From first to worst.

Pirates are your saviours to keep you out of the cellar.
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One of many reasons baseball is losing popularity. You also could watch them on local TV at one point. Fox Sports Midwest was at least somewhat accessible when they took it away from local broadcast. Now it’s a complete pain to watch games.

Meanwhile you can watch most Chiefs game on local TV or accessible networks (other than the bullshit 1 off streaming game a year. Fuck that) all across the Midwest including all of Missouri both ends of the state.
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Honestly, I think this is one of BB largest problems. The access to the product is becoming darn near impossible.

I would just as soon the Cards would stream every game (no blackouts) and then I would buy it. Simple.
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Who thought this was a great business model? Its insanity.
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Nobody.

Bally Sports got bought by Sinclair Media and Sinclair promptly drove it into a MFing mountain.

This was wholly a product of the Fox Sport group getting purchased and parted out. And I don't imagine MLB expected that to happen. The Regional Sports Networks were a perfect solution for baseball - baseball is largely a regional sport. The teams get followed by their local fanbase but it hasn't generated a true 'national' market for probably 50 years. There are just too damn many games played for folks to care about any single game on a Thursday where they don't have a rooting interest.

But the RSNs addressed that perfectly and brought a level of access that was largely unprecedented. What we have now is somehow STILL better than what we had in, say, 1997. But it's certainly a roll-back of 25 years of progress on that front.

It's a mess. But at least as it relates to this specific mess, I'm not positive there was anything else that MLB could've done.
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I've never in my life had a problem accessing Cards games until FSMW got parceled off.

RSN were available on all cable and satellite platforms (before there even was streaming) since I started watching the Cards in 1995 or 96'. Most cable packages it was standard programming back in the day.

What I don't understand is how Bally or Sinclair or whoever owns the rights to the team's games doesn't seem to understand that accessibility is how they make money rather than continually feuding with service providers. And yes MLB seemed to get blindsided by it.

Hopefully in the end MLB takes the nonsense over and you can start getting your teams channels independently.
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I sure have. There was a long stretch of time up until and slightly after the Big Mac/Sammy home run chase that if you weren't listening to Jack/Joe/Mike on the radio your only option was to check the box scores in the next day's paper.
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Yeah, being in KC, I didn't have Cardinals games until I went to Kirksville for college in 2000. So I don't really know when those RSNs really got up to speed. But yeah, mid-90s feels about right.

Prior to those, it was a wasteland for finding out of market games. I searched the box scores on the KC Star for results and read the 'local prospects' tracker when they had it in there. That's how I managed to know about Pujols earlier than most; being a Maple Woods kid, the Star tracked his performance. I knew his name well before I knew how the hell to pronounce it.

I think Sinclair did it on purpose. They were actively seeking to destroy the 'bundle' model so they could lean into a stand-alone streaming service or even a PPV model. And they just did a god-awful job with it. And badly underestimated how savvy fans would be. I don't think they expected that the fans would come to hate THEM rather than MLB. And that's exactly what happened.

Anyone that might bother to learn how to get a streaming service directly from Sinclair also learned that Sinclair essentially blew up an existing model that they really liked. So they gave them the bird.

Nothing else would explain why they blew a working model apart as thoroughly and rapidly as they did.
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Victor Scott's OPS in Memphis is below .400 right now.

We pushed that kids development back 2 full seasons. And honestly, we should just acknowledge that and move him down to Springfield with the idea that he spends all of 2024 there, most of 2025 in Memphis and maybe sees the bigs in 2026.

This team raw-dogged the shit out of that kid. Just unbelievable how bad they are at this.
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He'll end up traded to the Ray's for peanuts then magically become a legit force
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Not really a Rays kind of player, though.

He's a guy we'll insist is amazing and waste 3,000 PAs on over 7 years of bouncing around the lineup and burning through option seasons. In the meantime we'll trade 2 players BETTER than him.

One benefit to the Ozuna deal is that it at least kept us from doing that with Magneuris Sierra. Ricky and Butters would still be rubbing themselves raw over his occasional catches in the OF while batting .215 with an OPS of .650.

"Man he can really pick it. You can see why the Cardinals value him so much. That defense and his speed on the bases makes him a big part of this Cardinal core..."
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Baseball has the perfect setup waiting to keep a regional model with national reach. Take all local rights in house - have games on MLB Network. Localize it where each region gets their teams games. In the actually city, simulcast the games on a local over the air television station. I'm sure one of the CWs or similar would love to have the Cardinals or Royals games on every night. Then stream the rest on MLB.TV where you pay for what kind of package you want.
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"Butters" :-) :-) :-)
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Yeah - that's an old one. Goes way back to the Alex Reyes days.

Reyes wouldn't do anything but ignore coaching and get lit up - would still get a spot in the starting 5. Thompson would go out there and pitch to his defense, get outs and just otherwise be a good soldier....and ride the Memphis shuttle.

So I said "Man, the Cardinals treat this dude like Butters at the NAMBLA convention..."

And thus a nickname was born.

I forget that it's pretty much a nickname that about 25 people actually understand. I just use it as a matter of course. When that dude retires at 85 years old after spending 5 decades on the mic, he'll still be Butters to me.

Mostly because "Lesbian Volleyball Coach with Downs" takes too long to type.
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That "butters" post is in the birdsonthebat.com hall of fame.
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