MLB has destroyed their smartphone app

I know, I know. It is traditional for anyone and everyone to hate change on the internet. I do it, you do it. Yes, admit it: you know you do.

This is why writing an article about changes to a website or app is associated with danger because the grumble of change has become something people just do. Many times it just takes a little time to get used to the changes and then things work out well.

This is not the case with MLB’s complete redesign of their smartphone app this year. I thus declare the complaints department WIDE open, and hereby my complaints about the app. NOTE: I have an Android phone so all screenshots and information in this article are from the Android app. If you have an iPhone, your app probably looks and works somewhat differently.

You are forced to open the app on your favorite team’s page

I do not want to do this. I want to open the app for the scoreboard page. This was previously possible via the settings menu, but there is no longer such an option:

Solve this, MLB. I do not want to be forced to switch to the scoreboard every time I use the app.

The team plan page layout is awful

Before 2022 – and I wish I could find a screenshot, but can not and I have not saved one – if you went to the schedule for your team, you would get a calendar-style page where you could scroll from month to month . Pressing a date on the calendar would bring you to a ticket page for that game, which is fine.

This is what the Cubs team side looked like on Thursday afternoon before the match started. The arrow points to what looks like a calendar page for the schedule:

But when you press it, you get here:

It’s not a calendar, it’s just a list. There are two calendar-like icons at the top right that you can see. The one on the right adds these games to your personal calendar. You would think that the one on the left would give you a calendar format, but all it gives you is … a longer list.

This is not optimal, especially if you are trying to see which matches are at home and which are away; there is no way to distinguish between them except the small “@” or “vs.” before the opponent’s logo.

Solve this, MLB. It’s awful.

You can not get to the live MLB.TV broadcasts from the scoreboard

This should be intuitive; if you’re on the scoreboard, it should be easy to get to the live broadcast of a game. Instead, go to the bottom of the app (on any page, this is from the Cubs page):

That’s okay, but again, that’s not really intuitive.

Finally, I should note that the MLB Ballpark app, which is where all your mobile tickets are stored, works fine. No complaints there. And MLB did not change anything on that app this season; it works the same way as last year.

To circle back to what I noticed at the beginning of this article: Complaining about changes on the internet has become a kind of sport. In the end, most can be customized. A few of the changes MLB has made to the app made the app significantly worse: Forcing the user to start on a particular page with no choice, and the schedule page was not in convenient calendar form. Further, I tried the app that reversed the colors – white text on a black background instead of reverse – did not work better for me.

These should be easy fixes as the only thing I notice here are things that used to work but no longer do. Solve them, MLB.