TNT Sports signs MLB analyst Ron Darling to multiyear extension

TNT Sports announced Tuesday it had agreed to a multiyear extension with longtime Major League Baseball analyst Ron Darling.

The 65-year-old former MLB pitcher has been MLB on TBS’s lead game analyst since 2008 after joining TBS in 2007 for a guest spot as a studio analyst for the playoffs.

Darling told Sports Business Journal how excited he was when he signed his initial deal to join TBS.

“I was just like, I can’t believe it. I’m going to do national games,” Darling told SBJ. “I was so excited and wonderfully naïve about having a chance to be a national broadcaster. I feel like I’m a caretaker for these amazing athletes to chronicle what they do in October, and it’s a blessing for sure.”

Along with the 24 Tuesday night games it broadcasts during the 2025 MLB season, it will have exclusive coverage of the 2025 NLDS and ALCS.

Presumably, Darling’s deal coincides with Turner’s current MLB national rights deal, which runs through 2028.

Darling has also worked for SNY since 2006 as a color commentator and studio analyst for New York Mets coverage alongside Gary Cohen and Keith Hernandez. He also appears on SNY-produced WPIX broadcasts.

While Mets broadcasts can often have a touch of whimsy, he feels there is a “responsibility for the postseason to make sure that you not only get it right,” Darling told SBJ. “Because you want to make sure at the end of the day when someone throws a shutout or gets a big out, or like Turner hits a home run, that we capture it in such a way that their family, when the player is older and their grandkids are sitting on their lap and asking ‘Grandpa, how good were you as a player? Well, this is what happened.’ And they’re able to play that back, and we got it right. That’s a responsibility that I don’t take lightly, but I enjoy having the chance to do.”