Transition has been the name of the game in recent years when it has come to ESPN’s MLB announcers and analysts. On Sunday Night Baseball alone, ESPN has been through a different permutation of announcers almost every season it seems, from Curt Schilling and John Kruk to Aaron Boone to Jessica Mendoza and Alex Rodriguez.
However, it seems that ESPN is finally settling into a new generation of personalities anchoring their Major League Baseball coverage. This winter alone, ESPN has already announced new contract extensions for Rick Sutcliffe, Jessica Mendoza, and Mark Teixeira. Now you can add former World Series hero David Ross to the list.
The former Chicago Cubs and Red Sox World Series veteran will be sticking with the network with a new multi-year contract after first joining the network in 2017 following his Cubs championship.
“ESPN truly is a family environment and I’m so fortunate to work with great people both on-camera and behind-the-scenes,” said Ross in the release. “I love the job so much that it hardly feels like work. For instance, last season I had the opportunity to call telecasts ranging from MLB’s Game 163 to the Little League World Series. I couldn’t be happier to continue my broadcasting career at ESPN and I’m ready for the 2019 season to begin.”
Ross will continue to appear as an analyst on ESPN’s weeknight MLB telecasts and appear on Baseball Tonight. He will also add contributions to SportsCenter and Get Up!
ESPN seems to be building a pretty solid core of new MLB analysts with the likes of Ross and Teixeira, as well as Mendoza and A-Rod. The news that Ross will appear more often on Get Up! is interesting, given how they’ve been using many more analysts from around ESPN in order to add some juice to their weekday morning show. Ross could be their go-to MLB analyst once April comes around.
It may not be a coincidence that ESPN is announcing the re-signing of all their baseball analysts right now, given the rumored return of Baseball Tonight. ESPN had been outsourcing much of their daily MLB analysis to MLB Network with simulcasts of Intentional Talk, but that arrangement appears to be over. So if the network is really refocusing efforts on covering baseball, then they need some talent of their own to anchor it on a daily and weekly basis. You can expect that Ross is going to be at the forefront of those efforts.
[ESPN]
