Craig Carton and Jeff Passan have a history of biting back and forth at one another. It should come as no surprise then that on Monday, Carton laid into the ESPN reporter for admitting that he inserted himself into negotiations between Major League Baseball and the MLBPA.
Carton said that many fans regard Passan as one of, if not the best baseball insider working today. The WFAN afternoon host doesn’t think that is true necessarily. He called out Passan for not being objective in his coverage of the lockout.
“He’s anti-owner. So his coverage of the lockout is skewed towards the player, not skewed towards objectivity,” Carton said of Passan. “And for me to back that up, just go look at any of his tweets regarding the lockout and they are all pro-player and even accuses the owners of malfeasance in their handling of the labor dispute.”
The goal of the comments doesn’t seem to be defending MLB owners. Rather, Craig Carton seems to have more to say about Jeff Passan than about baseball. He described Passan as “egotistical and views himself as untouchable”.
He went on to lambast Passan for calling the owners’ offer to the players last week a “shit sandwich” and encouraging players not to sign it. It is an admission Passan made on the ESPN Daily podcast and has since apologized for.
“You may remember a week ago, they spent 12-15 hours late into the night on Monday night trying to get a deal done,” Carton said. “And Tuesday morning when [Passan] woke up and he saw the deal, and his words not mine, he called players, he called players’ agents, and he told them ‘you can’t possibly sign this bleep sandwich.'”
ESPN has since scrubbed the audio from the podcast.
Carton said that the comments prove that Jeff Passan is not capable of being objective.
“It turns out that he is nothing more than a shill for the players, that hates the commissioner and by proxy, all the owners.”
Were their consequences for Passan’s admission? While ESPN hasn’t commented publicly, Carton believes their are. He points to Passan’s lack of Twitter activity as evidence that he may have been suspended by ESPN.
