Since 1990, Sunday Night Baseball has become a showcase for Major League Baseball on ESPN. But getting a nationally televised game in prime time does have its costs, though they usually don’t appear on the scoreboard. The 8 p.m. start time for what’s often the final game of a series can be tough on teams in the middle of a road trip, which is why things appear to be changing next season.
According to the Associated Press, one bit of news that came out of the Las Vegas meetings is that Sunday Night Baseball, the long-running ESPN property, will start games an hour earlier this upcoming season.
That means a start that’s much closer to many local start times on other days of the week. And teams say that the hour does make a big difference.
ESPN started the “Sunday Night Baseball” telecast in 1990, and it developed in a showcase time slot. It nearly always is the only game scheduled for that time.
But players who had to travel after games complained they reached the next city at dawn, disrupting their sleep schedules ahead of the next series against an opponent that usually has more rest.
“When I was with the Yankees, that was one of the things I had to get used to,” Red Sox pitcher Nathan Eovaldi said. “That was one of the tough parts.”
Last season, Yankees manager Aaron Boone called it “ridiculous” that the team would have to play a Sunday Night Baseball game on July 8 against the Toronto Blue Jays and then travel to Baltimore to play a doubleheader the next day. The comments drew attention across the league to growing complaints about the quick turnaround for some teams with the Sunday Night game, especially if makeups for rainouts force games into a Monday that’s traditionally light on baseball schedules.
Other teams that often appear on Sunday Night Baseball seem excited about the change as well.
“From a travel perspective, it’s amazing what (difference) one hour can make,” Boston Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski told the AP. The Red Sox have already been picked for five Sunday night games next season, and that time traveling adds up.
As the AP notes, baseball has tried to be more flexible about start times to accommodating teams traveling in recent years. More teams have early starts on getaway day — the last game in a series before teams travel to new venues — since the new collective bargaining agreement went into place in 2017.
