The 2021 MLB.TV Watchability Rankings
Every year, I rank the MLB teams by MLB.tv watchability. It’s not a ranking of the best teams, it’s a ranking of the most interesting ones: some great teams are boring and some terrible teams are train wrecks you can’t take your eyes off of.
Typically, I do this exercise in March before the season starts. It’s intended as a guide of sorts as we try to figure out how to manage our time over the course of something like 2400 MLB games per year. This year, we’re doing things right around Opening Day so you should be all set for a long summer of masked fans, foul balls bouncing through nearly empty sections, stupid Rob Manfred-mandated rules, and baseball! Below is Part 1.
Part 1 of last year’s rankings: the top 10 teams you should watch in the abbreviated 2020 season, is here. Parts 2 and 3 are here and here You can check out the 2015 MLB.TV rankings here, and part 1, and part 2 of the 2016 version here. The 2018 version is here, and 2019 is here. (Yes, there is no 2017.)
Without further ado, the 2021 MLB.TV Watchability Rankings!
1. San Diego Padres
The Padres head into 2020 as baseball’s most interesting and exciting team. In addition to their glorious brown uniforms, watching Padres games will give you a chance to see a left side of the infield worth more than half a billion dollars between flashy superstar Manny Machado and arguably baseball’s most exciting player Fernando Tatis Jr. Beyond those two, the Padres lineup is chock full of interesting and notable players, from former top prospect Jurickson Profar to would-be two way player Jake Cronenworth.
In addition, thanks to GM AJ Preller’s wheeling and dealing this winter, the already playoff-caliber Padres now have a juggernaut of a starting rotation featuring Yu Darvish, Blake Snell, Joe Musgrove, Dinelson Lamet, and Chris Paddack, giving you a 5 out of 5 chance to tuning in to an interesting starting pitcher.
What’s more, the Padres are almost certainly only the second best team in their division and will be dukeing things out with the Dodgers all summer. Stay up late. Watch Padres games.
2. Chicago White Sox
Readers of last year’s watchability rankings will know that I have a soft spot for the White Sox and, if anything, their absolutely baffling choice to hire an old and vaguely racist manager for their young and overwhelmingly Latin and Black team adds a whole new angle on watchability here.
Losing Eloy Jimenez for 6 months is a blow for both the White Sox chances and White Sox-watchers but thankfully Luis Robert is around to show us what he can do over the course of a full season. He’s joined by uber-exciting position players like Tim Anderson and reigning AL MVP Jose Abreu and pitchers like Lucas Giolito and closer Liam Hendricks.
Toss in that the AL Central is going to be extremely close and that depending on how things go under new/ old manager Tony La Russa, the White Sox could realistically finish anywhere from 1st to 4th in the division, and this will be must-watch TV- especially with baseball’s best current play-by-play announcer, Jason Benetti, calling games.
3. Los Angeles Angels
Two words: Shohei Ohtani.
Two more: Mike Trout
Ok, two more: Anthony Rendon. Oh, and Albert Pujols‘ quest for 700 home runs, Justin Upton‘s quest for being good again, Jo Adell‘s quest to stick in the major leagues, and the Angels’ quest to have even a respectable pitching staff and finally get Trout into the postseason. There’s a lot going on there.
The biggest thing that jumps out to me is baseball’s most interesting player, Ohtani, who hit like 500 homers this spring and touched the upper 90s with a wipeout splitter on the mound. Ohatani-san is giving the two way player thing another try this year and I couldn’t be rooting harder for the finally-healthy superstar to succeed. You must tune in for every Ohtani start and as many at bats as possible.
Oh yeah, and this team has the best player in the world and he’s liable to hit a tape measure missile or rob a home run or do something else silly whenever you’re watching.
4. Los Angeles Dodgers
The Dodgers aren’t just the defending World Series champs, they’re also the prohibitive favorite to repeat in 2021.
Baseball’s best team got much better this winter, adding free agent Trevor Bauer and returning David Price to a starting rotation that already includes Clayton Kershaw, Walker Buehler, Tony Gonsolin, Dustin May, and Julio Urias. That’s a 7 out of 5 chance you’ll see a great and interesting starting pitcher on the mound whenever you tune in. I love those odds.
On offense, the Dodgers return former MVPs Mookie Betts and Cody Bellinger, as well as Corey Seager, and any one of them would be totally unsurprising winning the MVP this year. They also have Justin Turner, AJ Pollock, and young catcher Will Smith. They are the deepest team in baseball and have the most top-end talent. It’s rare that we have a team this good that’s already proven they can keep it together.
Coupled with Padres, the Dodgers make the NL West both the most top-heavy division, and the one of the most fun.
5. New York Yankees
The Bronx Bombers are once again poised to homer their way to the top of the AL East. Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Gleyber Torres, Aaron Hicks, and Gary Sanchez all enter 2021 healthy and with something to prove. Only Luke Voit, last year’s abbreviated season home run champ, is missing to start the year.
On the mound, the Yankees have Gerrit Cole, the best pitcher in the world not named Jacob deGrom, and former Cy Young award winner Corey Kluber trying to resurrect his career.
The Yankees also play a lot of games against the Blue Jays, another top 10 team on this list, the Rays, the defending pennant winners, and the Red Sox. It’ll be fun to see if Aaron Boone‘s team can meet expectations and win the AL crown.
6. Toronto Blue Jays
The Blue Jays have one of the most exciting, fun, and young lineups in baseball- Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette, Cavan Biggio, Teoscar Hernandez, Lourdes Gurriel, Marcus Semien, and now George Springer give them one of the very deepest position player corps in all of baseball.
On the mound, it’s…. not so settled. Past Hyun-Jin Ryu, the Jays rotation is a collection of unproven rookies and guys you’d feel more comfortable with at the back end of a better rotation. Blue Jays games may feature a lot of runs this year.
7. Atlanta Braves
The Braves play in what seems poised to be baseball’s best division top to bottom and will be in an absolute slugfest with the Phillies, Mets, Nationals, and even Marlins all summer long.
Atlanta comes armed to the fight with some of the most watchable players in all of baseball, like 40-40 hopeful Ronald Acuna, reigning NL MVP Freddie Freeman, crazy yellow-sleeved slugger Marcel Ozuna, and Ozzie Albies, who has a really fun batting stance and is also really good.
On the mound, the Braves have Max Fried, one of baseball’s best young flamethrowers, perennial OTBB favorite Charlie Morton, potential stud Ian Anderson, and, until Mike Soroka comes back, a bunch of guys that Braves fans think are really good but definitely aren’t.
Perhaps most importantly, with grit, determination, and a whole lot of luck, we might find out this year if Huascar Ynoa is good or not.
8. New York Mets
Regardless of what happens (or happened by the time you read this?) with his contract situation, the Mets have Francisco Lindor in the same lineup as Pete Alonso, Michael Conforto, Brandon Nimmo and now Dominic Smith and James McCann. The Mets offense is going to be fun.
Perhaps the biggest draw, though, is the pitching- with Marcus Stroman, Taijuan Walker, and when they’re healthy Carlos Carrasco and Noah Syndergaard to go along with Jacob deGrom, Earth’s best pitcher. We are witnessing the prime of a likely Hall of Fame career and somehow deGrom keeps getting better. More than any other pitcher in baseball, each of his starts is must-watch.
9. Minnesota Twins
Did you know that the Twins got Andrelton Simmons? And that they still have much of the same core that homered the MLB into oblivion in 2019? And that this might finally be the year Byron Buxton puts everything together? And that Rocco Baldelli is a 2 time MLB Most Handsome Manager award winner?
With Kenta Maeda at the top of their rotation, too, the Twins are the odds on favorites to hold off the White Sox and others and win the AL Central, but it won’t be easy, and that’s fun.
10. Tampa Bay Rays
No, the Rays don’t have Blake Snell or Charlie Morton from last year’s pennant winning rotation, and they don’t really have the star power of any of the other top 10 teams, but they’re still really good and will win a lot of games. The fun with the Rays is that you never know who’s going to supply the big hit or get the big K.
Sometime this year Wander Franco, baseball’s number 1 prospect, will join the big club and when he does, he immediately becomes one of the most interesting players in the whole sport. Plus, we’ll find out if teammate Randy Arozarena really is as good as he was last October or if that was just on an epic, but isolated, hot streak.
11. Washington Nationals
I was listening to local DC sports radio about a month ago and the hosts were debating how high you could list Juan Soto on a list of the best players in baseball without someone thinking you were crazy. They settled on 1, which is wrong, but I texted a few more rational friends to get their read. Where did they settle? 2.
Is Soto the second best player in baseball? Probably not, but you could reasonably make a case for the 22 year old, and that’s pretty incredible.
Also, you have a 3 out of 5 chance of catching Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, or Patrick Corbin, so that’s pretty good.
12. Houston Astros
Do we think the 2020 under-performances of Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman, and Carlos Correa were just coincidence or was it due to a lack of trash can assistance?
Somewhere on the list of precious things the pandemic stole from us was the opportunity to boo the Trashstros while they were the ignominious center of the baseball universe. Now that fans are allowed back in stadiums, we have a lot of work to do, even if its just 5,000 of us.
13. Oakland A’s
The A’s green uniforms are up there with the Padres’ browns as some of the best looking liveries in the sport. If that’s not enough reason to tune in to the somehow-perennial contenders, there’s Frankie Montas, Jesus Luzardo, and AJ Puk on the mound and Matt Olson at first, Matt Chapman making unbelievable plays at third, and Ramon Laureano making silly throws from the outfield.
14. St. Louis Cardinals
The Cardinals lose some points for being the Cardinals and just sort of always being around. They lose some more for playing 19 games against the Pirates. But they gain points for the best logo in sports and adding Nolan Arenado to a team that already had Paul Goldschmidt and a lot of infielders that don’t wear batting gloves and all kind of look the same.
15. Cleveland Indians
Francico Lindor! Wait, no, they traded him. Carlos Corra….oops, traded him too. Corey Kluber at least! Oh, no he’s not there either. Brad Hand? Well, it’s the last season ever you’ll be able to watch the ‘Indians’ and even though a lot of the guys that made last season’s team so good are elsewhere for no good reason, the team still has Franmil Reyes, Jose Ramirez, and weirdo James Karinchak to watch.
The most interesting part of the team might actually be the starting rotation, with reigning AL Cy Young award winner Shane Bieber joined by a trio of exciting newcomers in Triston McKenzie, Cal Quantrill, and Logan Allen. The Indians feel like an 84 win team that will be right in it down the stretch.
-Max Frankel
