I’m pretty annoyed with the AppleTV+ and Peacock exclusive baseball games this season, mostly because it takes some work finding the damn Cubs or White Sox game when it’s not on NBC Sports Chicago or Marquee. On Apple TV+ Friday Night Baseball (produced by MLB Network), I like Melanie Newman’s play-by-play, but all the others need to go (and I really wish someone would find the right spot for Katie Nolan, but this ain’t it). Also, the AppleTV+ games are only free this year, and, screw that, I pay enough for the Xfinity sports tier.
Peacock’s MLB Sunday Leadoff (produced by NBC Sports) is a far-superior offering, and since Peacock comes free for Comcast Xfinity customers, I give it some slack. The absolute best thing about the broadcast is how they configured the announcing team. Jason Benetti is the lead by-play announcer for the games, which makes me want to watch because he’s the absolute best in the game right now. Unfortunately, that means Sunday White Sox games don’t have their usual zing to them (Len Kasper is fine, he’s just not Jason). Benetti is joined by rotating analysts from each participating team, which is brilliant, and something that Fox and TBS should immediately adopt for the post-season broadcasts.
It’s always been dumb that local TV announcers are sidelined for the post-season. If ESPN can do 2 feeds of Sunday Night baseball with Statcast, and 2 feeds of Monday Night Football with the ManningCast (not to mention the Spanish feeds on ESPNDeportes), then Fox and TBS can do multiple feeds of postseason games with play-by-play and/or analysts from each home announcing team.
NBC Sports does a much better job of producing the telecast than the MLB Network team, though I do like AppleTV+ minimalist approach to on-screen graphics. Still, I find the AppleTV+ telecast boring.