The next era of Major League Baseball on ESPN is beginning to come into focus.
ESPN will debut its new Major League Baseball package with a 10 PM ET Mets-Dodgers game on Wednesday, April 15 — Jackie Robinson Day — the network announced Monday. That is the first Wednesday after the end of the NBA regular season, during which ESPN regularly airs games on Wednesday nights, but it is also about three weeks into an MLB season that begins March 25.
(ESPN is also scheduled to carry Pickleball Slam 4 that night, which could explain the late 10 PM ET start time.)
Despite opting out of, and ultimately losing, its MLB package that consisted of Opening Day, “Sunday Night Baseball” and Wild Card playoff games, ESPN acquired a new slate of MLB rights that will include 30 exclusive national game windows, plus the digital out-of-market package MLB.tv and streaming rights to six clubs. ESPN president of content Burke Magnus told Jimmy Traina on the “SI Media” podcast recently that the “preponderance” of those national games will air on Wednesdays, “but they’re kind of all over the place.”
On ESPN’s corporate blog, ESPN VP programming/acquisitions Ashley O’Connor said the new package gives the network “added flexibility to capture key storylines throughout the season, rather than being tied to a specific window each week.”
In addition to Mets-Dodgers, ESPN announced that it has selected Yankees-Royals on Memorial Day. The 3:30 PM ET matinee will be the first of annual Memorial Day games on ESPN under the new three-year contract. The deal also includes a standalone game on the first night after the All-Star break — Mets-Phillies this year — and the annual Little League Classic, which will remain in a Sunday night window.
As previously announced, the MLB season will begin with a standalone Opening Night matchup of Yankees-Giants on Netflix March 25. That will be followed by the traditional Opening Day slate March 26, which will be capped off with Diamondbacks-Dodgers in a fully exclusive primetime window on NBC and Peacock.
