Over the past few months, I finished a project for school (the last project before I graduated!) on something of my choosing. I chose, as the title of this post suggests, to look at whether “East Coast Bias” existed in the selection of who was playing on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball, and, if so, why.
I’m not going to bore you with the whole thing (although perhaps I’ll put it up as a download later), but I do want to summarize my findings.
In essence, it is true that teams on the East Coast (or at least the East divisions) do appear most often on Sunday Night Baseball. Here are the top ten teams in appearances from 2007 to 2011 on Sunday Night Baseball*.
1. Yankees (25 appearances)
2. Red Sox (24)
3(T). Cubs and Cardinals (23)
5. Mets (22)
6. Phillies (20)
7. Dodgers (18)
8. Braves (17)
9. Angels (12)
10. Tigers (11)
There really aren’t many surprises here. If you asked an average baseball fan to list the ten teams they think are on ESPN the most, they’d probably give you roughly this same list. However, you will note that half of these teams are in either the AL East or NL East, including three of the top five.
So, yeah, the East is dominant in Sunday Night Baseball appearances. But that only tells half the story. Stay tuned in the next few days when I cover why (hint: it’s a mixture of good teams and big markets- surprise, surprise), as well as what teams might have the biggest beef.
*By the way, note that, with the exception of times where Opening Night has been a Sunday, every team is allowed a maximum of five appearances per year on SNB. Just a few days ago, in fact, ESPN’s Buster Olney mentioned this after somebody accused ESPN of ignoring the Bay Area. (For the curious, the Giants were tied for 12th in most appearances).
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