MLB Network learn what works and what doesn’t if they choose to run another second screen broadcast during the Postseason. Even though Fox’s JABO telecast was a success, they went into it blind and it could have been a disaster. The analysts assigned to the game come from diverse baseball backgrounds, and it should create an interesting dynamic when breaking down the action on the field.
