MLB.TV Premium now available for $9.99
Three division leaders are ahead by no more than 3 1/2 games, and Houston and St. Louis will be on the road to protect now-fragile leads. Five clubs are within six games of Wild Card position in the American League, including Minnesota at just one game out. Jake Arrieta will bid for his 20th win on Wednesday during the third game of an intense four-game Pirates-Cubs series at PNC Park.
Those are just some of the exciting reasons to take advantage of MLB.TV Premium, which is now just $9.99 for the rest of the regular season and select postseason games. Major League Baseball Advanced Media announced the new sale price on Monday, with 12 of the remaining 291 live out-of-market regular-season games on this evening's docket.
For the first time, all postseason games telecast on MLB Network, TBS and FOX will be available to MLB.TV subscribers who are authenticated subscribers to the applicable network through a participating pay TV provider. That will include every FOX broadcast of the 111th World Series, scheduled to start Oct. 27 in an AL venue.
The regular season will conclude on Sunday, Oct. 4, and MLB.TV is the way to go as all 15 games will start at almost exactly the same time in a unique twist: Either 3:05 or 3:10 p.m. ET starts. Scoreboard-watching is likely to be happening in an unprecedented way on that day if the races stay tight, and MLB.TV Premium lets you monitor four games at once on the same screen, as well as easily move from game to game so you see all the key at-bats.
A subscription to MLB.com At Bat Premium is included for free with MLB.TV Premium, a $19.99 value, so it will pay off for others as well. You can enjoy complete mobile portability to compatible smartphones and tablets, and that includes more than 400 supported devices.
"When I was in Double-A and Triple-A this year, I used to watch the Astros' games every day on MLB.TV to see how they were doing," Astros rookie shortstop Carlos Correa, an MLB.TV subscriber. "I knew I had a chance to be at the big league level at some point, so I watched the games, and see the pitchers, how they pitched, in order for me to have an idea. TV is different, but I have an idea of how they pitched to our players. Yes, I used a lot of MLB.TV.
"When I'm in the hotel, I have Apple TV, I take it on the road with me. At home, I use my iPhone and the At Bat app. When they called me up [June 8], they told me I was going to face Chris Sale, so I went back to the last game he pitched just to see how he approached the hitters. I saw how he liked to use his fastball to get ahead and then his slider to strike people out. You see all this stuff, and then when you go to the big leagues, you figure there are a lot of computers there with a lot of videos, but it paid off for me."
The NL Wild Card Game presented by Budweiser is scheduled for Oct. 7, and TBS will air that one so it will be available live out-of-market to authenticated MLB.TV Premium subscribers. ESPN will televise the AL Wild Card Game presented by Budweiser on the previous day. Go to MLB.com/postseason to see the full postseason schedule and broadcasters.
With MLB.TV, MLB was the first sport league to stream its entire season (2003); first to wire its venues for TV-quality streaming ('05); first to use adaptive bit rate streaming ('08); first to stream live 720p HD video ('09); first to stream live games/subscription product to iPhone ('09); first live video on connected devices ('09); first to stream live video to a gaming console ('10); first live games embedded on Facebook and Twitter ('11); and first to make a live video stream embeddable to any site on the Internet ('13).
This season, MLB.TV introduced a Web-based media player (version 5.0). You'll notice the difference right away as the HD media player has an in-page layout with simplified user controls, so it all happens in your browser with no need for an additional download.
"It's great for fans to watch the games and be able to replay them," Correa said, "and just enjoy baseball."