MLB Postseason 2024: ESPN Begins Wild Card Sprint Early With Monday’s Mets-Braves Doubleheader in Atlanta

Hurricane Helene adds two games to stretch of 12 potential broadcasts in four days

The Major League Baseball Wild Card seems to become crazier every season, but this year’s edition is definitely the most chaotic. ESPN will produce a guaranteed total of eight games in two days, and that could stretch to 12 in three days if all four series go to a winner-take-all Game 3. And, as if those responsibilities weren’t enough, there was a playoff-impacting doubleheader on Monday between the New York Mets and Atlanta Braves, thanks to last week’s postponements due to Hurricane Helene.

“There were many scenarios that we considered,” says Paul Horrell, operations manager, remote production, ESPN, “but, by Friday night at around 6 p.m. ET, the two games on Monday materialized. When we pulled the trigger [on this plan], we put an ops team together, secured a mobile unit that arrived on Sunday, and got everything set up on Monday morning before the two games.”

Punched Tickets: Last-Minute Doubleheader Relies on Dome Spring, Atlanta-Based Crew

When the MLB season begins, many people see the day following the conclusion of the regular season as a time to get ready for the excitement of the playoffs. Mother nature — plus a three-way tie between the Braves, Mets, and Arizona Diamondbacks — spurred other plans in 2024.

Unforeseen circumstances forced a doubleheader with multiple possible outcomes. The winner of Game 1 would automatically earn a postseason berth, and the loser would need to win Game 2 to snag the final Wild Card spot. To sneak into the dance, the idle DBacks needed the Game 1 winner to sweep both games. In one of the best games of the 2024 campaign, the Metropolitans won a back-and-forth contest in Game 1 to clinch the No. 6 seed and face the No. 3 Milwaukee Brewers in Wisconsin. The Braves won their matchup to clinch the No. 5 seed and square off against the No. 4 San Diego Padres in California, denying the defending National League Champions a playoff appearance.

NEP ND6 traveled from Notre Dame Stadium to Oriole Park at Camden Yards for the Kansas City Royals-Baltimore Orioles series.

Before a pitch was thrown, the most complex aspect of this show-and-go production was ESPN’s getting everything in order operationally. This included finding a separate crew, with a majority coming from Atlanta since most regular MLB on ESPN staffers were preparing for Tuesday’s start to the Wild Card round. To execute the production, the network opted for a REMI (remote-integration) model that leveraged the enhanced–world-feed model deployed during the COVID-19–impacted season in 2020.

“We took the clean feed and a handful of isos from Bally Sports South’s home mobile unit, which was Mobile TV Group’s 35HDX,” Horrell explains. “We also added three of our hard cameras, including high first, high third, and centerfield.”

One control room in Bristol, CT, was used for this one-off regular-season finale, and Dome Productions Spring mobile unit onsite sent the video feeds to the offsite crew. The truck was available after producing ESPN’s college-football coverage between Florida State vs. SMU in Dallas on Saturday afternoon and making the nearly 12-hour drive to the capital of Georgia. Also onsite was the Sunday Night Baseball booth, housing Karl Ravech, Eduardo Perez, and David Cone. After the doubleheader, the on-air crew followed the Braves to San Diego to meet their colleagues.

Clearer Picture: Confirmed Sites Allow Crew To Create Tech, Production Roadmap

With all eight seeds locked up and the regular season in the rearview mirror, attention shifts to the Wild Card. Luckily, unlike in previous years, the four stadiums — Houston’s Minute Maid Park, Baltimore’s Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Milwaukee’s American Family Field, and San Diego’s Petco Park — hosting a maximum three games each were determined before the season’s final weekend. This not only gave the team more time to focus on the workflows and production elements to implement in the Wild Card effort but also made Monday’s doubleheader less stressful to handle.

“We were trying to strategically come up with a plan throughout the week,” notes Horrell. “When the host sites were unknown, we considered placing a truck halfway between two cities and take a crew. MLB’s new playoff format is a bit more broadcast-friendly, but it was nice having one of the leagues locked up before we headed into last weekend.”

The most difficult task for Horrell and his operations team is coordinating the sites’ specific mobile units. Two mobile units coming from NEP Group’s Field Shop in Pittsburgh — Alpha and NCP11 — are ready to go in Houston and Milwaukee, respectively. NCP11, used throughout the SNB season, was also in Milwaukee for last year’s Wild Card featuring the Brewers and Diamondbacks. The other two trucks are coming off productions from last weekend: NEP ND6 headed to Baltimore from Saturday’s college-football matchup between No. 22 Louisville and No. 14 Notre Dame in South Bend, IN, and NEP EN3 stayed on the West Coast to assist the series in San Diego.

The audio section of the ND6 mobile unit

On the broadcast-technology side, ESPN will augment broadcasts with various specialty cameras. A MindFly AI BodyCam, which debuted at the 2024 NCAA Men’s College World Series, will be deployed in Houston. UmpCam will make its return in Milwaukee, Baltimore, and San Diego. And DEFY WireCam — a workflow used during the regular season at numerous MLB venues — will be tapped in Baltimore, Houston, and San Diego.

On the talent side, the network is deploying specific commentary teams for each Wild Card game. The broadcasting assignments comprise Michael Kay, Todd Frazier, Tim Kurkjian, and Alden González for Detroit Tigers vs. Houston Astros; Sean McDonough, Jessica Mendoza, Ben McDonald, and Jeff Passan for Kansas City Royals vs. Baltimore Orioles; and Jon Sciambi, Doug Glanville, and Jesse Rogers for Mets vs. Brewers.

REMI to the Rescue: Multiple Control Rooms in Bristol Handle Four-Game Slate

Because of the immense workload on the crew, all Wild Card games will be remotely produced from Bristol. For example, the games in Milwaukee will lean into the standard SNB model, a 42-path mixed environment of REMI and REMCO (remote-controlled) workflows. For other games, 26 transmission paths will be headed to Connecticut.

With the last pitch of one game coinciding with the first pitch of the next, more than one control room will be in use each day. This will accommodate the replay operators, technical directors, and others in action this week.

“It’s a heavy lift,” says Horrell. “Thankfully, our remote-management team figures out the scheduling and bandwidth to pull all this off.”

March Madness–Style: Back-to-Back Games on Consecutive Days Test Internal Comms

Let’s not mince words: producing this many games in a short time presents a large margin for error. Teams of crew members in Bristol will be tasked with producing live games from midafternoon to the late hours of the night, and onsite staffers will face the intense pressure of playoff baseball. With headquarters at the center of the efforts, the four sites will be linked by production and operations departments familiar with each other.

“We’ve pretty much had the same ops producers and coordinators for the last 10 years,” says Horrell. “A lot of people are involved, but we all know our jobs really well.”

Tuesday’s schedule of Game 1s comprises Tigers-Astros at 2:32 p.m. ET on ABC, Royals-Orioles at 4:08 p.m. on ESPN2, Mets-Brewers at 5:32 p.m. on ESPN, and Braves-Padres at 8:38 p.m. on ESPN. On Wednesday, Oct. 2, Game 2s will be Tigers-Astros at 2:32 p.m. on ABC, Royals-Orioles at 4:38 p.m. on ESPN, Mets-Brewers at 7:38 p.m. on ESPN, and Braves-Padres at 8:38 p.m. ET on ESPN2. If necessary, the four Game 3s on Thursday, Oct. 3 will be Tigers-Astros at 2:32 p.m. on ABC, Royals-Orioles at 4:08 p.m. on ESPN, Braves-Padres at 7:08 p.m. on ESPN, and Mets-Brewers at 8:38 p.m. on ESPN2.