Mendoza added to Sunday Night Baseball, Schilling moved to Mondays in ESPN broadcast reshuffling
ESPN announced a couple of significant lineup changes Wednesday for its baseball broadcast teams for the upcoming season. Jessica Mendoza and Aaron Boone have been added to the Sunday Night Baseball telecast as color analysts, while Curt Schilling moves from Sunday to Monday nights.
Mendoza, 35, a softball star at Stanford and for the United States Olympic team, joined the Sunday Night booth late last season after Schilling was suspended. She has been at ESPN since 2007, primarily as a softball analyst.
Schilling will join play-by-play voices Karl Ravech and Dave Flemming (they will share the job) and analyst Eduardo Perez on Monday Night Baseball. John Kruk, who had been part of the Sunday Night Baseball broadcast since 2013, will return to a studio analyst role on Baseball Tonight.
On Aug. 24, Mendoza called the Monday night matchup between the Cardinals and Diamondbacks, becoming the first woman in the booth for an ESPN MLB broadcast. The next morning, Schilling got into hot water after retweeting a meme that included a photo of Adolf Hitler and said:
“It’s said only 5-10% of Muslims are extremists. In 1940, only 7% of Germans were Nazis. How’d that go?’’ Schilling added: “The math is staggering when you get to true #’s.’’
He deleted the tweet, but ESPN suspended him, ultimately deciding to keep him off its baseball broadcasts for the remainder of the season.
Mendoza replaced Schilling on the Sunday broadcasts, and in her first game, Cubs pitcher Jake Arrieta threw a no-hitter. She earned a consensus of positive reviews for her work.
Boone, 42, is moving over from the Monday broadcasts. Shulman, Mendoza, Boone, and holdover reporter Buster Olney will be the fifth different analyst team in six seasons for Sunday Night Baseball.
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