ESPN doesn’t deserve baseball anymore—and a rare Rob Manfred ‘W’ has the MLB finally waking up

ESPN/MLB SPLIT – Anyone else feel like they just got punched in the face? That’s how it felt watching Gary Striewski parade around the ghost town that was once the Baseball Tonight studio.

A sacred space where Karl Ravech, Tim Kurkjian, Peter Gammons, Barry Larkin, John Kruk, and the late Pedro Gomez gave us everything we needed to know about baseball.

Now the Baseball Tonight studio looks like an abandoned storage closet.

Someone asked me for a tour of the old Baseball Tonight studio on campus. Enjoy this heaping slice of nostalgia. pic.twitter.com/eNQgbTZyTe

— Gary Striewski (@garystriewski) February 19, 2025

Welcome to ESPN’s baseball coverage in a nutshell.

It wasn’t just Baseball Tonight. It was Web Gems. It was “That’s Nasty.” It was Touch ‘Em All. It was staying up late, watching every highlight, every deep dive, and every quirky stat from Tim Kurkjian, Gammons, and Buster Olney before drifting off to sleep.

That era? Long gone.

ESPN and MLB have mutually agreed to end their national TV partnership after this season, per @EvanDrellich pic.twitter.com/eQ7H5tYCJA

— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) February 21, 2025

ESPN Gave Up on Baseball—And Now The MLB is Giving Up on ESPN

On Thursday night, MLB officially opted out of its contract with ESPN after the 2025 season. And while it’s hard to imagine baseball anywhere else, this needed to happen.

ESPN doesn’t care about baseball anymore and to be frank they don’t deserve it.

MLB is an Afterthought at ESPN

Commissioner Rob Manfred himself admitted that he’s “not been pleased with the minimal coverage that MLB has received on ESPN’s platforms.”

Rare Rob Manfred ‘W’…

But seriously…minimal? That’s putting it lightly.

Baseball is on for seven months a year, and ESPN treats it like a niche sport.

• They axed Baseball Tonight.
• They barely talk about baseball on their morning shows.
• They stopped investing in the product.
• Even Sunday Night Baseball has become a shell of itself.

Meanwhile, they shove regular-season NBA games down our throats like they’re playoff matchups. Nobody cares about NBA regular season games. Even NBA fans don’t care and the product on the court would indicate that actual players don’t either.

And yet, they chose to go all-in on the NBA while completely abandoning MLB.

Good Riddance.

Manfred gets a lot of heat (rightfully so), but this move is the right one. Let ESPN continue their love affair with LeBron, the Cowboys, and whatever outrage topic is trending that morning. Let them talk about everything except sports.

Baseball deserves better. The fans deserve better.

So, yeah—I’ll miss seeing that old Baseball Tonight set in action. I’ll miss the glory days of the Worldwide Leader in Sports actually caring about baseball. But those days aren’t coming back.

The sport needs a new home and let’s hope it’s one that actually wants it.

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