Is Anyone Watching Out There?

This could become one of the least-watched World Series since baseball’s premier event moved to prime time.

Games 1 and 2 averaged a 15.2 overnight rating on NBC, down 6% from last year, Nielsen Media Research reported Monday.

Saturday night’s opener got a 14.0 overnight rating and 25 share, down 18% from Game 1 last year between the New York Yankees and Atlanta Braves, which had a 17.0 rating and 26 share for Fox on Sunday night.

Game 2 on Sunday night got a 16.3 overnight rating and 25 share, up 8% over last year, when the Yankees and Braves played opposite ABC’s “Monday Night Football” for part of their game at a 15.1 rating and 23 share.

The dropoff was particularly steep in New York, where the rating for the opener dropped 40%, from 30.8 to 12.5. Game 1 got a 14.4 rating in Los Angeles and a 9.3 in Chicago.

With more people at home Sunday night, Game 2 got better numbers: a 13.2 in New York, a 17.5 in Los Angeles and a 10.1 in Chicago.

Last week, NBC entertainment executive Don Ohlmeyer said he was hoping for a four-game sweep to get baseball off the air and keep his regular prime-time schedule.

“We’re looking for four and out,” he said. “Either way, that’s what we want. The faster it’s over with, the better it is.”

Ohlmeyer later apologized.

The rating is the percentage of television homes tuned to a broadcast. The share is the percentage watching a program among those televisions on at the time.

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After batting .193 in six American League championship series games against Baltimore, the Indian offense has caught fire in the World Series, with 25 hits in 73 at-bats for a .342 average in two games.

That doesn’t bode well for the Marlins, who lost Game 2 with their best pitcher, Kevin Brown, and will now send the bottom half of their four-man rotation, left-handers Al Leiter and Tony Saunders, against the Indians in Games 3 and 4.

The Indians will counter with Charles Nagy, who threw 7 1/3 scoreless innings in Cleveland’s pennant-clinching victory over the Orioles, and rookie right-hander Jaret Wright, who hasn’t pitched since Oct. 12, when he was bombed by Baltimore for five runs and six hits in three innings.

Leiter has been a picture of inconsistency and struggled in his two playoff starts, giving up four runs and seven hits in four innings of a division series game against San Francisco and four runs and 10 hits in six innings of a league championship series game against Atlanta.

But he has reason to feel optimistic tonight. As a Toronto Blue Jay in 1995, he went 2-0 with a 1.54 earned-run average in three starts against the World Series-bound Indians.

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Florida Manager Jim Leyland said Monday that Jim Eisenreich, who hit .280 this season, would start at designated hitter in Game 3 tonight, and that left-handed hitting Darren Daulton would replace regular Jeff Conine at first base against right-hander Nagy.

David Justice, who started in left field for the Indians in Games 1 and 2, will return to his customary DH spot in the American League city, but Manager Mike Hargrove said Bip Roberts, not Brian Giles, would start in left.

That means Tony Fernandez, who doubled and singled in two Game 2 at-bats after replacing Roberts Sunday night, will start at second. Shortstop Omar Vizquel, who fouled a ball off his right foot in the fourth inning Sunday night, worked out Monday and showed no ill effects.

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There is one theory that players tend to take more pitches in cold weather, and another that managers tend to take fewer chances on the basepath, but Leyland is pretty sure that the weather won’t slow the game any more than the TV commercials. “I can tell you that,” he said. “It’s a long night during postseason play.” . . . The Indian bullpen, which went 4-0 with a 2.05 ERA in the ALCS, is off to another good start in the World Series, having thrown six scoreless innings in the first two games. The Marlin bullpen has given up one run in 6 1/3 innings.