This week is a big one for NBC Sports.

After the Mets-Pirates kick things off Thursday afternoon with Matt Vasgersian, Al Leiter, and Neil Walker on the call, Thursday night marks the official debut of NBC’s lead MLB telecast. The Dodgers raise their World Series banner against the Diamondbacks in the lone primetime game of the night, with Jason Benetti calling the game alongside World Series heroes Orel Hershiser and Luis Gonzalez.

And then, three days later, Sunday Night Baseball makes its season debut. The Cleveland Guardians visit the Seattle Mariners on March 29 at 7 p.m. ET on Peacock and NBCSN, with Ahmed Fareed hosting the pregame show.

It’s a strong first matchup for the new package. Jose Ramirez and the Guardians won the AL Central in 2025. Cal Raleigh — who led all of baseball in home runs last season — and the Mariners won the AL West. Two division champions, two of the more compelling players in the American League, and a game that gives NBC’s rotating analyst model its first primetime test of the year.

In the booth, Benetti will be joined by Rick Manning and Ryan Rowland-Smith.

Manning played 13 seasons as an outfielder in MLB, spending nearly nine of them in Cleveland before being traded to Milwaukee to finish his career. He has been a television analyst for Cleveland broadcasts since 1990, making him the franchise’s longest-tenured commentator. Rowland-Smith spent four of his five MLB seasons with the Mariners from 2007-10, working as both a starter and reliever. He joined Root Sports Northwest as an analyst in 2017 and became the primary analyst for Mariners broadcasts in 2025.

There is no one in a booth anywhere with a more direct line to what’s happening inside these two organizations.

That’s the whole idea. As Awful Announcing reported in February, NBC is building its broadcast team around a rotating local analyst model, mirroring what it did with MLB Sunday Leadoff on Peacock in 2022 and 2023, when Benetti anchored games alongside analysts tied to the teams playing that week.

It’s worth remembering how Benetti and NBC got here. ESPN opted out of its $550 million-per-year MLB deal in February 2025, ending a 35-year run airing Sunday Night Baseball. NBC stepped in at roughly $200 million annually — considerably less than ESPN had been paying — reclaiming not just Sunday nights but the Sunday morning Leadoff package it had let expire after 2023, which Roku had been running for $10 million a year. The result is a makeshift baseball doubleheader on most Sundays, with morning games on Peacock leading into primetime on NBC.

Thursday’s games are NBC’s official re-entry into baseball after a 26-year absence. Sunday’s Guardians-Mariners game is the first real look at what Sunday Night Baseball is going to look like all season.