The most under-rated and overlooked piece of baseball television is the MLB Strike Zone channel.

You probably have no idea what I am talking about. That proves the above point about it being the most overlooked piece of baseball television.

Put simply, MLB Strike Zone is a twice-weekly (usually Tuesdays and Fridays, but occasionally Wednesday as well) injection of nonstop baseball. Available on it’s own channel on most cable and satellite systems that have a sports package, Strike Zone is similar to MLB Tonight, only with little-to-none of the talking heads and with zero commercials. It is, in many ways, similar to the NFL RedZone channel: minimal interruption, maximum game action.

Watching yesterday, for example, I was able to see, amongst many other things: the David Phelps‘ meltdown against the Mets, Ryan Zimmerman‘s first and second home runs (I only missed the last one because I did some channel surfing), several good defensive plays, the Orioles’ comeback and the start of the late games. I would have, had I just chosen one or two games and switched between them, missed a lot. But with Strike Zone, I saw more-or-less everything of note that happened in baseball last night, live or with only a short delay.

And yet, nobody seems to talk about Strike Zone all that much. Perhaps because it is relatively new- it just started last year, after all. Or maybe it is because it doesn’t seem to receive much publicity: I’ve only seen maybe one or two commercials for it, and it seems like MLB Network itself is more focused on getting eyes on the games they are showing on the network on the nights that Strike Zone is on.

With luck, more will start paying attention to Strike Zone, and, with luck, it could even be expanded to more days of the week. So if you haven’t already, check it out.