The following is a list of the national television and radio networks and announcers who have covered the Major League Baseball wild card games throughout the years. It does not include any announcers who may have appeared on local radio broadcasts produced by the participating teams.
Year | League | Series | Network | Play-by-play | Color commentator(s) | Field reporter(s) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2023 | AL | Minnesota Twins/Toronto Blue Jays | ESPN (U.S.) | Michael Kay | Alex Rodriguez | Alden Gonzalez |
Sportsnet (Canada) | Dan Shulman | Buck Martinez | Hazel Mae | |||
Tampa Bay Rays/Texas Rangers | ABC | Sean McDonough | Jessica Mendoza and Tim Kurkjian | Coley Harvey | ||
NL | Milwaukee Brewers/Arizona Diamondbacks | ESPN2 | Jon Sciambi | Doug Glanville | Jesse Rogers | |
Philadelphia Phillies/Miami Marlins | ESPN | Karl Ravech | David Cone and Eduardo Pérez | Buster Olney | ||
2022 | AL | Cleveland Guardians/Tampa Bay Rays | ESPN (Game 1) ESPN2 (Game 2) | Jon Sciambi | Doug Glanville | Jesse Rogers |
Toronto Blue Jays/Seattle Mariners | ESPN (U.S.) | Dave Flemming | Jessica Mendoza and Tim Kurkjian | Coley Harvey | ||
Sportsnet (Canada) | Buck Martinez | Pat Tabler | Hazel Mae | |||
NL | St. Louis Cardinals/Philadelphia Phillies | ABC (Game 1) ESPN2 (Game 2) | Michael Kay | Alex Rodriguez | Alden Gonzalez | |
New York Mets/San Diego Padres | ESPN | Karl Ravech | David Cone and Eduardo Pérez | Buster Olney |
Year | Game | Network | Play-by-play | Color commentator(s) | Field reporter(s) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2021 | AL | ESPN | Matt Vasgersian | Alex Rodriguez | Buster Olney |
ESPN2 (Statcast alternate broadcast) [1] | Jason Benetti | Eduardo Pérez and Mike Petriello | |||
NL | TBS | Brian Anderson | Ron Darling | Lauren Shehadi |
League | Series | Network | Play-by-play | Color commentator(s) | Field reporter(s) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
AL | Tampa Bay Rays/Toronto Blue Jays | TBS | Rich Waltz | Jimmy Rollins | |
Minnesota Twins/Houston Astros | ABC (Game 1) ESPN2 (Game 2) | Karl Ravech | Tim Kurkjian and Eduardo Pérez | ||
New York Yankees/Cleveland Indians | ESPN | Matt Vasgersian | Alex Rodriguez and Buster Olney | Marly Rivera | |
Oakland Athletics/Chicago White Sox | Dave Flemming | Jessica Mendoza | |||
NL | Los Angeles Dodgers/Milwaukee Brewers | Karl Ravech | Tim Kurkjian and Eduardo Pérez | ||
Atlanta Braves/Cincinnati Reds | Matt Vasgersian | Alex Rodriguez and Buster Olney | Kiley McDaniel | ||
Chicago Cubs/Miami Marlins | ABC | Jon Sciambi | Chipper Jones | Jesse Rogers | |
San Diego Padres/St. Louis Cardinals | ESPN2 (Game 1) ESPN (Game 2 and 3) | Tom Hart | Rick Sutcliffe Jessica Mendoza (Game 3) | Pedro Gomez |
Year | Game | Network | Play-by-play | Color commentator(s) |
---|---|---|---|---|
2021 | AL | ESPN | Dave O'Brien | Xavier Scruggs |
NL | Jon Sciambi | Kyle Peterson |
The Miami Marlins are an American professional baseball team based in Miami. The Marlins compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) East Division. The club's home ballpark is LoanDepot Park.
Major League Baseball (MLB) has been broadcast on American television since the 1950s, with initial broadcasts on the experimental station W2XBS, the predecessor of the modern WNBC in New York. The World Series was televised on a networked basis since 1947, with regular season games broadcast nationally since 1953. Over the forthcoming years, MLB games became major attractions for American television networks, and each of the Big Three networks would air packages of baseball games at various times until the year 2000. Fox would rise to major network status, partially on its acquisition of MLB rights in 1996; Fox has been MLB's primary broadcast television partner ever since.
National television broadcasts of Major League Baseball (MLB) games have aired on ABC in various formats. The network first aired Saturday Major League Baseball Game of the Week games between 1953 and 1955, in 1960, and in 1965. ABC then televised MLB games from 1976 to 1989, airing Monday Night Baseball, Thursday Night Baseball, and Sunday Afternoon Baseball in various years during that period.
Sunday Night Baseball is an exclusive weekly telecast of a Major League Baseball game that airs Sundays at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT on ESPN during the regular season.
MLB Network Showcase is the title of a presentation of Major League Baseball on cable and satellite channel MLB Network that premiered on April 9, 2009. The network produces in-house 26 non-exclusive live games a season. Since one or both teams' local TV rights holders also carry the games, the MLB Network feed is subject to local blackouts. In that event, the cities in the blacked-out markets will instead see a simulcast of another scheduled game via one team's local TV rights holder. MLB Network Showcase typically airs one game a week.
ESPN Major League Baseball is an American presentation of live Major League Baseball (MLB) games produced by ESPN. ESPN's MLB broadcasts have also aired on sister networks and platforms ESPN2, ABC and ESPN+.
MLB on TBS is an American presentation of regular season and postseason Major League Baseball (MLB) game telecasts that air on the American pay television network TBS and the streaming service Max. The games are produced by TNT Sports.
Jon "Boog" Sciambi is an American sportscaster for ESPN and the Marquee Sports Network, and has been the everyday play-by-play announcer for the Chicago Cubs TV broadcasts on Marquee since 2021. He has worked extensively as a baseball play-by-play announcer, calling games for ESPN television and on ESPN Radio. Sciambi's nickname, "Boog," was given to him owing to his physical resemblance to former major league player Boog Powell.
Rich Waltz is an American television play-by-play commentator currently calling college football, basketball for CBS Sports and CBS Sports Network. Waltz also calls MLB for MLB Network's Showcase telecasts and Apple TV's Friday Night Baseball. The past two seasons he has filled in on TV for the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Los Angeles Angels on Bally Sports. Waltz also called the Phoenix Regional of the World Baseball Classic for MLB Network and MLB International. A three-time Emmy winner, Waltz is formerly known for calling television broadcasts for the Miami Marlins of Major League Baseball from 2005 to 2017. Waltz's dismissal by Fox Sports Florida and the Marlins was criticized by fans and media. Over the past few years, Waltz has called MLB for MLB Network and Turner Sports, including the Cubs' Alec Mills no-hitter, the sixth MLB no-hitter he has announced. Waltz also called the 2020 AL Wild Card Series for TBS alongside Jimmy Rollins.
The 2015 Major League Baseball season began on April 5 with a Sunday night game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field, and ended on November 1 with the Kansas City Royals winning the World Series. This was Rob Manfred's first season serving as Commissioner of Baseball.
The 2017 Major League Baseball postseason was the playoff tournament of Major League Baseball for the 2017 season. The winners of the Division Series would move on to the League Championship Series to determine the pennant winners that face each other in the World Series. This was the first edition of the postseason in which home field advantage in the World Series was awarded to the team with the better regular season record, rather than the winner of the Major League Baseball All-Star Game.
The 2020 Major League Baseball season began on July 23 and ended on September 27 with only 60 games amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The full 162-game regular season was planned to begin on March 26, but the pandemic caused Major League Baseball (MLB) to announce on March 12 that the remainder of spring training was canceled and that the start of the regular season would be delayed by at least two weeks. On March 16, MLB announced that the season would be postponed indefinitely, following recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to restrict events of more than 50 people. This was the first time that MLB games had been put on hold since the 2001 season, when the season was paused for over a week after the September 11 attacks.
On August 28, 2012, it was announced that ESPN and Major League Baseball had agreed on a new eight-year deal that increased ESPN's average yearly payment from about $360 million to approximately $700 million.
The 2020 National League Wild Card Series were four best-of-three-games series in Major League Baseball (MLB) to determine participating teams in the 2020 National League Division Series. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, MLB expanded the postseason from 10 to 16 teams with all teams starting in the wild card round instead of holding the regular Wild Card Game for each league. All games for each series were played at the higher seeded team's home ballpark and were a best of 3 series.
The 2020 Major League Baseball postseason was the playoff tournament of Major League Baseball for the 2020 season. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the league played only a 60-game season, and an expanded 16-team postseason tournament began on September 29, with games of all but the first round being played at neutral sites. A new three-game Wild Card series was added as the opening round of this postseason due to the shortened season caused by the pandemic; it would become a permanent addition to the postseason format starting in 2022.
The 2023 Major League Baseball season (MLB) began on March 30. The 93rd All-Star Game was played on July 11, hosted by the Seattle Mariners at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, Washington, with the National League winning, 3–2. The regular season ended on October 1, and the postseason began on October 3, and ended with Game 5 of the World Series on November 1. This season saw the introduction of several rule changes: in an effort to create a quicker pace of play, a pitch clock was introduced along with other minor changes, while limits on defensive shifts and larger bases were also introduced.
The following is a general overview of Major League Baseball on television in the 2020s. During the 2020s, Major League Baseball announced its first exclusive television contract with a paid streaming service. Due to the bankruptcy of Diamond Sports Group, MLB took over the production of the local broadcasts of the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks.