Latest in Major League Baseball

Spectrum SportsNet LA said Wednesday that it has reached a carriage agreement that will see DirecTV, AT&T TV, U-verse TV and AT&T TV Now customers finally be able to watch Los Angeles Dodgers games. The deal ends a six-year impasse that has kept the MLB team off DirecTV screens in more than half of homes in its own…

Major League Baseball teams returned to the field this week for the start of spring training. Grapefruit and Cactus league play has been an annual ritual for more than a century ahead of the spring start of the regular season, but this year there are as many existential questions as fastballs flying through the…

UPDATED, 11;55 AM: Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred today gave his first public interview regarding the sign-stealing scandal that has rocked the sport. He also took time to respond to the Los Angeles City Council’s resolution that urges MLB to give the tainted 2017 and 2018 World Series titles to the…

A major change may finally be coming to the streaming sports landscape, New York Yankees president Randy Levine hinted Thursday after the $3.5 billion sale of the YES Network formally closed. YES, which will now be owned by the Yankees, Sinclair Broadcast Group, Amazon and three private equity partners. The new…

Bill Buckner, a longtime baseball star who spoofed his crucial late-career World Series error on Curb Your Enthusiasm, died today. He was 69. Sportswriter Jeremy Schaap tweeted that Buckner’s widow Jody said had been suffering from Lewy body dementia. Buckner played for five teams during his 22-year career, amassing…

YouTube and Major League Baseball have set a groundbreaking deal that will see 13 games live-streamed for free across the Google-owned video platform in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. It is the first live game distribution partnership for the two entities and a notable pact in the percolating and capital-intensive…

Brodie Van Wagenen, the 44-year-old former CAA agent who is now GM of the New York Mets, has stirred up fresh talk about links between pro sports teams and media outlets that cover them by hiring ESPN’s Jessica Mendoza as a team adviser. Mendoza, the team said, will have a role in player evaluation, roster…

In an unusual arrangement, New York Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia will work as an analyst on ESPN TV and radio broadcasts during his final season in Major League Baseball. Sabathia announced last month that 2019 will be his final season. A former Cy Young Award winner and World Series champion, Sabathia has pitched for…

Reinforcing one of its live-sports tentpoles, Fox Sports has reached a 10-year, multi-platform extension with Major League Baseball. The deal keeps the World Series on Fox, which has broadcast it every year since 1996, and will step up the number of regular- and post-season games on the network starting in 2022. The…

As the Major League Baseball season gets under way, Twitter has renewed its streaming deal, with Thursday’s Texas Rangers-Oakland Athletics game kicking off weekly live games. The @MLB handle will host a Twitter game of the week, with out-of-market live streaming of daytime games, which will be simulcasts of…

This news isn’t likely to cheer Clayton Kershaw up, but ESPN said today that Thursday’s 2018 MLB opener for the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants drew the sports net’s best opening-day numbers in six years. The 1-0 victory by the hated Giants at Dodger Stadium was seen by 1.67 million viewers, also making…

Roy Halladay, a former star pitcher who won two Cy Young Awards and threw one of only two no-hitters in Major League Baseball postseason history, died today when the small plane he was piloting crashed in the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida coast. He was 40. The Pasco County Sheriff’s office said the single-engine…