Baseball Tonight is the pregame studio show for ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball, airing ahead of the main broadcast. During ESPN’s run of Sunday Night Baseball from 1990 to 2025, the show preceded most weekly telecasts across ESPN and, on select occasions, ESPN2 and ABC. The current version of the show, Baseball Tonight: Sunday Night Countdown, has aired since 2017, after ESPN refreshed its Major League Baseball coverage.
The one-hour show delivers a detailed preview of that day’s baseball game matchups, covering key storylines, lineup news, and analysis from across the league. Regular segments include highlights from other games, Web Gems — the best defensive plays of the week — and replays of home runs. The broadcast team for live baseball games also makes appearances on the show, bridging the pregame and game coverage.
Karl Ravech served as lead host of Baseball Tonight — and by extension the Sunday Night Countdown edition — from 1996 through 2022. Kevin Connors took over as lead host in 2022 and has anchored the show since then. His regular desk for the Sunday edition featured National Baseball Hall of Fame sportswriter Tim Kurkjian, senior MLB insider Jeff Passan, and analysts Xavier Scruggs and Jessica Mendoza.
Connors joined ESPN in July 2008, coming from WCBS-TV in New York where he served as weekend sports anchor. Kurkjian has been part of the Baseball Tonight franchise since 1998, and Passan joined ESPN’s MLB coverage in 2019. Together, they formed one of ESPN’s most experienced baseball studio teams.
Starting March 26, 2026, Sunday Night Baseball moved from ESPN to NBC and Peacock. Consequently, this brought the Sunday Night Countdown era on ESPN to a close after the 2025 season. As a result, Baseball Tonight now airs in various time slots throughout the week before any games on ESPN and ABC.
