From 2015 to 2019, Jessica Mendoza was an ESPN analyst Sunday Night Baseball. Prior to last season, the New York Mets hired her as a baseball operations adviser, but she retained her role as an ESPN analyst and aired three SNB games for the Mets last year. The conflict of interest was affected, and teams like the Dodgers even barred her from accessing the clubhouse given to members of the media out of concern about her role with the Mets. Her work with the organization was part of why she was widely roasted this spring for her criticism on ESPN platforms of Mike Fiers’ whistleblowing, leading to her leaving the Mets and signing a new ESPN deal (but was fired) Sunday Night Baseball)
Oddly, though, ESPN never seemed to have a problem with that conflict of interest. And they didn’t seem to mind the period of SNB analyst Alex Rodríguez from 2017 to 2018 as an adviser to the Yankees (a role he played during his first SNB season in 2018, which featured six Yankees games). But now they seek to avoid a conflict of interest with Rodríguez because … could he be involved in a new group owned by the Mets?
This is what Bob Nightengale of USA Today tweeted on that front Thursday:
ESPN will prevent A-Rod from broadcasting #Mets games this year due to a potential conflict of interest with Rodríguez and J.Lo who are trying to buy the club.
– Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) July 16, 2020
Look, of course, organizations don’t have to keep making mistakes because they’ve made them in the past. Growth is a good thing, and if ESPN can now recognize that having a game analyst working for one of the clubs involved in the game they broadcast is not ideal, more power for them. And at least this year, keeping A-Rod out of the Mets’ games should have minimal impact; The planned 60-game season only has nine weeks of SNB broadcasts and 10 games, with just one of seven non-TBA matchups involving the Mets (which is part of a double opening undercard, and yes, ESPN is only going to Putting him in the other game; that piece also involves him making ravishing pro-property comments about a salary cap, his other fun conflict of interest.) Yes, there is a bigger potential problem when it comes to the playoffs, but the Mets were 86-76 last year and finished third in their division, so they’re hardly a playoff block. So this can end up being an easy move that just makes sense and avoids possible clumsiness.
But at the same time, it is remarkable to see ESPN suddenly take this apparent stance on conflicts of interest when they did not do so with Rodríguez in 2018 or Mendoza in 2019. And it is fascinating to see them take a position like this because Rodríguez could be part of a group that buys the team, something that might not happen, while they were fine with Rodríguez and Mendoza having real and not hypothetical positions with the teams they covered. (To be fair to ESPN, many national broadcasters on the MLB Network, Turner and Fox have also held team positions, but those positions also present some problems, and Mendoza’s position presented particular challenges given the way he was regularly described as active consultant on Mets exchanges.)
It makes sense that ESPN doesn’t have Rodriguez covering the Mets games while bidding on the franchise, and it makes perfect sense to do so if he ends up buying the franchise (but if that happens, he probably won’t be working as a broadcaster anymore). Hopefully, ESPN will use this approach more broadly in the future, and will limit its overall conflicts of interest rather than simply removing A-Rod from a single Mets game while competing on the team.
