Editor's note: Tonight's Blue Jays game has been rained out. The game will be made up as a doubleheader on Saturday with the second game following the 1 pm game. MLB Network will carry the second game in the United States.
Finding Toronto Blue Jays games on U.S. TV is much more miss than hit over recent years. True, the Blue Jays are playing the New York Yankees this weekend, but there is a lot of interest in this weekend's matchups.
MLB Network will air the first 2 games of the series tonight and Friday night. The channel will take a local feed (99.999999999% chance that will be the YES Yankees feed) on Thursday but produce the Friday night game with Matt Vasgersian and John Smoltz.
Vasgersian and Smoltz will broadcast Saturday's game on Fox. The game will be offered regionally though the majority of the country will get the Blue Jays and Yankees. The other games on Saturday afternoon will be St. Louis at Cincinnati/Kansas City at Baltimore. Your humble narrator is stuck with the Cardinals and Reds.
Ernie Johnson and Ron Darling will call the Sunday afternoon game on TBS.
The evening contests start at 7 pm and the afternoon games run at 1 pm, though the Fox pregame starts at 12:30 pm.
All of the games air in Canada on Rogers Sportsnet. The U.S. moves mean U.S. viewers won't be able to get the Jays feed for the Friday-Sunday games.
The Toronto Blue Jays are 79-60 with a 1½ game lead over the New York Yankees at 77-61. The Jays are 3 games under on the road at 32-35, though 5-1 at Yankee Stadium this season. Each team has gone 6-4 in their last 10 games.
The Fox telecast would be even more impressive if it were in Toronto AND not against the Yankees. We anticipate the bias will definitely be toward the Yankees, but hopefully the national crews will learn more about the Blue Jays, possibly in time for the playoffs. Still, U.S. viewers won't have to struggle to see the Toronto Blue Jays this weekend.
logo credit: Toronto Blue Jays/MLB
With Fox having the AL playoffs this year, Saturday is an excellent opportunity to give the Jays some exposure ahead of time.
Posted by: Tyler | September 11, 2015 at 12:20 PM
Agreed. Almost 70% of the country will get access to the game. The lure of the Yankees doesn't hurt. Plus the MLB Network will pick up that second game.
Posted by: Chad | September 11, 2015 at 10:03 PM
I caught some highlights of Game 1 on Saturday from the Fox telecast. Matt Vasgersian was pretty excited sounding on a couple of the Jays homers. Didn't seem like any obvious pro-Yankees bias.
Posted by: Tyler | September 14, 2015 at 04:30 PM
I thought the announcers and telecast were reasonably balanced. Vasgersian and Smoltz called Friday night's game on MLB Network so they were more familiar with the Jays on Day 2 for them. A bit surprised that Canadians could choose between the local feed (Sportsnet) and the U.S. national feed (Fox). Nice to have choices.
Posted by: Chad | September 15, 2015 at 10:09 PM
Fox is an over-the-air station available widely across Canada and Sportsnet is on cable/satellite and would have done its own production anyway. Rare opportunity to get choice.
Posted by: Tyler | September 16, 2015 at 12:03 AM