I wrote about MLB.com’s re-introduction of ‘Condensed Games’ earlier this week and watching a few of the Friday games in this fashion this morning reminded me why the feature was (and now once again is) so popular with MLB.tv subscribers. 

When I logged on to MLB.com, the main story related to Brandon Webb winning his eleventh game of the season.  Clicking through to the linescore and boxscore showed that Ian Snell was the opposing pitcher and that he had pitched pretty well himself.  Snell’s 2008 season has been something of a struggle so far and after last night’s loss he now has a 2-6 record with a 5.65 ERA.  He lasted nine innings combined over his previous two games, giving up seven earned runs against the Reds and then six in just four innings against the Cardinals.  Due to a high pitch count, he only made it through five innings against the D-Backs last night, but he gave up just two runs (one unearned) and he struck out nine.  When things aren’t going your way as a pitcher, even your good performances land you with a loss and Snell had the misfortune to be facing Webb, who was masterful once again and is surely guaranteed to be the NL’s All-Star starter.

As the Condensed Games generally show you the outcome of pretty much every meaningful at-bat (outs, main hits etc), you are able to get a feel of how the game panned out inning-by-inning, rather than solely watching the four or five key moments.  The Condensed Game coverage of the D-Backs/Pirates clash left me in no doubt as to which players had a good night.  While it would be nice to have the time to watch several full games each day, that’s just not possible for the vast majority of baseball fans.  Watching Condensed Games is the next best thing and I’m sure I’ll be using the feature on a daily basis for the rest of the season.

While we’re on the subject of useful features, John Smoltz’s brief return as Atlanta’s closer this week highlighted the absence of MLB.com’s Clickable linescores.  Smoltz pitched the ninth inning of the Braves’ match against the Marlins on Monday.  The results weren’t very good (he ended up with a blown save), but he was using a new pitching delivery with an almost side-arm action and as he was immediately shut down again (possibly permanently) I was keen to take a look at it.  Trying to navigate my way straight to the bottom of the ninth in either the Condensed Game footage or the full MLB.tv archived game footage was a nightmare because you had to scroll along without knowing which point of the game you were going to end up at.  “Stupid bloody MLB.com”, I muttered to myself as I thought back to last season and the clickable linescores that enabled you to click on the half of the specific inning you wanted to watch.  As with the Condensed Games, this great feature had mystifyingly disappeared for the 2008 season, but when I looked at MLB.com’s scoreboard on Tuesday they had miraculously returned. 

I’ve no idea why MLB.com decided to get rid of either the Condensed Games feature or the Clickable linescores, but I’m delighted that they are now back and being enjoyed by many baseball fans once again.