Passan began covering baseball in 2004 at
The Kansas City Star, before moving to
Yahoo! two years later. After 13 years at Yahoo! (2006–2018), he announced that he was joining ESPN's baseball team in January 2019. In 2022, Passan signed a four-year, $4 million contract extension with
ESPN. While working at
ESPN, he makes guest appearances on
SportsCenter,
Get Up,
The Rich Eisen Show,
The Pat McAfee Show and other ESPN studio shows. In 2018, while at
Yahoo! Sports, Passan declined to submit his
Baseball Hall of Fame ballot after Hall of Famer
Joe Morgan circulated a letter urging voters to bar players linked to performance-enhancing drugs. He has since argued that the Hall’s continued exclusion of candidates such as
Barry Bonds and
Roger Clemens represents a failure of the voting process. In March 2024, Passan's reporting detailed that
Los Angeles Dodgers interpreter
Ippei Mizuhara had transferred at least $4.5 million from
Shohei Ohtani’s bank account to an illegal bookmaker, leading to Mizuhara’s dismissal and law-enforcement inquiries. Passan is the author of
The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports, and the co-author of
Death to the BCS: The Definitive Case Against the Bowl Championship Series. == Awards and recognition ==