MLB commissioner Rob Manfred not "comfortable" with Jessica Mendoza, Pedro Martinez dual roles
BOSTON, MA - SEPTEMBER 8: ESPN Sunday Night Baseball color commentator Jessica Mendoza exits the Green Monster before a game between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees on September 8, 2019 at Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts. (Photo by Billie Weiss/Boston Red Sox/Getty Images) Credit: Getty Images/Billie Weiss/Boston Red Sox
ORLANDO, Fla. — The dual roles of former Boston pitcher Pedro Martinez and ex-Olympic softball player Jessica Mendoza as team employees and broadcasters have drawn the concern of baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred. Martinez is a Red Sox special assistant and an analyst for TBS and MLB Network. Mendoza is a New York Mets baseball operations adviser and an ESPN broadcaster.
Both criticized pitcher Mike Fiers for revealing the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scam to The Athletic.
Fiers, now with Oakland, sparked an investigation that led to the departures of 10% of the major league managers: Houston’s AJ Hinch, Boston’s Alex Cora and the Mets’ Carlos Beltran. “I’m a transparency guy,” Manfred said Thursday after an owners meeting. “That someone should be kind of singled out because they saw something that was wrong and decided to talk about it, I don’t agree with that."
Martinez, a Hall of Famer, told Boston radio station WEEI “whatever happens in the clubhouse stays in the clubhouse, and Fiers broke the rules.” Mendoza was a gold medalist for the U.S. at the 2004 Olympics. “To go public, yeah, it didn’t sit well with me,“ she said of Fiers on an ESPN broadcast. “Honestly, it made me sad for the sport that that’s how this all got found out.“
Manfred concluded their comments were made in their roles as journalists. “I’m not all that comfortable with it. I’m really not,“ he said of their dual roles. “It’s a topic that remains under discussion internally. It caused a lot of complications, not just on this particular incident or comments, but in general.”
