Netflix wants Barry Bonds in the booth when the Giants and Yankees open the 2026 season at Oracle Park on March 25.<\/p>\n
The streaming giant is pursuing Bonds for both pregame and postgame coverage of its first baseball broadcast, according to The Athletic\u2019s Andrew Marchand<\/a>. Netflix is also trying to sign CC Sabathia<\/a> for the Yankees side of the matchup.<\/p>\n Bonds makes sense for Netflix on multiple levels. He spent the final 15 seasons of his career leading the Giants\u2019 lineup, retired as baseball\u2019s all-time home run leader with 762, and would bring instant credibility to a broadcast team with no experience covering baseball. His connection to the Home Run Derby \u2014 which Netflix also owns rights to under its three-year MLB agreement \u2014 creates additional value beyond Opening Day. If you\u2019re trying to sell baseball\u2019s power-hitting spectacle to a global streaming audience, having the guy who hit more home runs than anyone in history seems like an obvious move.<\/p>\n Sabathia would handle the Yankees side. He\u2019s been a regular on MLB Network\u2019s \u201cClubhouse Edition\u201d and previously hosted the R2C2 podcast with ESPN\u2019s Ryan Ruocco. He won a World Series with the Yankees in 2009 and spent nine of his 19 Hall of Fame seasons in New York, which makes him an obvious choice to provide insight on a team Netflix needs to make compelling for a massive Opening Day audience.<\/p>\n As for the remainder of Netflix\u2019s would-be Opening Day crew, Elle Duncan joined the streamer in December<\/a> as the platform\u2019s lead studio host for all sports programming \u2014 including MLB<\/a> \u2014 and will anchor pregame and postgame shows. Netflix still hasn\u2019t announced its play-by-play announcer or game analysts, which leaves the broadcast team half-built with Opening Day six weeks away.<\/p>\n The Giants-Yankees matchup<\/a> gives Netflix exactly what it wants. It\u2019s the kind of tentpole event that fits Netflix\u2019s sports strategy, which has focused on big one-off showcases rather than grinding through full seasons of weekly programming. Netflix\u2019s three-year MLB deal includes Opening Day, the Home Run Derby, and the Field of Dreams game between the Phillies and Twins on August 13.<\/p>\n Bonds has largely stayed away from baseball since his playing career ended, though he\u2019s made occasional public appearances<\/a> and has been called an \u201cunderutilized asset\u201d by Alex Rodriguez<\/a>, who argued baseball should make better use of its legends regardless of their complicated pasts. If Netflix signs Bonds, it would mark his most prominent role in the sport since serving as the Miami Marlins\u2019 hitting coach in 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Netflix wants Barry Bonds in the booth when the Giants and Yankees open the 2026 season at Oracle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2395],"tags":[1664,5,1333,1816,778,58,4171,4,49629,62,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-566849","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami-marlins","8":"tag-barry-bonds","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-cc-sabathia","11":"tag-marlins","12":"tag-miami","13":"tag-miami-marlins","14":"tag-miamimarlins","15":"tag-mlb","16":"tag-mlb-on-netflix","17":"tag-new-york-yankees","18":"tag-san-francisco-giants"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116053928169264164","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}