Fox saw its Saturday afternoon numbers drop 10 percent to a 1.8 rating/2.74 million viewers. Fox ended its regular season Oct. 2 with a 1.2/1.7 million average for a Saturday afternoon schedule that had just one game with postseason implications. That’s 48 percent off 2008’s numbers, when the last weekend of the regular season featured three games that had playoff implications for Fox, drawing a 2.3 rating.

ESPN saw ratings for its franchise series, “Sunday Night Baseball,” drop 6 percent, to a 1.6 U.S. household rating, or 2.46 million viewers.

ESPN blamed scheduling problems for the drop. A typically highly rated Yankees-Red Sox game was moved out of prime time to 2 p.m. ET on Sept. 27 because of a conflict with Yom Kippur. That game had a 1.1 rating/1.6 million viewers. The other three Sunday night Red Sox-Yankee games averaged a 3.0/4.63 million viewers.

Overall, ESPN’s baseball game ratings dropped 8 percent over 66 games, to a 1.1/1.6 million viewers.

Turner was the sole national network to see an increase. Its rating rose slightly, to a 0.6 U.S. household rating from a 0.5. Its viewer numbers jumped 27 percent, from 730,000 to 930,000.

On the local level, exactly half of the teams saw ratings increase. As in past years, teams that performed well on the field also performed well with their ratings. Six of this year’s nine playoff teams, counting the Detroit Tigers (who lost to the Twins in a one-game playoff), saw ratings increases.

Perhaps the biggest success story came in Philadelphia, where Phillies games on CSN Philly posted a 24 percent ratings increase, the team’s seventh consecutive season with an increase. The 7.13 rating and 210,000 average homes both are records.

The Nationals were the biggest gainer, posting a 67 percent increase from last year, even though the team had the worst record in baseball. But MASN’s Nats telecasts remained dead last of all MLB teams in both ratings (0.60) and households (14,000).

Fox Sports found success with both the Rangers (up 58 percent on FS Southwest) and Braves (up 35 percent on both FS South and SportSouth). Executives for both RSNs credited the teams’ play as the main reason for the increase.

“When the Braves became a serious contender after the All-Star break, we saw a corresponding rise in ratings,” said Jeff Genthner, general manager of FS South and SportSouth.

On the other side of the coin, the A’s saw ratings drop 53 percent to a 0.82/20,000 homes during their first season on CSN California. In previous years, A’s games were on CSN Bay Area.

But CSN executives dismissed suggestions that the move hurt ratings, pointing to the NHL Sharks’ ratings through their first two games this year, which are more than double last year’s pace for the first two games (1.4/36,000 homes vs. 0.6/15,000 homes).

RSNs with the six biggest decreases all carried teams that were below .500 (the A’s, Indians, Reds, Diamondbacks, Mets and Brewers).