The Pittsburgh Pirates have announced a few schedule changes for the upcoming season, due to a few games being moved to national TV. The affected games are as follows.
**Saturday, July 11 vs. the St. Louis Cardinals has been changed from 4:05 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. and will be an exclusive FOX national telecast.
**Sunday, July 12 game vs. the St. Louis Cardinals has been selected by ESPN for its exclusive National Sunday Night Baseball telecast. As a result, the first pitch will move from 1:35 p.m. to 8:05 p.m. The Pirates played the Cardinals last year on Sunday Night Baseball on May 11th.
**Saturday, August 8 vs. the Los Angeles Dodgers has been moved from the originally-scheduled time of 7:05 p.m. to 4:05 p.m. to accommodate the national telecast on FoxSports1.
**Saturday, August 22 vs. the San Francisco Giants has also been moved from the originally-scheduled time of 7:05 p.m. to 4:05 p.m. to accommodate the national telecast on FoxSports1.
The big thing here is the Sunday Night Baseball game on ESPN. The timing of the game will be right around the time of the year where playoff races start to get serious, and should hopefully feature the Pirates and Cardinals battling it out at the top of the NL Central.
Tim started Pirates Prospects in 2009 from his home in Virginia, which was 40 minutes from where Pedro Alvarez made his pro debut in Lynchburg. That year, the Lynchburg Hillcats won the Carolina League championship, and Pirates Prospects was born from Tim's reporting along the way. The site has grown over the years to include many more writers, and Tim has gone on to become a credentialed MLB reporter, producing Pirates Prospects each year, and will publish his 11th Prospect Guide this offseason. He has also served as the Pittsburgh Pirates correspondent for Baseball America since 2019. Behind the scenes, Tim is an avid music lover, and most of the money he gets paid to run this site goes to vinyl records.
Only negative is that it is the latest game of a four game set against the Cardinals (though it is in Pittsburgh). Meaning, chances are that neither Cole nor Wainright will not be pitching in the matchup.
After playing on ESPN they will have to send out the uni’s to be de-loused.
I do not like the 4:00 game times, wish they played all games at 1:00 with an occasional night game sprinkled in, not going to happen, I know. Don’t want any love for ESPN or any other large outlet, ROOT is good enough for me, the only thing I don’t like about ROOT is the announcers get too carried away about other teams star players, I don’t like them and I don’t want to look at them laughing in the dugouts after they do something bad to the Pirates. Oh my, doesn’t sound like I like anything!
Lets hope it goes better than last year’s Sunday night vs STL. That loss was agonizing, bases loaded nobody out down 1 in the 9th, pop up, double play game over. It was incredibly deflating after they came back to get it to 1 run down. It probably wasnt as emotional if you weren’t there, but from my seats, man that was memorable.
Whaat ? Are you kidding me ? Sunday night games without the Red Sox and/or Yankees ?
Both clubs are criminally under-exposed.
Heh heh, there are going to be ” fans ” who tune in and will complain that neither team is on. Be prepared though. By 2016 you are going to have the Cubs coming out of your ……ears.
Nationally televised games, playoffs two years in a row, league mvp in 2013 and the baseball shows still spend more time talking about the cubs,brewers,astros ect..ect.. than they do the pirates. Where is the love ? I’ll be waiting, I just won’t hold my breath as I might die.
Nice to see them get a little love from ESPN.