ESPN has announced their first 16 Sunday Night Baseball Games for the 2020 season, and the Mets are featured fairly prominently with the team appearing three times. That includes them appearing in back-to-back weeks in April. The Mets appearances are scheduled as follows:
April 19 Milwaukee Brewers at New York Mets
April 26 New York Mets at Atlanta Braves
May 31 Los Angeles Dodgers at New York Mets
Looking at the schedule, which is set thorough August 23, the Mets are the only National League East team to have multiple games scheduled on Sunday Night Baseball. In fact, aside from the Mets, the Braves are the only other team in the division with at least one game. That is despite the Washington Nationals being defending World Series Champions, the Atlanta Braves arguably being the most active team this offseason, and the Philadelphia Phillies having one of baseball’s more marketable stars in Bryce Harper.
This does speak to how popular and marketable some of the Mets players are. The team has the reigning Rookie of the Year and Home Run Derby champion in Pete Alonso, and Jacob deGrom has consecutive Cy Young Awards. Additionally, the team has very popular players like Marcus Stroman and Noah Syndergaard, both of whom have fairly active social media accounts. The return of Carlos Beltran to the Mets as their manager makes them an all the more intriguing team.
Looking forward to the schedule, the Mets April 19 game is part of a 10-game homestand, and the team has an off-day after the Sunday Night game. The following week, the Mets have an off-day before traveling to Puerto Rico to take on the Miami Marlins. Again, after the May 31 game against the Dodgers, the Mets will have an off-day before resuming their five game homestand.
In terms of scheduling, it does not appear as if the Sunday Night Baseball games will have a negative impact upon the Mets as the team was already slated to have an off-day. The only real issue for for fans who have already purchased tickets for those games and now have to deal with a night game when they believed there was going to be a day game. On that note, the Mets do not have Mr. Met Dashes after Sunday Night Baseball games costing young fans an opportunity to run the bases after those games.
