Regarding ESPN MLB insider Jeff Passan, David Samson isn’t exactly the most reliable narrator. Samson’s criticism of Passan on Thursday’s The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz seemed fueled as much by personal animosity as by any real disagreement, as he accused the award-winning journalist of carrying water for ESPN.
Passan recently appeared on Puck’s The Varsity podcast with John Ourand and boldly claimed that MLB “dropped the ball” on its recent national streaming deals. The main issue Passan points out isn’t that these deals have tanked viewership or killed fan interest. It’s that MLB seriously undervalued its own media rights.
Take Roku’s Sunday Leadoff package, for example. It’s just $10 million a year, way less than the $30 million Peacock was paying for the same games. Then there’s Apple’s Friday night deal, which, at $85 million a year, is a fraction of what ESPN used to shell out. Passan thinks these lowball deals send the wrong message and could make it harder for MLB to get fair value down the line.
Awful Announcing’s Drew Lerner recently questioned whether Major League Baseball mishandled its streaming deals with Apple and Roku. Although Lerner didn’t reference Jeff Passan, he’s far from the only one raising concerns about MLB’s media rights strategy. This issue has lingered before and after ESPN opted out of its current rights deal with MLB.
Somewhere in that, Samson developed the impression that Passan was pushing a narrative about how MLB, not ESPN, was responsible for their media rights relationship falling apart.
“On MLB, that was an article that came out two days ago, that was just wrong,” Samson said on Thursday’s show. “It was full of ESPN and Jeff Passan and full of people who were leaking stuff, who don’t understand anything. The deal with Roku and Apple actually provides more money per game than what ESPN is paying per game. The Apple deal for baseball is a good deal. It’s a side-by-side, non-exclusive window deal. And ESPN is really going after MLB because they’re hurt that MLB does not love/want them and is going to move on without them, which could hurt their new ESPN flagship DTC.”
“There is a major war going on between MLB and ESPN, as ESPN finishes off the last year of a deal where MLB has walked away and opted out, as did ESPN,” Samson continues. “But MLB is going to match the $550 million… MLB will sell that package. But when you read an article that gets so much attention, that impunes MLB’s ability to sell their game, you know that’s ESPN. It just reeked of all the ESPN talking points, so people in the industry, both the buyers and the sellers, viewed that as all of noise and stupidity.”
Samson took aim at Passan’s position and motivations.
“ESPN loses baseball, and Jeff Passan is a baseball insider; I’m not sure why you’d need somebody at the salary he’s at,” Samson said. “He’s digging for donuts, so, of course, you’re going to be carrying the water for ESPN when you’re trying to figure out when there’s cuts going on everywhere, other than the top, top level, which is not Jeff, obviously. The top, top level is getting the money, and you’re trying to sort of dance for your dinner. I get it. I’m not disparaging him for carrying their water.”
Well, actually, he kind of is. Dan Le Batard called him out on it.
So, much for it being Nothing Personal with David Samson.
“I’ve never met him; there’s no beef,” Samson claims.
The bad blood may go back to when Passan, then at Yahoo Sports, wrote about the exit of Samson’s former stepfather, Jeffrey Loria, calling him “the worst owner in sports.” That spilled into a 2022 X (formerly Twitter) feud, where Passan pointed out Samson only ran an MLB team because of his then-stepfather’s influence.
“This is no disparagement, Dan,” insisted the ex-Miami Marlins president. “This is me telling you the truth about Jeff Passan and his information and where he gets it. And what he says, and the value that he perceives he has in the industry, is zero.
“I am alleging that when Jeff Passan is carrying water for agenda-laden things, like talking about the Pittsburgh Pirates, and they don’t deserve to have Paul Skenes, that there is a level of carrying water that bases his opinion,” Samson adds. “I don’t view him as a journalist. I view Jayson Stark, Ken Rosenthal, other such people, Buster Olney, Peter Gammons, as people in that space. He is an ‘insider’ who gets information. That’s how you’re an insider. Being an insider doesn’t make you a journalist.”
Passan, who has been openly critical of the Pirates, told The Pat McAfee Show earlier this week that Pittsburgh hasn’t proven worthy of someone like Paul Skenes and that the most exciting young pitcher in baseball has little incentive to sign a long-term deal with the team.
What incentive? Hmmm. Let me think…and Pirates aren’t worthy? This is like a Seinfeld episode. About nothing. https://t.co/vW1ANebt1C
— David P. Samson (@DavidPSamson) May 14, 2025
But this feud isn’t about nothing. It sure seems personal to us.