Netflix’s Opening Night broadcast is nearly fully staffed.
Lauren Shehadi is joining the streamer as an in-game reporter for its MLB coverage, according to Front Office Sports’ Michael McCarthy. She’s expected to work Opening Night on March 25, when the Giants host the Yankees at Oracle Park in San Francisco, and will also cover the Home Run Derby and Field of Dreams Game under Netflix’s three-year deal with the league.
Shehadi has been a fixture on baseball television since MLB Network launched its morning show, MLB Central, in 2015, first alongside Matt Vasgersian and Mark DeRosa, and then, starting in 2018, alongside DeRosa and Robert Flores. The Emmy-nominated show airs live from 10-12 ET on weekdays and has become one of the more recognizable brands in baseball media, hosting more than 900 guests over the years, including more than 300 active players and 13 Hall of Famers, and celebrating its 1,000th episode with the same trio in 2025.
Beyond MLB Central, Shehadi has also served as a sideline reporter for TBS’s postseason baseball coverage and called her second game alongside DeRosa and Flores last August, a Braves-Phillies Showcase broadcast on MLB Network. She’s currently working March Madness for TNT Sports on Kevin Harlan’s crew through the regional finals.
Her addition fills out a broadcast that has been taking shape slowly, but surely. Matt Vasgersian is expected to call the game, per Sports Media Watch’s Derek Futterman. The same Vasgersian, who was one of the original voices on MLB Network when the network launched in 2009, and who spent four seasons as ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball play-by-play voice before returning to MLB Network full-time in 2021. Elle Duncan will anchor the studio coverage as Netflix’s first full-time sports hire, having left ESPN in December after five years hosting the 6 p.m. SportsCenter.
Netflix is also still reportedly pursuing Barry Bonds and CC Sabathia for pregame and postgame coverage, with Bonds — who spent the final 15 seasons of his career with the Giants and retired as baseball’s all-time home run leader — covering the home side and Sabathia, who won a World Series with the Yankees in 2009 and will have his No. 52 retired by the franchise later this season, handling New York.
FOS also reports that ESPN’s Taylor McGregor was in the running for the sideline role before not landing it. ESPN and Fox have grown increasingly reluctant to share their on-air talent with Netflix as the streamer has expanded into live sports, a dynamic that has shaped how this broadcast — which will be co-produced by MLB Network — came together.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.