Watching live baseball on TV without cable

April 27, 2021 3:50 PM

What are my options these days for watching live baseball on TV without cable (which I recently got rid of)? Thank you!
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (13 answers total)

Response by poster: And to add: I specifically want to watch my home team (the Mets) from my home in NYC, so blackouts are an issue.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 3:51 PM on April 27, 2021

MLB.TV is about the only legitimate way to watch major league baseball in the USA. Unfortunately, they only show out-of-market games for your local teams. I suspect, but could not prove, that a VPN would change your "location" and enable all games.
posted by blob at 4:24 PM on April 27, 2021 [2 favorites]

This is highly dependent on team, what networks they have a deal with, location, etc. Super annoying in general. For Mets:

Mets on streaming
Looks like YouTube TV should carry Mets in market, and maybe also fuboTV.

In general YouTube TV and MLB have a bunch of deals, but again for in-market stuff it depends on the deals between the local station and YTTV, so it's far from guaranteed.

I think both fuboTV and YTTV offer trials, so if either of those look like they work you can test.

I don't think there is any way to get _just_ local MLB games (legally anyway), which does suck [since you basically have to get "cable but over streaming", by which I mean you can't just get MLB a la carte]
posted by thefoxgod at 4:37 PM on April 27, 2021 [1 favorite]

I came here to recommend r/MLBStreams, but it appears they’ve moved their operations to SportSurge.net. I haven’t tried that myself but if it runs as well as the former subreddit, then that could be a viable option.
posted by Fuego at 5:31 PM on April 27, 2021 [1 favorite]

Can confirm what blob said, mlb.tv plus a VPN works to avoid blackouts. Specifically, I use Windscribe on an Amazon Fire 4K Stick to watch on TV, but it also works in desktop browsers with their app or extension and occasionally on the MLB Android app (sometimes it gives an error along the lines of "cannot determine location").
posted by hankscorpio83 at 5:52 PM on April 27, 2021

Find a friend who has cable and borrow their login.
posted by sandmanwv at 6:21 PM on April 27, 2021 [2 favorites]

WPIX—Channel 11–will simulcast 28 games with SNY this year. Any antenna (I used to use one I bought for $12) will plug into the coax input on your TV, though getting your tv to detect all the local channels in one pass can be challenging.

There are higher-end antennas that might work better, if you’re willing to spend a bit more money on a one-time purchase.
posted by thecaddy at 7:03 PM on April 27, 2021 [1 favorite]

For game on WPIX 11 use locast.org. For games only on SNY, YouTube TV and I think Sling TV carries SNY.

You can get MLB Tv. but to watch a local market game, you need to wait until 2 hours after the game ends.

Yankee fan here. Mets are easier bc SNY is carried on more streaming platforms. YES is not carried anywhere.
posted by AugustWest at 7:18 PM on April 27, 2021

My son who lives about 1,000 miles from here watches the Yankees game on a stream. He is pretty sure it is not sanctioned, but will send me his link when he gets home.

I am sure if you know how to search for unsanctioned streams you can find it. I do not know how.
posted by AugustWest at 9:20 PM on April 27, 2021

Response by poster: Find a friend who has cable and borrow their login.

This method is also subject to geographic blackouts.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 10:14 AM on April 28, 2021

I subscribe to MLB.tv and when my favorite team is in my local market, I use the Tor browser to spoof my VPN so that I can watch those games on my laptop (otherwise I have no interest in my local market team).

I gave my brother (who lives in the favorite team market) my login and he got a free trial for NordVPN, which he said is about $50 a year, and is able to stream locally blacked out games using that on his laptop and then plugs the laptop into his TV with an HDMI cable.
posted by jabes at 1:00 PM on April 28, 2021

I am uncertain of the legality, but this has every game, home and away broadcast.
MLB Streams
posted by Carlo at 7:18 AM on April 29, 2021

I use Express VPN (with their router setup) to watch in-network games. You can also try to set up a VPN on an individual device but it will not work on any device that has GPS location ability (ie tablet, phone) as MLB forces you to enable location services.
posted by danapiper at 11:42 AM on April 29, 2021