Neil Freiman
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Catchers were the best with a 56% overturn rate.
Batters came in second place with 50%.
And pitchers were in third place with 41%.
So maybe if I'm a manager, I'm saying I'm not letting a pitcher make this challenge because I didn't mention you only have two challenges over the course of the entire game.
If you get it right, you got to keep it, but you could lose them.
So you don't want necessarily a pitcher who's just pissed off making a challenge, tapping their head right away because then you end up losing the challenge.
Maybe the baseball umps are looking at what happened with tennis and have a little trepidation because, yes, there was an era in tennis where there was the challenge system.
But now they a lot of the majors have gotten rid of human refs completely.
And so there will be a question moving forward if this is successful about what the future of human umps will actually be.
But there's no question that all of the changes that Rob Manfred has made in baseball are paying dividends.
Attendance was up for the third straight season.
The first time there's been three straight seasons of growing attendance since 2005 to 2007.
And viewership is absolutely just crushing the NBA when it matters in the playoff moments.
2025 World Series Game 7.
drew 26 million viewers.
2025 MLB Finals Game 7 drew 16 million viewers.
That's the fourth time out of the last six years that the World Series has beat the NBA Finals in viewership.
So if you're looking at the MLB and the NBA, those two leagues are going in opposite directions.
Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines.
Mark Zuckerberg's about to write a big check, even for him.