WP App Review : MLB At Bat 13

NOTE: This review has been updated at the bottom.

At Bat 13 (Version 1.0)

MLB Advanced Media L.P

Free

MLB has finally released a Windows Phone 8 version of their popular At Bat app. For baseball fans like myself, it was a long time coming. Having an official baseball app further solidifies the Windows Phone platform as more and more official apps from popular companies are added to the marketplace. So how does this new app perform?

It's been a while since I've used the iOS version but overall, the At Bat app provides all the basic features of it's popular counterpart. The app is smooth and features solid and easy controls to access all of the essential information such as scores, schedules, standings, stats, and more.

The app enables you to select your favorite team and have your team's score featured at the top. Furthermore, you can pin your favorite team to the home screen providing easy access to all your favorite team's information as well. At Bat also provides short video clips featuring game highlights and news.

A good feature is that you can access MLB's free game of the day through the app. Since the app was just released today I wasn't able to check if streaming was smooth but you can access the complete finished game and watch it (note that blackout restrictions apply.) Providing video access to the free game of the day is a great feature which I didn't experience while I was using At Bat on iOS. However, one thing that bothered me was that you can only skip through the video as the the player doesn't apply you to scroll through to a certain point.

All in all, it's great to see more official apps hitting the Windows Phone marketplace and having MLB's At Bat app is a great addition for baseball fans.

Update (8/11/2013)

Using the app some more, I noticed that you can get free radio streaming of live games. This is a great feature and it loads up quick and is fairly fast in terms of delay from the actual game. You can also choose the radio feed to reflect your favorite broadcast.

One thing that the At Bat app lacks is a good play by play feature which visually shows what's going on in the game. The information is provided in a small box and is a bit lackluster in terms of getting information about the game. ESPN's Score Center is a lot better in this regard as it provides a better visual play-by-play and an easily accessible overview of what's going on in the game via the different feeds. However, ESPN Score Center has a slew of problems with live tiles.

Pros : Solid, smooth, and great features

Cons : Unable to scroll through free game of the day videos