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RSNs do blackouts to protect their investment, and because they pay a shit-ton of money for the rights, Baseball is totally on board with the idea. RSNs draw their revenue from both advertisers and from getting a cut of subscription fees. RSNs allow MLB.tv to air their games out of market games because RSNs realize no revenue from outside their market anyway, but allowing streaming within the market cannibalizes their investment. The idea, of course, is to get you to pony up the fee to get the RSN from your local provider, or from a streaming service that offers their channel. They don't want people to bypass that and see their games for free, since that would undermine the entire point of paying the humongous rights fee they paid the team for the games. Thus, the blackout.

And that is a big reason we got Javy on the team.

"Batter thirrrd, the shortstop, Have-ee-rrr Baez." 😄

After the post above, it occurred to me to research this issue on this service called "Googol" (sp?), and here's what I just found. https://thevpn.guru/best-mlb-tv-vpn-bypass-at-bat-blackouts#ios Is It Possible to Watch Blackout Games on iOS (iPhone/iPad)? Due to the fact the MLB at Bat app on iPhone and iPad devices use location services, you will not be able to bypass MLB blackout restrictions on either of these platforms. If you do turn off location services, the MLB at Bat will not function. Can I Bypass MLB.TV Blackouts on Android? As is the case with iOS devices, the MLB.tv app on Android-based phones and tablets uses a combination of location services and GPS to determine your current location. Thus, you cannot bypass MLB blackout restrictions on Android, even when using VPN.

Maybe it's different now, but I tried that a few years ago specifically to try to get past the local blackout and it didn't work. Maybe they changed it, or maybe I did it wrong back then.

If the Tigers go over .500 during this stretch, they should maybe start printing playoff tickets! 🤩

All true, and there's also this: we have a pretty tough first month ahead of us, so we shouldn't get unusually discouraged if we start off well below .500. Of the first nine series of the season, five are against teams projected to be among the top ten teams in baseball: White Sox, Boston, Yankees, @ Dodgers, @ Astros. Only two are against bottom feeders (Pirates, Rockies [who just beat the Dodgers two of three!]) with the other two series against teams projected to be middle-of-the-pack, and those are ALC teams on the road (@ Royals, @ Twins), against whom we struggled last year. These nine series consist of 27 games, and will take us through ... wait for it ... May 8. After that the schedule eases up some, although the Rays are lying in wait for us in the middle of May. Point is, if we finish this stretch something like 10-17, it should not come as a surprise, nor should it be particularly discouraging. Speaking only for myself, I would find any record better than this fairly encouraging.

Yes. and here's how to do it, if you want to watch it on your TV rather than a laptop: I was able to do this and successfully get the Tigers feed (i.e., Dan Dickerson) for this past series even though I am blacked out from White Sox (and Cubs) games on MLB.tv. NOTE: this will still not work for iOS devices (e.g., iPhone, iPad) since they use there own geolocation protocol that appears to defeat any attempt to use VPN to spoof location.

Rookie hazing? Playa hating? Who knows.

It’s never too early to call for a manager’s head, and it would be so entertaining if you would do so over and over in this forum all season long. 😁

Exactly. He’s out of sorts. He let a first pitch fast ball he should have deposited into the left field stands go right by him. His swinging strike two was at his eyes. He took strike three when he should have been protecting. Pat him on the back and give him tomorrow off.

Counterpoint: In Dusty we trusty.

Old school managers, for sure. Leyland did that shit all the time.

On the other hand, Javy is well known to make the occasional play without having his head fully in it. I don’t know whether that’s the case here because I wasn’t available to watch the game and whatever play you’re talking about didn't make the highlights, but that is something to keep in mind about Javy.

This is happening tonight in Anaheim. This guy thinks this might be the explanation:

Baez did not fully extend on that and it cost us at least one run.

Eat some bench, Grandal!

This is actually why I enjoy watching MLB Tonight, as useless as I find most of the rest of that network’s programming. When you get a couple of ex-players talking while they have a game going on behind them, you get really solid insights into what players think during games that, to your point, a pure broadcaster could not effectively contribute to.

I don’t know—Shep is going into his fourth year with these guys, so if the deference hasn’t fallen away after three years, I’m not sure it ever will. Remember, he was a teenage Tiger fan when these players were treading the hallowed ground of Tiger Stadium. They were his bona fide baseball heroes, and he has said as much in interviews. So he may never feel he is the equal he has to be in order to go head to head with them.

Not sure and in any event I’m not saying he should be able to elevate his launch angle AND hit the ball harder. All I’m saying is that both his launch angle is way up and his hard hit is down, to his detriment I do think if he can moderate his launch angle to something like 17 and hit the ball harder, he’ll probably do a lot better than he did last year.

I don’t know about the MLB.tv app directly on a Samsung TV, but most units MLB.tv runs through, such as Apple TV or Roku or the MLB app on phones, have a radio overlay available so you can switch to the radio call right on your app without having to coordinate the radio from another app or device. Next time a game is on, see whether you can pull up an options menu while the game is going. If you can, there should be audio options available, and if there is, switching to the radio feed should be one of them.

Maybe other teams do this too, but the Ilitch Tigers seem to have this thing where, when they know the team is going to be bad, they pull in some 1984 Tigers to distract us from that. In 2003, when they knew they team would be just dreadful, they brought Trammell in to manage and hired Gibson and Parrish to coach with him. When it looked like there was light at the end of the tunnel, it was time to broom those guys and bring in a real manager and coaching staff. So maybe when the team started going through the horrible rebuild they appear to be just now emerging from, after Mario and Rod imploded, they decided they could deflect from the terrible on the field by getting Gibson, Morris, and Petry in the broadcasting fold, and hey, how about a hero from 2006 (Monroe) working the desk as well? Yes, that should tide the rubes over … 😉 So maybe now that the is going to start winning more and everyone is going to start paying attention again, they’ll decide to get a real broadcasting team. We can hope …

Run a VPN through your router, if you have one. I don’t know if you can apply a VPN directly to the box you get from your ISP—you can’t with AT&T’s gateway—but you can do so on any decent router you lay on top of that, like an ASUS or a Linksys. I have NordVPN and they have easy step by step instructions on their website on how to apply it to your router. I have New York, Seattle, Dallas and Toronto on mine, so just in case one is struggling, I have three others I can try. That’s how I could get the game on MLB.tv although I should have been blacked out from doing so.

Austin Meadows’s launch angle did go way up, but there was more: his EV, hard hit and barrels all went down, which dropped his xwOBACON from .455 in 2019 to .369 last year. As a result his HR/FB dropped by a full third, and when you hit fly balls that don’t go out of the park, they usually get caught for outs. That’s a big drag on BABIP, batting average, SLG, and ultimately run production. Not for nothing, Austin also started chasing outside the zone more and making contact out there less, perhaps in frustration from popping up too much and falling short of the wall a lot more. Perhaps he started pressing to make things happen to change his luck. Austin spent his entire spring with another team, so I really don’t know what he worked on all camp. But hopefully they identified the problem as trying to lift the ball too much, so if he can direct his efforts toward switching out some of his fly balls for line drives, we can see lots of good things from him.

Good observation—last year Meadows had a .402 wOBA when not shifted versus a .304 wOBA against the shift, which he faced 75% of the time. In 2019 he was actually better against the shift (.398, vs .361) when he was shifted only 51% off the time. If they can address that, Austin Meadows can be an All-Star with us. Wonder if that will/would have any positive effect on Parker Meadows? ☺️