For the first time in nearly a decade, the Detroit Tigers made an appearance on ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball. Predictably, the game turned out to be electric, with Tigers ace Tarik Skubal stealing the show. The game wound up doing extremely well in terms of ratings, peaking at 2.3 million viewers.
ESPN’s most-watched #SundayNightBaseball season in 8 years continues👏
— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) July 1, 2025
⚾️#RepDetroit's victory over #MNTwins averaged 2M viewers (2.3M peak)
⚾️SNB up 11% from '24 season
More: https://t.co/8hJGl3mJOC pic.twitter.com/xRNFDEGqjs
Any regular season game getting ratings that good is impressive, but knowing that the Tigers and Minnesota Twins, two small-to-mid-market teams, were able to drive ratings like these proves that ESPN and MLB has completely lost the plot.
Love, love, love that this game had as many people watching as it did. A national audience for the greatness that is Tarik Skubal, the ascendant Tigers (who have so much more coming in their system) and the game whose small and mid markets deserve as much love as the big ones. https://t.co/sxpNqSVMW2
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) July 1, 2025
ESPN and MLB should be aiming to platform star players and good teams on national broadcasts far more than they do. This is a prime example of that.
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Tarik Skubal proves ESPN needs a strategy change
What makes Sunday Night Baseball so special is that only one game is played at night. 14 of the 15 games played on Sundays are played in the afternoon, making one standalone game on the schedule every Sunday.
What feels like 99.9 percent of the time, those games feature big-market teams like the New York Yankees, New York Mets, Boston Red Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Chicago Cubs, to name a few. While it obviously makes sense to have the most popular teams in the sport on National TV, those games shouldn't only include that small group of teams. At a certain point, fans get tired of seeing the Yankees play the Red Sox every other Sunday.
I get that the Tigers haven't been great for most of the past decade, but they were a playoff team last season. Why weren't they on Sunday Night Baseball a single time in 2024? Now, the Tigers are arguably the best team in the sport. They need to be treated like it by being given more time on National TV.
MLB must prioritize highlighting good teams and star players
How ESPN can maximize viewership is quite simple - they must prioritize good teams and great players. Having an ace like Skubal scheduled to start isn't something they can plan far in advance, but even in games Skubal doesn't start, the Tigers are a pleasure to watch.
This game really had it all. It had star power - from Skubal, to Byron Buxton, to Riley Greene, to Carlos Correa. It also had two teams in the playoff race, and it had a pair of division rivals going head-to-head.
A team like the Toronto Blue Jays is never on ESPN and has a bonafide superstar in Vladimir Guerrero Jr. - shouldn't they be featured on Sunday Night Baseball once? Even a team like the Los Angeles Angels might not be as popular, but they're hovering around .500 and have Mike Trout.
Variety will keep fans engaged. Instead of forcing the big market teams on prime time, MLB must find a way to platform other smaller market teams deserving of being broadcast nationally. Hopefully, the Tigers-Twins game having as much success as it did will start a new and exciting trend.