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March 03, 2008

Yanks & Mets Fans Tuning In Quickly This Year

Some interesting stats from Neil Best's Watchdog blog:

On the Mets - Last year, SNY's first spring training Mets telecast attracted only 0.14 percent of area households - understandable on a weekday afternoon.

This season's first spring training game Friday afternoon drew 0.80 percent of homes - more than five times as many as last year.

On the Yankees - Sunday's Yankees game was the second highest-rated and second most-watched preseason game in YES history, trailing only a 2004 game against the Red Sox.

The game attracted 2.31 percent of households and an estimated 177,00 viewers.

Of course, it’s sort of unfair to compare a Friday day-time broadcast to a Sunday day-time broadcast. Therefore, one cannot compare the Mets first spring TV game ratings here to the Yankees first spring TV game ratings. However, if anything, these stats tell us that both Yankees and Mets fans were really interested in watching their team this spring as soon as possible – and more so than last year. If this level of interest keeps up, it should be a fun summer in the Tri-State area this season.

Posted by WW Staff at March 3, 2008 01:05 PM

Comments

I watched yesterday. I totally missed baseball!

Anyone notice how goofy Kyle Farnsworth looks with his curly hair? Also, it was nice to see him serve up a long ball on the second pitch of his outing. Who needs spring training?! He's in mid-season form!

Posted by: MJ [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 3, 2008 01:31 PM

I was going to mention this in the reliever post, but since MJ brought it up here...

Yeah, it was awesome to get back to baseball, but it's amazing how nothing changes. Farnsworth gives up the home run. Bruney walks a guy. Henn can't find the plate, either.

But seriously...

I thought Hawkins looked good -- good velocity, and he really does seem to sink the ball now. Farnsworth also had good velocity, which was an issue last year (it would be nice if he could get it back up to triple digits and strike people out again). Bruney had the walk, but he was also hitting 96 on a semi-hopped-up radar gun. Outside of that one BB, I thought he actually looked decent enough. And Henn is just an enigma -- he's long past the days of throwing 98, and on a good day he's a hard-throwing lefty who's capable of getting big-leaguers out, but I seriously doubt he'll ever fully exorcise his control demons. Unless he puts it together for another run like he did last spring, I expect Henn will be waived and picked up by someone.

Posted by: baileywalk [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 3, 2008 01:56 PM

I agree - I noticed the same thing about LaTroy Hawkins. I had no idea he could get it up to 95 mph (although you have a point about the radar gun maybe being a little hot). Even still, Hawkins showed velocity and location, two nice attributes to have coming out of the bullpen.

Posted by: MJ [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 3, 2008 02:06 PM