I was tempted to title this post "Fired Joe Morgan," but in the interest of being nice on what has to be a tough day for the guy, I won't. ESPN has declined to renew Joe Morgan's contract as a commentator for Sunday Night Baseball, and has asked his coworker Jon Miller if he might be interested in doing radio broadcasts for the Sunday games instead.
↵“We’ve decided to make a change and introduce new voices and new perspective,” said Norby Williamson, an executive vice president of ESPN. He added: “Twenty one years is an eternity in this business. And today is about acknowledging the contributions they made to the franchise.”↵
I always liked the way Morgan talked about the nuts and bolts of the games - how the cleanup hitter's swing looks, why the runner at first is leading off so far, and so on - but I gave up on listening to the Sunday night games several years ago, when it seemed like Morgan went on uninformed and irrelevant rants against sabermetrics at least twice a game. Those rants earned him a dedicated anti-following among baseball fans, famously including these guys. Still, best of luck to him - he was a fantastic player, and his contributions to the game have been immense. He continues to work as a "special advisor" to the Reds, which seemed like a strange side job for a broadcaster to have.