RAYS AND DODGERS SERVING UP A TV TURKEY
2020 Fall Classic scores worst ratings in over 50 years
The Tampa Bay Rays and the Los Angeles Dodgers are bringin' it.
But they're not bringin' eyeballs to the ballpark.
Ratings from the first two games of the 2020 World Series on Fox TV brought in the lowest ratings in Fall Classic history.
And it could get worse if the trend of Games 1 and 2 continues through the weekend.
Game 3 went Friday night, with the Dodgers winning 6-2 to take a 2-1 series lead.
Games 4 and 5 follow tonight and Sunday night.
It's hoped those heart-of-theseries contests don't return the ugly ratings of Tuesday and Wednesday, when the battles between the Dodgers and the Rays brought in only 9.2 and 8.9 million viewers respectively.
Those are the two worst scores for any World Series ratings since 1968, when Nielsen first started tracking them.
The previous low for a Game 2 of the best-of-seven championship was marked last fall, when only 11.9 million sets of peepers took in the ball game.
And it was for Game 3 of the 2008 Fall Classic when viewership last dropped to fewer than 10 million. That was when the Rays made their last appearance — and lost to the Philadelphia Phillies — in the World Series.
It doesn't help the numbers that the Rays hail from small-market Tampa and don't really register on most people's radar. They are, after all, what many call a no-name team devoid of superstar players.
Then there's the Dodgers with their star-studded lineup and a bevy of names known throughout the Major League Baseball landscape.
But even with the likes of Mookie Betts and Cody Bellinger and Clayton Kershaw (and Corey Seager and Max Muncy and Walker Buehler), the eyes on them are less than what you might expect.
So if the Dodgers — and that massive L.A. market — aren't bringing out the fans, what's the deal?
Let's chalk it up to COVID-19, since it's wrecking most everything these days.
Just check out the ratings across the 2020 sporting championships:
Sports Media Watch delivered these not-so-precious nuggets: Viewership fell by more than 40 per cent for the Stanley Cup Final (-61 per cent), the NBA
Finals (-49 per cent), the U.S. Open tennis tournament (-45 per cent) and golf's U.S. Open (-42 per cent).
The NFL, meanwhile, has suffered just a 13 per cent dip in ratings heading into this week, says Sports Media Watch.
The MLB'S regular season, by comparison, was down 26 per cent.
Strange enough, though, is that Fox announced that last week's Game 7 of the National League Championship Series, won by the Dodgers over the Atlanta Braves, brought in a massive audience. A total of 10.2 million viewers tuned in, making it the most-watched league championship contest since 2017 when the Houston Astros clinched their series over the New York Yankees (and then proceeded to win what's widely considered to be a tainted title). FYI: The two Donald Trump-joe Biden pres
idential debates averaged 73.1 million and 63 million viewers respectively.
AROUND THE HORN
Rays starter Charlie Morton came into Game 3 with a 7-2 post-season record all-time. Yes, “Ground Chuck” or “Uncle Charlie” — whatever you want to call him — had been pretty darn proficient, owning a 2.84 ERA, 61 strikeouts and a 1.16 WHIP in his 11 games started. But that changed in a hurry as the Dodgers got to him and ran Morton out of the game in the fifth inning with seven hits and five runs for a 10.38 ERA ... Morton also came in Friday having gone 128 straight batters without giving up a home run until Justin Turner blew one out of the park on the hurler's 14th pitch. Turner's 11th dinger of his post-season career also tied him with Hall of Famer Duke Snider for the franchise
lead in that department ... Got to love that safety squeeze bunt by Dodgers catcher Austin Barnes to score Cody Bellinger as part of the two-run fourth inning. That's aggressive baseball — and it's fun. More please! ... Barnes' solo shot in the sixth inning was the 50th run cashed in by the Dodgers with two out in these playoffs — a wowzer of a stat ... The Rays set a record Friday, topping the 2018 Dodgers for the most strikeouts (174 through five innings and counting) by a club in a post-season. Those Dodgers played one less game — and counting — than this year's edition of the Rays
... Meanwhile, Dodgers starter Walker Buehler was busy fanning seven Rays through five innings while allowing just two hits, one run and one walk to line him up for the win.