Cardinals' strong start makes them harder to find in big weekend series

The St. Louis Cardinals are no longer sneaking up on teams during what was supposed to be the beginning of a rebuild. With expectations around the team being cellar dwellers, attendance and national audience interest was anticipated to keep dropping off as dark times came to St. Louis. However, a week into May, the Cardinals are firmly in a Wild Card spot and are showing that they may be for real. With this energetic and fun playing style, the national television outlets are taking notice.

After going through plenty of television uncertainty for the past few seasons, bouncing between Bally Sports, Fox Sports, FanDuel, Diamond Sports, and now MLB-owned Cardinals TV, fans were finally happy to have something consistent with the year-long subscription for our favorite team. Now, the strong performance over the first quarter of the season has fans flipping through apps and channels trying to find the game while also navigating the West Coast start times. With a four-game series against the playoff-contending Padres, MLB is taking this weekend as an opportunity to showcase both talented teams to the national audience, raising excitement around the Cardinals but frustration for Cardinal Nation.

The Cardinals-Padres series will be featured on four different platforms this weekend

Without trying to be too upset, the weekend was already a bit of a bummer with two games already being played past my bedtime, but the upstart Cardinals have caused MLB to take notice and want to showcase the youngest lineup in baseball. Beyond the late start in two of the games, three of the contests will be taken by the national media, while Sunday's game will be back on our familiar Cardinals.TV platform with Chip and Brad on the call. The rest of the games, though, will be handled by national broadcasters, with a little local flavor mixed in on the call, but it leaves us visual fans longing for the return to television normalcy. After winning the series opener on ESPN on Thursday, the Cardinals will be featured on Apple TV for an 8:45pm central time start. The Apple broadcasts have been a pleasant surprise in my opinion, but that does not take away the hassle of flipping through multiple channels and apps to try to find out where the game is. The added subscription is a bummer as well, but Apple does tend to offer subscription deals to entice baseball fans to sign up.

After the Apple broadcast on Friday night, the Cardinals will have a more familiar national home, playing the featured Fox game of the week on Saturday at 6pm. While this is usually aired on basic cable, many fans have cut the cord in hopes that streaming will be cheaper and easier, but Fox may not be included in those basic packages. In a period of rising costs all around the country, needing multiple subscription services, beyond the $100 yearly subscription for Cardinals TV, is a frustrating reality of the media landscape that is constantly in flux.

Luckily, we can all open our MLB app on Sunday at 3pm and hear the familiar, soothing voices of Chip Caray and Brad Thompson for the series finale. The success has been fun, but that is going to come with more of these national outlets picking up the games. An unfortunate price to pay for a successful season in St. Louis.

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