MLB 2022: How to Watch, Stream the Wild Card and Playoff Races
The 2022 Major League Baseball season is a marathon and as summer winds down, the leaders of the pack pull ahead. The Yankees, Astros, Mets and Dodgers have big leads in the East and West, appear to be locks for the postseason and are favorites to win their divisions. The standings are tighter in the Central, where races between the Guardians and White Sox in the American League, and the Cardinals and Brewers in the National League, could go down to the wire.
This year the Wild Card has three births in each league, keeping plenty of other teams in the hunt.
Contenders include the Blue Jays, Mariners, Rays, Orioles and Twins in the AL and the Braves, Phillies and Padres in the NL. San Diego traded for Juan Soto at the deadline to gain a superstar, only to lose another when Fernando Tatis Jr. failed a test for performance-enhancing drugs. Baseball fans have many ways to livestream their favorite team’s games for the rest of the season without subscribing to cable, but the best option for one fan might not work for another.
Selecting the right streaming service for watching baseball greatly depends on which team you follow and where you live. Veteran baseball streamers will note new options for 2022, including Apple TV Plus and Peacock, as well as Yankees games on Amazon Prime Video, Red Sox games on NESN 360, five more teams on Bally Sports Plus and a handful of games on YouTube.
Juan Soto, one of the best hitters in baseball, was acquired at the trade deadline by San Diego Padres.
G Fiume/Getty Images
Live TV streaming service vs. MLB.TV
There are two major ways to stream MLB games day in, day out without a cable or satellite TV subscription:
Depending on where you live, one of the major live TV streaming services could carry the channel that has your favorite team. Those channels, called regional sports networks, deliver almost all of the regular-season games live. Most such services, however, carry only a handful of the 30 RSNs that show MLB games — and they’re typically the most expensive.
DirecTV Stream carries the most RSNs, but you’ll need to spring for its £90-a-month plan; its basic £70-a-month plan doesn’t include RSNs. Sling TV, a service that costs £35 a month, doesn’t have any RSNs for baseball. If you’re a baseball fan who needs your team’s RSN, a cable subscription might actually be cheaper than streaming.
The other option is MLB.TV, a separate service that carries every game played by every team live. It’s great for hard-core fans in general. MLB.TV costs £25 a month.
The big catch with MLB.TV is the local blackout restriction: You can’t watch your local team’s games live. Instead, they become available about 90 minutes after the game ends. If you’re a Yankees fan in the New York area, for example, you can’t start to watch the Yankees game until an hour and a half after the final out.
Other teams’ games aren’t blacked out live, which makes MLB.TV ideal for fans who want to follow one or more of the 28 or 29 teams based in other cities, aka out-of-market teams.
DirecTV Stream: Best for fans of the home team
Due to MLB.TV’s blackout restriction, a live TV streaming service is the best bet for following your local team. Many services carry the RSN that has exclusive rights to every regular season game, but availability varies by location and service. In addition to the RSNs listed below, live TV services carry most if not all of the major national networks — ESPN, Fox, FS1, MLB Network and TBS — that regularly televise matchups from different teams around the league.
Details are at the top of this article. Here’s how the RSNs stack up on each service.
RSN availability by team and streaming service
| Bally Sports Arizona | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Bally Sports South | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| MASN | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| NESN | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Marquee Sports Network | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| NBC Sports Chicago | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Bally Sports Ohio | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Bally Sports Great Lakes | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Bally Sports Detroit | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| AT&T SportsNet Southwest and Bally Sports Southwest | Yes | Yes (AT&T SportsNet Southwest) | No | No | No |
| Bally Sports Kansas City | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Bally Sports West | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Spectrum SportsNet LA | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Bally Sports Florida | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Bally Sports Wisconsin | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Bally Sports North | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| SportsNet NY | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| YES | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| NBC Sports California | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| NBC Sports Philadelphia | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| AT&T SportsNet Pittsburgh | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Bally Sports San Diego | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| NBC Sports Bay Area | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Root Sports Northwest | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Bally Sports Midwest | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Bally Sports Sun | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Bally Sports Southwest | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| SportsNet | No | No | No | No | No |
| MASN | Yes | No | No | No | No |
Some key takeaways:
- The RSNs above are typically only available to local subscribers.
Refer to the individual service’s details below to find out if you live in a place where you can receive a particular RSN.
- None of the (US-based) services carry the RSN for the Toronto Blue Jays.
- DirecTV Stream’s £90-a-month Choice package includes 28 of the 30 RSNs for baseball — all but the Phillies and Blue Jays.
- It’s slim pickings for the other four services. FuboTV offers 10 RSNs for baseball, while Hulu Plus Live TV and YouTube TV offer only five. Sling TV doesn’t offer a single RSN.
- YouTube TV is the only service that carries MLB Network in its base package.
The others either charge more or don’t carry it at all.
One other note: Fox Sports RSNs have been rebranded as Bally Sports, because the channels are no longer owned by Fox but Sinclair, which has since partnered with casino group Bally’s to rename them. So, what was once Fox Sports Ohio is now Bally Sports Ohio and so on. If you’re looking to watch your local team night in and night out, DirecTV Stream is your best bet.
It offers by far the most RSNs of the live TV streaming services. Philadelphia and Toronto are the only MLB cities whose RSN is not offered on DirecTV Stream. FuboTV is second with 10 RSNs, giving you only a one-in-three chance of getting your local RSN to watch baseball.
DirecTV Stream is the priciest of the five major live TV streaming services, but it’s also the one with the most RSNs. Its cheapest, £70-a-month Entertainment package includes ESPN, Fox, FS1 and TBS. You’ll need to move up to the £90-a-month Choice plan to get MLB Network and any available RSN.
You can use its channel lookup tool to see which local channels and RSNs are available in your area.
MLB.TV subscription: Best for out-of-market games
Major League Baseball’s official streaming service is great for following your favorite team if you live outside its TV market. Because of the 90-minute blackout described above, however, it’s much less useful for following your local home team. MLB.TV subscribers also miss games that are broadcast nationally on ESPN, Fox, FS1, MLB Network and TBS.
Those games are blacked out on MLB.TV, which can be particularly irksome for fans of the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers and other big-market teams that are frequently selected for national broadcasts.
