Big Bear Nolan's Blog

Opening Day for the 2026 MLB season has officially come and gone (despite some teams beginning today on march. 27). While for the most part it had that classic opening day feel, there were the debut of promising teams and prospects along with new streaming partners. So I wanted to talk about it and give my perspective.

• Promising players from last season along with debuting propsects made their first opening day and showed out.

Brewers pitching prospect Jacob Misiorowski who had a mind blowing debut in 2025 along with a strong ending became the team’s ace with the exit of Freddy Peralta. “The Miz” as the Brewers call him pitched five innings, while striking out 11 batters in his Opening Day debut against the Chicago White Sox. This all came after Misiorowski gave up a lead off home run which ended up being his only run given up on the day in the Brewers 14-2 win. Other prospects in Carson Benge for the New York Mets and J.J. Wetherholt for the St. Louis Cardinals made their anticipated debuts for their respective teams, and both were at home in front of their home fans. Benge and Wetherholt both homered in their debut’s to help their teams to wins.

• Some teams had to overcome slow starts for dominating wins.

A common theme I noticed when watching these games were the slow starts some teams overcame for somewhat surprising results. The Brewers overcame the leadoff home run from White Sox Chase Meidroth to cruise to a 14-2 win which that itself wasn’t so surprising. However, in the New York Yankees/San Francisco Giants “Opening Night” game on Wednesday, Yankees starter Max Fried escaped trouble in the first inning where the first three batters all reached. That led to the Yankees being able to get on Giants starter Logan Webb in the middle innings to win 7-0. However the most surprising result probably was the one at Citi Field between the Mets and the Pittsburgh Pirates. Newly signed second baseman Brandon Lowe hit a first inning two-run home run to put the Pirates up 2-0, with Paul Skenes on the mound with the early lead it looked to be a long day for the Mets. It was anything but, aided by two misplays in center from O’Neil Cruz, the Mets responded with a five-run first to chase Skenes out of the game and carry them to a 11-7 opening day win. Another shocker was the Chicago Cubs and Washington Nationals game, Washington went into Wrigley and opened up with a 10-4 win in the Friendly Confines.

• Netflix and NBC made their programming debuts for MLB and one was actually decent while the other was a disaster.

Netflix and NBC were announced to carry games over the 2026 season, with Netflix airing a few games while NBC and Peacock will take over for the Sunday Leadoff and Sunday Night Baseball games that Roku and ESPN used to carry. Both streaming services made their debuts this week, beginning with Netflix in the Yankees and Giants Opening Night game. The game itself was a microcosm of the broadcasting disaster that Netflix put together. While some of the on-air talent was good, the rest of the broadcast was just a marketing ploy with a baseball game in between. We barely saw hits because of late cuts back into the game, or the ungodly amount of interviews in the game which one caused us to miss the first ever ABS challenge in the history of MLB. But don’t worry, we got our fair share of Jimmy Uso from WWE, quarterback Jameis Winston or Bert Kreischer drinking a Corona on a Kayak in McCovey Cove, we also got to see the national tv sponsor ads in the sponsor board make Rafael Devers and others look distorted. Also the tv score bug from Netflix that was provided to us viewers, you needed a strong pair of glasses to read i (rhetorically). On the other hand, NBC made its debut with a doubleheader on opening day with the Pirates/Mets and D-Backs/Dodgers. While I couldn’t watch most of either game, I did notice a much better difference with NBC. The score bug and graphics NBC had was much clearer and had better picture quality. It seemed like they had help from their affiliates that help broadcast regionally. Clayton Kershaw made his tv debut in the Dodgers game and he was good too.

Opening day isn’t always going to be perfect, every one literally is working out their kinks. But all in all, it is great that America’s Pastime is officially back and running for another season.