Baseball is back, you can forgive us for getting a little excited about it—our offices are just two blocks away from the San Francisco Giants’ ballpark. s play 162 games in the regular season alone, so they’re taking the field almost every day. You’ll want to enlist the help of your phone to be sure you don’t miss a clutch performance or walk-off home run.
Your Android device can serve as your perfect baseball companion, with plenty of apps to help you stay connected to your fantasy league, keep on top of trade rumors, of course monitor your favorite club. ’ve compiled the best apps for the new season, so no matter where you are you’ll be connected to as much baseball as you want.
tch every game, though be wary of blackout rules
Major ague Baseball is again offering its M.TV subscription, which gets you every single game for the 2015 season.
If you’re planning on using your Android phone or tablet to watch games or stream them with a Chromecast, you’ll want the premium package. It’s $130 per year (or $25 per month), which gets you any game on up to 400 different kinds of devices.
M At Bat is your home for streaming every Major ague game – for a price.
You can watch it on your Android phone or tablet with the M At Bat app, which is the recipient of a rather svelte Material Design refresh just in time for the start of the new season. Even if you don’t plan to watch games on your phone, the At Bat app is an excellent way to follow scores games in progress. us, there’s a cheaper $20 per season subscription that lets you stream radio broadcasts within the app (including local games).
The key caveat here is broadcasting blackout rules, which prevent you from streaming games in your local market. For example, if you live in Northern California you can’t fire up a Giants or A’s game; you have to watch it through your cable or satellite provider.
So if you were hoping to use M’s TV package as a way to catch local games even though you’re a cord cutter, you’re out of luck. Head to M’s blackout checker to find out which team(s) you’re locked out of viewing through the streaming package.
Follow the scores, news, rumors
ile M At Bat does the job well, there are other apps that also do an excellent job of keeping you updated on the world of baseball.
ES just got a major redesign, finally making it fluid free of the crashes bugs that often plagued it.
ES follows every pitch will send push alerts to your Android ar smartwatch.
You’ll need to create an account, either with the traditional email password method or through Facebook, to save your favorite teams. You can then customize how often you get alerts. Your phone can ping you at the start of a game every few innings if you want. erts also push to your Android ar smartwatch, so you don’t even need to pull your phone out.
The ES gamecast feature is also here, so you can get pitch-by-pitch coverage of any game. It would be great if this had a pull-to-refresh feature for those times when you hop out of the app come back later.
Another good contender is CBS Sports, as the app takes Material Design seriously syncs all your preferences to your online CBS account so you can follow scores on the web as well as on your Android device.
Now is a great companion for keeping track of your favorite baseball team.
Many are also fans of theScore, which has a lot of customization options a dark aesthetic for those who want their sports app to appear as manly as possible.
so don’t forget about Now, which has rather impressive sports capabilities. If you’re using the Now launcher, this is the fastest way to check out on how your team is doing or who they’re playing. st open up Now it will pop up a card right in your stream.
To turn on the magic, you’ll need to head to the Now menu, select Customize, tell it what teams you’re interested in following. Then you’ll see a card each day with the upcoming game or live results of an ongoing contest. You won’t get constant push alerts, but if you’re using the Now uncher it’s by far the fastest way to quickly check out a score or find out when the next game is.
Stay connected to your Fantasy leagues
Fantasy baseball is big business, you don’t want to miss out on how your team is performing or if there’s a sleeper pick that just went live on the wire.
ES Fantasy Baseball is back for another season, but unfortunately the interface is still stuck in the minor leagues. The last update was in February, so hopefully the ES team will deliver some enhancements with the new season underway.
Get fantasy tips follow your team with the CBS Sports Fantasy app.
Yahoo Fantasy Sports hles baseball any other of your Yahoo leagues, so no need to grab another baseball-specific app if you’re already a Yahoo fantasy player.
CBS Sports Fantasy is another all-in-one solution; it hles leagues from ES, Yahoo, or of course CBS Sports. CBS is also Android-friendly in that it takes ’s design guidelines seriously, producing another app that looks great on Android.
Grab some apps before you head to the ballpark
If you’re heading to a game at some point this year, grab the M.com Ballpark app. It’s kind of like a Foursquare for baseball, with the ability to “check in” to a game.
en you head to a game, be sure you have the M at the Ballpark app to enhance your experience.
But it goes beyond the social experience with some hy in-game extras. For example, at some parks you can use the app as your ticket to the game. You can also use it to buy tickets, get a map of the stadium, or try for a seat upgrade. There are even some parks where you can order refreshments with it.
It’s part of a great package by M, which has done a good job of bringing America’s pastime up to speed in the digital era.
