Monthly Archives: February 2019

Great Britain Baseball Funding Boost

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$300m is an eye-catching figure, there’s no doubt about that.

Manny Machado’s impending payday with the San Diego Padres has received UK online media coverage today and you can understand why.

However, from a British perspective news of a much smaller sum will have a much larger impact.

It was announced at the end of last week that Great Britain Baseball will receive £30,500 from the UK Sport Aspiration Fund as part of the team’s preparations for the 2019 European Championships and associated Olympic qualification attempt. This came after the incredibly disappointing news from early December in which it was announced that baseball would receive no such funding, although GB Softball was awarded £62,500.

The hard work put in since that point, not least by BaseballSoftballUK, to gain some baseline funding for baseball should be applauded.

It’s easy to look at £30,500 and think it’s not a great deal of money in the general scheme of things, and it’s certainly true that this is far from a transformative sum. But for a programme that has become accustomed to doing all it can to build Great Britain baseball, from the juniors up to the seniors, with no national funding, any financial help is a bonus and can be used to good effect.

No one is underestimating the challenge Great Britain will face in finishing in the top five at the Euros and thereby making it through to the Africa/Europe qualifier.

The Netherlands will be prohibitive favourites to win the event, with Italy, Spain and the hosts Germany at good odds to join them in the top four, before a keen battle for the fifth spot, likely led by Belgium.

Liam Carroll’s team finished ninth overall at the most recent event (2016) and GB have only finished in the top five twice in the history of the tournament (silver medal finishes in 1967 and 2007), so it will be a big ask to break into that group. However, no one should be in any doubt as to the commitment and fight that the team and coaching staff will show to give their best and to make it happen.

The provisional schedule has handed GB the toughest start possible in opening up with games against the Netherlands and Germany, yet you kind of think that may be how the team will like it. We saw the same situation back in 2007 when Great Britain, led by Stephan Rapaglia, spoiled Spain’s Opening Day party and then rode a wave of confidence all the way to a final against the Dutch.

Great Britain heads into 2019 on the back of an encouraging bronze medal performance by the U23s in the European Championship Qualifier in Slovakia.

The U23s will be part of the European Championship U23 in Prague, Czech Republic in early August, with the U18s heading to the European Championship Qualifier Juniors U18 held in Sundbyberg, Sweden in July, a week after the U12s will have been in European action in Trebic, Czech Republic.

All worth noting for the next time someone hears about the MLB London Series and tries to tell you no one plays baseball here.

It’s also worth noting more generally in regard to the promotional impact that the Yankees and Red Sox coming to London will have. Understandably, MLB is coming to these shores to promote MLB, but there’s a great opportunity for us to use it as a way to promote British baseball too and in particular the Great Britain programme.

What better way for our teams to head into European competition starting in July than on the back of a late June MLB London Series that makes many more people aware (even among MLB fans based here) of our national team set-up.

And maybe even with a few fundraising events and initiatives to add to the £30,500 already in the pot.

British Baseball Beat: 2019 Preparations

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As MLB teams look ahead to starting Spring Training games this week, so baseball clubs across the British Isles continue with their 2019 season preparations on and off the field.

Here are a few notes from around the leagues (I’ll write a separate blog about the recent GB baseball funding news in the next few days).

Irish British Baseball Cup

Pretty much every comment about British baseball this year can be framed in the context of the publicty benefits that the MLB London Series will bring. The more events that can be put on the better and the BBF have started well with the inaugural Irish British Baseball Cup.

The event will see reigning Irish Baseball champions the Dublin City Hurricanes travelling to Farnham Park to take on the reigning NBL champions the London Mets to open the season on Saturday 6 April.

https://youtu.be/jwflIYBlEW0

Those unable to make it to Farnham can watch live (or on-demand) via the impressive BBF YouTube live stream game coverage. It will be interesting to see how the two teams stack up against each other, albeit for practical reasons just in a single nine-inning game.

The fact that the game will come barely a week after our supposed Brexit date may add a little more to the mix, hopefully in a positive publicity way in a British/EU coming-together rather than negative publicity in it being called off with our beloved Government not letting EU nationals in!

BBF Leagues

We can be certain that the London Mets will be defending their NBL crown once again, but we’ll be waiting a little while longer to see how the rest of the clubs and leagues will shape up as plans and fixture lists are put together following the 31 January BBF registration deadline.

We do know that the ever-progressive Herts Baseball Club took a Luniz approach to their submission by putting five on it.

(Pop culture aside: I remember that song coming out in 1995 and in looking it up for this reference realise that, in all my youthful naivety, I was completely oblivious to what the song was about!).

We knew Herts had plans to launch a new club in North West London and it turns out that not only will the Herts Londoners be bringing Triple-A baseball to their Basing Hill Ballpark, but the Herts Eagles name will be back in British baseball and offering Single-A baseball there too. That’s great news and provide yet another route for people in the capital inspired by the London Series to give baseball a go.

3 is a magic number for Bristol

Bristol are another club expanding for 2019

Bristol Badgers made it to the Double-A BBF final last year as well as fielding the Bats team in the indepenent South West Baseball League. The latter will be joined by Bristol Buccaneers in 2019 after a successful winter recruitment campaign.

Leeds Rams

Elsewhere we’re seeing some new baseball clubs forming. Leeds has hosted some excellent teams over the years and a new one is now being born as the Leeds Rams. They made an announcement a few weeks ago that they would be holding off from entering full league play in 2019 to build up for 2020.

It’s an approach that worked really well for Norwich Iceni Baseball, who registered with the BBF in 2016 to play friendly games before entering the league competition in 2017 and having a perfect season whilst capturing the Single-A title.

We’ve all seen many promising baseball clubs come and go over the years and there can be a lot of value in having some fixture flexibility in your first year as you build the foundations for a new team. Here’s hoping 2019 goes well for Leeds Rams and they charge into full league competition in 2020.

Sponsorship news

Funding and publicity is always such a big part of amateur sport so we should all be supportive of teams and leagues trying to increase both as part of our community.

Hull Scorpions are currently seeking sponsorship for their field:

Whilst Baseball Scotland have added a sponsor for 2019.

Kent’s Field of Dreams

Baseball facility improvements are also a vital part of growing our sport, benefitting both the local community and all teams that get to vist and share the facilities too.

Based on their Twitter updates, teams visiting Kent’s will enjoy their day out regardless of the game result.

News to share?

If your club any news to highlight, or wants to take part in some potential YouTube livestream chats during the upcoming season, let me know on Twitter (@mattbaseballgb) or using the Get In Contact form.


Oakland A’s 2019 Spring Schedule

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We’re now less than a week away from Spring Training games beginning.

The Oakland A’s and Seattle Mariners will be out on the field in Arizona next Thursday (21st), so it’s a good time to publish the A’s spring schedule, mentioned on my latest A’s UK video.

One thing to bear in mind, whether an A’s fan or not, is that the U.S. moves to daylight time three weeks before we do. An hour is added to clocks on Sunday 10th in the U.S. so from that point to Sunday 31st (when we move to British Summer Time) the usual time difference (5 hours ahead of Eastern Time, 8 hours ahead of Pacific Time) is reduced by one hour.

So here’s the schedule. It covers the Cactus League games, the games in Japan and the the Bay Area series, up to MLB Opening Day.

Kyler Murray Makes Up His Mind

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In my blogpost yesterday I mentioned that I’d be publishing another video on our Oakland A’s UK YouTube channel later in the week.

That still stands and I’ll be rounding up and commenting on the main news from the first few days of the A’s Spring Training camp, which as of today (11 February) is officially underway.

However, news has broken today regarding the A’s 2018 First Round draft pick Kyler Murray that merits more immediate discussion, so here goes.

In my Position Player video I put Murray on the A’s Hokey Cokey List as we all waited for him to make up his mind on whether to follow through on his agreement to join the A’s or pursue a potential NFL career instead. He made his position clear today:

As I said in the video, everything was pointing to Murray going down this route and not staying with the A’s (if that’s the way to put it, it doesn’t really seem like he’s been with us to leave us) so it’s far from a surprise.

There are plenty of issues around MLB at the moment – not least of which being the terrible pay of Minor Leaguers, the way teams manipulate the service time clocks of talented youngsters, and the ongoing free agency void – so it’s understandable that some may use Murray’s decision as a way to highlight them.

Doing so doesn’t stack up against the evidence, though, which shows that the truth is Murray’s first preference was always to go to the NFL. This was clear when he made it a condition in signing with the A’s that he could carry on in college football. That wasn’t just one last hurrah, it was a final attempt to show that his relatively small stature for an NFL quarterback didn’t need to hold him back.

His athletic ability and talent gave him the opportunity to both stick and twist, to keep his options open so that he could either play professional baseball and become a millionaire, or sign with an NFL team and become a millionaire. I think we can all agree that’s a nice position to be in.

As an A’s fan, I can’t say I’m all that disappointed. The news has simply confirmed what most of us have expected for months.

Admittedly this is partly due to be a British fan who has very limited knowledge of, and to be honest interest in, college football and the NFL so the star power of Murray isn’t something that registers with me much.

More to the point, given that he hasn’t played a lot of college baseball, it would have taken a while for Murray to get to the Majors and, whilst his athletic ability would have held him in good stead, baseball history is littered with talented athletes who never put it together. The A’s clearly believed in his potential, but no one really knows how he might have developed. We have may have missed out on a potential All-Star. We may have missed out on a fourth outfielder.

In other words, I don’t feel cheated of ‘what might have been’ as it’s hard to know what expectations we should have had.

I also don’t feel overly critical of the A’s Front Office in all of this. They have had numerous conversations with Murray, his family and advisor Scott Boras from before making the decision to select him in the draft to now. They knew, and continue to know, vastly more about this than we do from the outside and that’s what they based their decision on.

Based on what I’ve read, it seems to be the case that Murray had a great season with Oklahoma and that spun everything around. It’s fair to question as a result whether the A’s should have allowed him to go back to Oklahoma. Had they made it a ‘sign and stay’ requirement then they would at least have got a compensatory draft pick for 2019 if he had refused.

Again, it all comes back to the discussions that were had before they even decided to sign him. The A’s must have heard enough, and liked his baseball potential enough, to take on the risk. Billy Beane was asked today, before the news broke, if he would change his decision if he could go back and do so, but that’s an option no one ever has. All you can do is make the best decision as things are known at the time.

What matters now is that the A’s have lost a first round player from their farm system, so that will put even more attention on the team making good selections in their 2019 draft. And from the more immediate position we also need to look at the financial aspect:

I’ve not yet read a definitive explanation as to what the A’s can do with the returned $1.29m and the allocated $3.16m. Spending on the amateur draft and international talent is now tightly controlled, so I’m not sure if they can add that back into that pot or if it can be spent on the Major League roster. Indeed, the latter was on MLB.com A’s beat writer Jane Lee’s mind when she read Jeff Passan’s tweet.

I have no bad feelings towards Murray in all of this, if his heart if set on the NFL then there’s no point in denying that, but I do wonder if he’s been entirely fair to the A’s in all of this and the fact that he didn’t even mention the team in his announcement tweet seems a bit off.

So maybe the A’s will get a bit of good luck out of it. Perhaps the silver lining to this cloud is a bit of extra money in the kitty to get a deal over the line for a much-needed starting pitcher?

For all the talent and potential Murray possesses, I’d trade that for a World Series Championship in 2019!

PECOTA Points The Finger at A’s Pitchers

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Baseball Prospectus this week launched their 2019 PECTOA player projections and, in doing so, have started to update their projected standings.  

I’ll be doing an Oakland A’s news update video on YouTube later in the week, but thought I’d quickly write up some thoughts on the AL West projection before then. Here it is:

For updated standings and more info, visit https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/fantasy/dc/

From an A’s perspective, they’re predicting a large drop-off in performance, shedding 18 wins based against our 2018 total.

It’s very important to note here that the projected standings work on looking at their playing projections and then allocating playing time based on educated guesses. The A’s, like most teams, went through a significant amount of roster churn over the course of the 2018 season. As BP will be quick to say themselves, the standings as of 10 February include lots of contributions from players that may not feature for the team, and clearly can’t take into account the performance of in-season recruits.

In short, don’t take them as a guide as to where every team will stand at the end of the season. Take them as a guide as to where the team may stand playing through the season with the current roster options available as of today.

There’s no need to take any offence to the A’s 79-83 projected record, but what you can do on BP’s website is click on each team and see precisely what they are factoring in. For the A’s, the story is that they are very pessimistic about the returns we’ll receive from our current starting pitcher options. In particular, based on the projection, Marco Estrada’s player comment in the BP Annual will not be too positive, just as it wasn’t in the Ron Shandler Baseball Forecaster.

BP’s overriding projection is that the starting rotation looks dicey and the rest of the roster will not be able to make up the shortfall as well as they did last season. If true, that means the A’s once again will need to work some magic with the pitchers they’ve got – and likely with some pitchers they’ll get as the season goes on – to make it back to the post-season.

And, away from the stark current 79-83 projected win-loss record, I suspect that’s exactly what most of us A’s fans were thinking already.

MLB.TV 2019 Subscription details

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It’s been a curious launch for the 2019 MLBTV subscription details.

Usually there is a bit of a fanfare for it all, with a big promiment article on MLB.com. This time, there was a short news item made available on mobile devices on Wednesday/Thursday and since that point there’s been some confusion as to quite what is happening.

If you go to MLB.com on a PC web browser, there is currently no way to see details about the All Teams subscription and, just checking again as I type this, it’s now not even letting me click on the Teams subscription section (I tested it on Thursday and it did allow me to pick a team etc). EDIT 8/2 – MLB support are telling people to try a different browser, but that seems to produce mixed results too!

So who knows quite what is going on, but the main details have been announced one way or another so let’s work on the basis that there are a few teething issues in signing up for some methods that will hopefully be resolved soon.

The headline news is that the service once again means we can watch and listen to all the baseball we can find the time for and the cost has only increased slightly from last year.  That may be all you need to know, but read on for some other news and views.

For those of us that are annual subscribers and are on an auto-renewal (which you get opted into, it should be noted) then payment will be taken from your card on or about 28 February.

All Teams price

As predicted a couple of days ago, the MLB All Teams package has increased by $3 to $118.99. We have to add VAT at 20% on to that to make for a UK cost of approximately £109-£110 (depending on your card/bank, you may pay a small overseas transaction cost too).

I say it every year in this article, but quite simply that’s a great deal for something that gives you access to Spring Training, all 2,430 regular season games (probably minus 20 or so Thursday day-games if Facebook renews their exclusive Thursday Free Game offering) and all of the play-offs (noting that we’re not caught by the US national and local TV blackouts that affect North American subscribers).

As always, value for money comes down to how much you use your subscription, but if you want to watch plenty of baseball – and why wouldn’t you?! – then it’s worth every penny.

Single team snub again?

Given the current sign-up issues, it’s not completely clear if MLB are continuing their frustrating policy of only offering the Single Team subscription option (i.e. solely giving access to games of a team of your choosing) to North American customers.

The advertised price for the U.S. is $91.99. If it was available to us then it would be approximately £85 (inc VAT). If you’re already paying for BT Sport and primarily use MLB.TV to ensure you can catch your team regularly then that £25 saving would be nice to have.

If it does tip you over your budget then don’t forget most week-days there is a Free Game to watch (admittedly not all at a convenient time for us in the UK) and the price comes down as the season goes on (with some public holiday themed offers too).

I had a go at creating a test account to see what would happen and it did allow me to pick a team; however, in previous years when you update the application details to show your address then the Tax section immediately updated to the correct amount, which it didn’t do when I tested it. It was at the same time previously that the system said the Team package wasn’t available in my location, so I do wonder if something’s a bit broken there currently. Hopefully the team package will be available, but take it as unconfirmed for now (I’ll update the article when further details come out).

Same old (good) stuff

In terms of the service itself, it’s pretty much business as usual with nothing really in the way of new features. As I mentioned in my preview, that’s not a surprise as it does what you’d want it to do, and does so well, although UK Braves Fan did throw out a good idea on Twitter that sadly hasn’t come true.

https://twitter.com/OffseasonJay/status/1092086215527026690

I’d certainly love the ability to download a game on to a mobile device, even if it was just time-limited as usually is the case on BBC iPlayer, although maybe that’s more a factor for those of us battling the time difference compared with people in the States? Anyway, that’s not on the cards as yet.

No MLB Network, for now

Neither is there an option to add MLB Network to the mix as hoped, for now anyway. I think it would be a popular addition at a reasonable price so hopefully that will stay on their agenda and become a feature at some point.

At Bat Premium and Connected Devices

As in previous years, MLB has a free At Bat app for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android, and Amazon devices for news and scores, and then a Premium app that will give you the ability to listen to games live (i.e. radio coverage) all season long, but not to watch them. That doesn’t seem to be available yet, but in recent years has been £12-13.

However, don’t forget that if you’re buying the MLB.TV subscription you get the Premium app included in that (i.e. download the free At Bat app and then log in with your MLB.TV account details), so that’s how you can watch games live via the app.

Elsewhere, there are a host of Connected Devices on which you can download the MLB app for and then link your MLB.TV account to. It’s important to check the details on the Connected Devices FAQs page as availability of the MLB app on some devices is restricted to certain regions. The main thing this affects is PS4 owners who can’t get the app in the UK (other than using jiggery-pokery of which I of course do not endorse, but have a Google!).

XBox One, Apple TV, Roku, Chromecast and Amazon Fire TV should all be fine here though.

TV coverage

TV coverage in the UK will again be on BT Sport.

ESPN in the States are broadcasting a couple of Spring Training games (Pittsburgh-Boston on 6 March and Minnesota-Boston the following day) and both are going to be on BT Sport. You would fully expect the two A’s-Mariners Japan games to be on there too on 20-21 March before the usual broadcasting pattern (normally 8-10 games most weeks) begins from Opening Day on 28 March.

Broadcasting details for the MLB London Series officially have not yet been announced, although there have been reports of the BBC being interested in acquiring the rights.

Baseball, baseball, baseball …

Despite the rather low-key launch, all we really care about is that MLB.TV is available once again and at a price that thankfully hasn’t increased very much. If you have any queries about subscribing and how the service works in the UK, leave a comment and myself or another MLB.TV regular (of which there’s plenty of us) will do our best to help.

Loading … or not

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So on 5 February the MLB Hot Stove news remains that there is no news. Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, two of the best players in the Majors over the past 5-6 seasons, are still free agents among a whole group of other experienced Big Leaguers who will get a job at some point.

Commenting on negotiations from the outside, with few facts to rely on, is the name of the game at the moment. Are teams being cheap? Do the players have good offers on the table but are looking for even more? Every update published by the usual reliable sources give the impression that no one really knows for sure what’s going on with the two big stars.

The one thing that does perturb me a little reading some of the comments is the idea of looking towards future free agent classes. No bad idea in itself for teams, of course, but citing potential 2019/20 free agents such as Nolan Arenado, Gerrit Cole and Chris Sale as a reason not to invest in Harper and Machado rings hollow when this time last year the latter two were used as a reason for teams not to go after the top free agents then.

Will people be saying the same this time next year, looking ahead to the potential free agency of Mike Trout and Mookie Betts?

All of which does at least give the creatively minded, or those with an overactive imagination, scope to go to town on interpretations of random Tweets, such as Bryce Harper’s post-Superbowl classic.

What could it mean? Answers on a postcard …

My fellow A’s UK’ers were not really on the Harper bandwagon, it has to be said.

I tentatively endorse the sentiments, hesitating only because the Houston Astros have been rumoured as a potential landing spot. I will care where he goes in that case.

Teams officially start reporting to Spring Training on Sunday (the A’s leading the way due to the mid-March Japan series), with most teams beginning on the 12th.

Will Harper and Machado have a team by then?

BaseballGB 2019 Plans and Oakland A’s UK YouTube

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As we’re now into February, I’ve started to firm up plans for BaseballGB for the coming season.

I’m going to get back into the swing of doing a weekly round-up of British baseball news, with various other features on top. It was my plan to do that last year too and this was scuppered by the BSUK/BBF website issues that resulted in a significant drop-off in fixtures, scores and league tables being published, but hopefully that’s behind us now.

Whilst in previous years I’ve tended to concentrate on longer articles for MLB stories, this season I’m going to be doing a bit more classic blogging. So shorter posts, perhaps, but on a more frequent basis. I’ll also be adding in my Monday ‘MLB Early games’s column, which somewhat went by the wayside in the second half of last season and the guilt felt in receiving several messages and emails seeking it out was balanced out by gratitude that some people cared enough to notice and get in contact!

The one other main change is that I had previously written occasional Oakland A’s columns (‘Thank you for the A’s’) here. These will now switch to my latest venture into the unknown that is our recently launched Oakland A’s UK YouTube channel. If you haven’t seen that yet, the short ‘About the channel’ video is embedded below.

If you’ve got any other ideas of features you’d like to see, or if you’re keen to get involved, let me know in the comments section or by sending me a message using the Get In Contact form.

Cheers!

MLBTV 2019 Preview

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This coming week should see the announcement of the 2019 MLBTV subscription details, if the past couple of years are an accurate guide.

My annual review article upon launch always seems to be appreciated, so I’ll endeavour to write that up as soon as possible when the details are published.

Gone are the days when the impending announcement came with fevered speculation over what new features we may get to enjoy as part of the service. MLBTV is a mature offering now and it’s hard to think of too many things that it doesn’t offer already that would improve it.  The option of 4K streaming would likely be the next major advance that they will look at, but it’s probably a few years before there’s a big enough market for it, especially if it comes at a higher price.

However, there are a few things to look out for in 2019.

Costs

Under the so-called Garber lawsuit settlement, MLB agreed to an annual price increase of either 3% or the rate of inflation (whichever is higher) up to 2020.  The 2018 price was a $3 increase on 2017 to $116 and we’ll likely see a similar small increase in 2019, so the advertised price will be $119 or so.

We also have to consider VAT at 20% that MLB has to add on, plus the dollar/pound exchange rate. The 2018 MLB-wide All Teams subscription was $139.19 including VAT, working out at just under £100 as of early February 2018. We’d be paying £6 more at the same price this year and, factoring in the small price increase, I’d estimate that the subscription will work out at £109 or so this year.

Options available

The £109 price would be for the full All Teams subscription, which may well be the only one we can buy. Whilst MLB promoted the option to buy a team-based subscription at a lower cost limited to a chosen team’s games last year, fans outside of North America were blocked from being able to purchase it.

I guess the thinking is that if someone outside of North America is interested enough in MLB to buy a streaming subscription, having to pay the extra $20 (as it was last year) isn’t going to put most of them off so they may as well take the money.  It seems petty to me though, as I doubt it would add up to all that much revenue lost and needlessly creates a bad impression for potential customers.

What we can watch

As well as the lack of a team-based subscription, the other thing that is starting to become a factor is MLB allowing other companies exclusive streaming rights, and therefore taking away some games that would otherwise be included in the subscription.

So far that’s been limited to Facebook doing a Thursday day-game, although as an A’s fan that was a pain several times last year as a Thursday home day-game (20.35 start BST) is one of the main slots in a week that works well for us.

Of course, us baseball converts shouldn’t be too selfish with that, as such deals do give potential newcomers the chance to watch a game every week for free, which can only be a good thing.  There was also a Twitter weekly game option last year, yet this was restricted to North America so another one that wasn’t open to us.

All in all, us international subscribers get a great deal out of MLBTV as we are free from the US national and local blackout restrictions (the latter often being particularly ridiculous), including the ability to watch all post-season games as part of the annual subscription. So losing a game or two a week really isn’t a big factor – annoying as it is if your team happens to be playing in one you then can’t watch – but it’s something to keep an eye on in case this starts to increase.

MLB Network

Finally, whilst I started this article stating there isn’t much MLB can add to the MLBTV service, that’s not to say they couldn’t make it all the more attractive by adding other potential subscriptions to it. They’ve already done that for several years in giving us the option of buying the MiLBTV (Minor Leagues) subscription at a reduced rate, and the other addition they could make – that would be a particular bonus to international fans – is MLB Network.

MLB issued a short survey last year to MLBTV subscribers (I’m not sure how widely it was sent around) and one of the key topics they asked questions about was MLB Network.  They were seeking views on whether subscribers would be interested in the option to get MLB Network as part of the subscription and how much extra they would be prepared to pay.  The fact that they were asking shows that it’s clearly an option they are heavily considering.

The news this past week that ESPN would not be bringing back Baseball Tonight as a daily show, as rumoured, brought more attention on to the potential for making MLB Network available more widely. The Awful Announcing article about that news noted that in 2018 ESPN had partnered with MLB Network to syndicate the Intentional Talk programme and that this deal had come to an end.

I would guess that it was this deal that meant Intentional Talk was included on BT Sport in the UK last year, so the one option we had to watch some MLB Network programming (other than clips on MLB.com) probably has disappeared.

However, I think there is a good chance that this year’s subscription will include the option to add on a streamed service of MLB Network.

As always, the price will be a big factor for every individual customer as to whether they sign up for it.

The spare time I have to watch baseball-related stuff every week once the season gets going is happily largely taken up by watching actual games (live or catching up on some A’s night-games), so I probably wouldn’t get my money’s worth out of it if it was more than an extra $20 or so for the year. At that cost I’d be happy to catch bits here and there during the season and then I’d watch it a lot more in the off-season.

Anyway, having the option available would be the big bonus as I’m sure some fans over here would watch it a lot.  It’s only a potential for now, but that will be the big thing to look out for when the subscription details are announced in the coming days.