Raul Ibanez Hired by ESPN: Latest Details and Reaction

ESPN has hired former MLB player Raul Ibanez to join its Baseball Tonight team, contribute as an analyst on selected games and appear on SportsCenter, according to a Wednesday press release.

The hiring comes just a week after ESPN fired former MLB pitcher and Baseball Tonight analyst Curt Schilling for "commenting on and promoting a controversial anti-transgender meme on his Facebook page," per Mark Townsend of Yahoo News.   

Ibanez, 43, spent 19 seasons as an MLB player with the Seattle Mariners (three stints), Kansas City Royals (two stints), Philadelphia Phillies, New York Yankees and Los Angeles Angels. For his career, he hit .272 with 305 home runs and 1,207 RBI. He was an All-Star in 2009 and hit 20 or more home runs eight times in his career and 100 or more RBI four times.

Ibanez, who retired after the 2014 season, has served since February as a special assistant to Andrew Friedman, the president of baseball operations for the Los Angeles Dodgers. According to Travis Durkee of Sporting News, he will remain in that post.

He's set to debut on ESPN during this week's Wednesday Night Baseball broadcast at 8 p.m. ET. He's also been an analyst for Fox Sports.

“Raul is a guy who has great credibility, is really smart and is well-respected by those in and out of the game of baseball,” Fox Sports executive producer John Entz said of Ibanez after the network hired him in March 2015, per Richard Deitsch of Sports Illustrated. “As an analyst, we think he has an incredibly high ceiling.”

ESPN brass clearly agrees. Ibanez's experience in the game and his reputation as an intelligent player and media personality should serve him well in his new analyst role. 

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