Jessica Mendoza’s loss of credibility tour was an asinine blunder that hopefully sparks change at ESPN
posted
5 years ago
by
TMC-4 (20488)
https://awfulannouncing.com/espn/jessica-mendoza-loss-of-credibility-tour-was-an-asinine-blunder.html
Some combination of my age and just the chaotic times we live in have drastically reset the thresholds for events to shock or outrage me. I’m becoming more dead inside. Things that get most people riled up, and would in the past do the same to me, are now met with a “meh” or a “well, that was bound to happen”. More and more, this applies to the sports media beat, which by comparison seems so much more lower stakes than everything else going in the world. That being said, ESPN and Jessica Mendoza have awoken the sports media critic in me as I sit here in utter bewilderment of how terribly asinine and obtuse this morning’s events were.
You can read our earlier recap here, but long story short, Jessica Mendoza was paraded across three popular ESPN shows where she spit out the same talking points pertaining to the Astros sign stealing scandal. First, the initial appearance on Golic and Wingo that opened the floodgates of criticism.
Mendoza would go onto appear on the two ESPN main network morning shows, Get Up and First Take, and stuck to the script on both shows which only caused criticism to snowball.
Before getting into this, a few quick things for those not familiar with some of the nuances here:
– Mendoza is one of the color analysts on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball, a broadcast booth that has been generally pummeled.
– Mendoza is also a baseball operations adviser for the Mets, a secondary role ESPN has allowed her and other talent (including Alex Rodriguez and David Ross) to pursue, but one that has drawn the ire of other teams who see a conflict of interest.
– Mendoza’s trifecta of appearances came as the heat of the Astros scandal was now squarely on her other employer, the Mets whose rookie manager, Carlos Beltran, was named as one of the former players who participated in the sign stealing scandal. With the terminations and resignations of Jeff Luhnow and A.J. Hinch in Houston and Alex Cora in Boston, Beltran was essentially now the last high-profile individual whose fate was now up for debate.
With all of that context, it’s not hard to connect the dots and see how Mendoza imploded her credibility while making a mockery of ESPN. Mendoza, at the very least, was a far, far cry from a neutral broadcaster during those appearances. At worst, she seemed like a modern-day politician making the rounds of Fox News or MSNBC, regurgitating the same handful of talking points in hopes of swaying public opinion or deflecting criticism away from the core issue at hand.
She didn’t just misspeak, she went on ESPN’s most popular radio show and two of ESPN’s biggest studio brands and shilled for the Mets. And she didn’t just try to play defense for the sake of preserving Beltran’s job, but inexplicably went on the offensive going after Mike Fiers using offensive verbiage like “ratted”. Her three-show performance was so brazen, so obvious, and so cringeworthy, it couldn’t be ignored by her peers, her fans, nor her coworkers.
Two predictable things then happened. 1) Mendoza was leaned on by ESPN to do some damage control, something she really failed miserably at and 2) the public pressure only intensified and Beltran and the Mets parted ways, with him doing the predictable “I haven’t been fired, I’m not resigning, but I’m leaving because I don’t want to be a distraction” thing. Whoever came up with the whole “distraction” PR two step, should really be in some type of Hall of Fame at this point. Here’s Mendoza’s statement:
So, beyond this recap, why is my heart rate a bit elevated, you ask? Because this was just an incredibly stupid self-inflicted wound, and one that has undermined the credibility of Mendoza as a lead analyst going forward. ESPN has already been facing intense scrutiny and criticism for Sunday Night Baseball, with our own Joe Lucia saying back in April that the booth “is a disaster and cannot last long-term” (and he was far from alone there). Even with that prevailing opinion that the SNB booth is on thin ice, ESPN seemed to have absolutely no awareness whatsoever of how Mendoza going on three of their most popular shows could spectacularly backfire like it did.
For the record, I’ve enjoyed Mendoza in the booth, thought she was an inspiring hire, and know both her and ESPN have had to endure a ton of undeserved grief because she’s a woman in the announcing booth. In a day and age where that uphill struggle is still trying to get a toe-hold of footing, in just a few hours, a pre-orchestrated media blitz has tarnished Mendoza’s reputation to the point where I’m not sure she can regain that credibility with the huge swath of fans who were aghast or offended by Mendoza’s attack on Fiers. Think of it this way-Could Mendoza call a SNB or playoff game with Fiers on the mound? I seriously doubt it.
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