David Cone has decided not to join ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball crew, opting to continue calling New York Yankees games for YES Network.
ESPN had been hoping to hire David Cone to replace Jessica Mendoza on Sunday Night Baseball. According to Andrew Marchand of the New York Post, Cone has rebuffed ESPN’s advances and will continue to call New York Yankees games for YES Network.
Cone will call 75 Yankees games during the 2020 season for YES Network. That’s a major boon for the Yankees and YES Network. Cone is considered the shining light on what most fans believe is a mediocre broadcast team.
The Yankees broadcast team was ranked 16th in MLB by fan votes on Awful Announcing. AA has been doing these lists since 2014 and they’re generally considered the go-to for reviews of sports broadcasting.
The Yankees broadcast team is one of the most polarizing in MLB. They received both the most A grades and the most F grades of any team in baseball. That makes it hard to tell how fans really feel, but Awful Announcing believes 16th is right where the team belongs.
The average grade they earned is more in alignment with their rankings in every year outside of 2017, which was an outlier. Losing Cone would have been a huge hit to their team.
“We left it on good terms,” Cone said of his relationship with ESPN. “I’m still very much in the mix for future potential work, they said. I was happy to meet with them and to talk with them. I feel pretty good about it.”
Cone may be sticking around in the Bronx for 2020, but his future is still up in the air. Don’t be shocked if he leaves YES Network for greener pastures at some point in the next few years.
