The New York Mets are a mess, but that apparently hasn’t stopped anyone — this writer included — from watching them.
NBC’s June 21 broadcast of Mets-Phillies from Citizens Bank Park averaged 3.0 million viewers across NBC and Peacock, according to the network, making it the most-watched Sunday Night Baseball game since August 2013, excluding season openers.
Four days after that broadcast – which featured a 6-2 Phillies win — the Mets are amid a dreadful five-game losing streak in which they’ve been outscored 50-19, capped by a doubleheader loss to the Chicago Cubs that dropped them 12 games below .500. The nightcap featured six infield errors, leading to SNY play-by-play voice Gary Cohen calling it “nothing short of ugly” on the PIX 11 broadcast, all but demanding a re-evaluation of the team while the camera panned to manager Carlos Mendoza.
And yet, three million people tuned in to NBC to watch a Mets team that has been one of the most dysfunctional and disappointing in baseball, leaving even their own broadcasters with nothing left to defend. Having the Phillies — 35-17 since firing Rob Thomson in April — on the other side of the diamond didn’t hurt either.
For NBC, it is the latest strong number for a Sunday Night Baseball package that launched this season after the network paid roughly $200 million per year — less than half of what ESPN had been paying — with NBC Sports president Jon Miller convincing Rob Manfred that keeping baseball on broadcast television was worth more to the sport than a larger check from a streaming platform.
The package drew 3.2 million viewers for its Opening Day broadcast of Dodgers-Diamondbacks in March, the first baseball NBC had aired since 2000. Mets-Phillies is now the best non-opener the package has produced, and Yankees-Red Sox on June 28 — a rivalry that hasn’t appeared on NBC since 1995 — is on deck.
