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.
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.