As part of the unfortunate layoffs at ESPN this past week, their baseball coverage was gutted.  One of the top baseball reporters there is, Jayson Stark, was let go.  In addition, Baseball Tonight contributors Doug Glanville, Dallas Braden, and Raul Ibanez were also let go.  In fact, Baseball Tonight is essentially no more.  What was once one of the top shows covering baseball is now a once a week pre-game show for ESPN’s Sunday Night Game.

While you can certainly argue Baseball Tonight is not what is used to be, it still provided quality coverage.  Yes, Baseball Tonight was harmed by the MLB Network both in terms of the depth of coverage and the quality of analysts.  Still, Baseball Tonight mattered and had really good nights.  That’s no more.

In place of Baseball Tonight, ESPN has opted to go with Intentional Talk as its daily baseball coverage.  Both ESPN and MLB Network will air the show.  For a network that values First Take and Pardon the Interruption over good reporting, this should be no surprise.

Intentional Talk is as bad as it gets.  It’s just Charlie Rose and Kevin Millar with forced humor.  As usual, forced humor isn’t funny.  It’s what made the 2013 All Star and Legends Celebrity Softball game almost unbearable.

It should have been a lot of fun.  You had Darryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden, John Franco, and Mike Piazza on the same field.  There was also former Met Rickey Henderson playing.  Comedian Kevin James stole the show by taking the game way too seriously.  Over all of this was Rose and Millar doing play-by-play.  It was awful, not funny, and the worst thing there was at Citi Field that year during a season where Matt Harvey had a season ending injury.

The addition of Intentional Talk to ESPN is a reminder they do not care about good coverage or baseball for that matter.  They mostly care about personalities, and Millar was a memorable one from his playing days.  It doesn’t matter that the show isn’t good or watchable.  The only thing that matters is it isn’t Baseball Tonight.

Overall, the biggest loss we might have seen from the ESPN layoffs was them essentially announcing they are ceasing their high quality baseball coverage.  That’s a shame.