{"id":2140,"date":"2026-01-22T17:54:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T17:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/?p=2140"},"modified":"2026-01-22T17:54:46","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T17:54:46","slug":"espn-moves-three-weekend-mlb-games-to-abc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/sports-media\/espn-moves-three-weekend-mlb-games-to-abc\/","title":{"rendered":"ESPN Moves Three Weekend MLB Games To ABC"},"content":{"rendered":"

A third of the four over-the-air broadcast television networks will be airing Major League Baseball in 2026, as ESPN announced Wednesday that ABC will carry three weekend regular season games<\/a> this upcoming season.\u00a0 The games between the Chicago Cubs and San Francisco Giants on Sunday, June 14, the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox on Saturday, June 27, and the St. Louis Cardinals and Cubs on Sunday, August 16 will all be carried by ABC.\u00a0 Those three games were all originally part of ESPN’s agreement with MLB on a 30-game deal for the next three seasons.<\/p>\n

ABC’s broadcasting of Major League Baseball, which was once very regular, has been sparse over the last 30 years.\u00a0 The network used to carry a national broadcast of Monday Night Baseball, similar to their legendary Monday Night Football broadcasts, from 1976 through 1988.\u00a0 But apart from coverage of the Wild Card round of the playoffs when it expanded to a best-of-three format, ABC has carried just one regular season MLB game since 1995: a White Sox-Cubs matchup in August of 2021 which went up against NBC’s coverage of the Summer Olympic Games from Tokyo.\u00a0 ESPN then took over the Monday night broadcast of baseball in 1992 until 2021.<\/p>\n

With the addition of ABC, now three broadcast networks are slated to carry Major League Baseball regular season in 2026.\u00a0 NBC will have the slate of Sunday Night Baseball<\/a> that was relinquished by ESPN, and FOX is expected to continue to carry 26 games as part of their national broadcast coverage.<\/p>\n

There also has still not been an announcement as to who will be calling play-by-play or color for ESPN in their new package.\u00a0 David Cone, who was a part of the network’s Sunday Night Baseball broadcasts, did not have his contract renewed, and is returning to call Yankees games on the YES Network.\u00a0 Cubs television broadcaster John Sciambi, and former Mariners, Rangers, and Yankees infielder Alex Rodriguez, who works for Fox as a studio analyst, were also a part of those broadcasts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A third of the four over-the-air broadcast television networks will be airing Major League Baseball in 2026, as ESPN announced Wednesday that ABC will carry three weekend regular season games this upcoming season.\u00a0 The games between the Chicago Cubs and San Francisco Giants on Sunday, June 14, the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5660,"featured_media":2148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[267,238,266],"tags":[75],"class_list":["post-2140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-espn","category-sports-media","category-networks","tag-featured"],"modified_by":"Steve Carney","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5660"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2140"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2150,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2140\/revisions\/2150"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}