2021 Mets' Opening Day game will be televised on ESPN, not SNY
Mets and likely Opening Day starter Jacob deGrom begin the season in Washington on April 1 in a nationally televised game. Credit: AP/John Bazemore
The Mets’ first game under new owner Steve Cohen will not be on SNY.
Instead, ESPN exclusively will broadcast the Mets’ Opening Day date against the Nationals, which is at 7 p.m. on April 1 in Washington.
That leaves open the possibility that ESPN analyst Alex Rodriguez — who tried hard to buy the Mets during the summer but fell short despite organizing a large consortium of investors with fiancée Jennifer Lopez — will be in the broadcast booth instead of the owners’ suite for the 2021 opener, offering commentary on Cohen’s first offseason of moves.
Last season, ESPN kept Rodriguez off of Mets games to avoid the conflict of interest. Next season, though, Rodriguez will be eligible to call Mets games, ESPN told Newsday on Thursday.
The "Sunday Night Baseball" team — of which Rodriguez has been a part in recent seasons — usually is assigned to ESPN’s marquee game of the day, but those details have not been finalized for a game still more than four months away.
ESPN also will air, not exclusively, the Mets’ April 6 game in Philadelphia.
Cohen’s deal to buy the Mets did not include SNY. The Wilpon and Katz families still own a controlling interest in the regional sports network, which has been the television home of the Mets since its inception in 2006.
Rest assured, though, that Cohen is a big fan of the SNY broadcast team of Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling.
One fan recently expressed to Steve Cohen, who has regularly interacted with Mets fans on Twitter this month, that the Mets have the best TV and radio announcers in baseball and suggested, "Don’t mess with that. Very very important."
Cohen’s response? "Totally agree."
"The entire announcing crew is A1," Cohen wrote to another fan.
