Yankees beat writers dunk all over fake Matt Olson trade rumor

Will Matt Olson be the next starting first baseman for the New York Yankees? Possibly.

Was a trade at the “one-yard line” on Tuesday afternoon? Absolutely f***ng not.

The Yankees need to clear out a ton of 40-man roster fluff by Friday, Nov. 19 in order to protect players from the Rule 5 draft. At the moment, the 40-man is completely full, so even if the front office only wants to protect one or two essentials like Everson Pereira (which wouldn’t go far enough, but we digress), they’d have to drop a pair of players.

That makes the next few days prime time for a trade, and one clout-chaser took advantage of the situation by asking Yankee fans to stay in their seats for a two-hour period on Tuesday, waiting for the Olson news to drop.

We won’t be linking that series of tweets here because we never want to see them again. But, rest assured, the Yankees did not trade for Matt Olson on Tuesday afternoon. The deal did not reach the “medicals” stage. The deal did not happen.

The match makes perfect sense, and a trade could be completed in the coming days. It wouldn’t shock us. That’s what made this scheme so devious. But the “promise” was a specific package on Tuesday, and seeing as it’s now Wednesday, it’s safe to say that was incorrect.

You know who else really enjoyed saying that? Yankees insiders Bryan Hoch and Lindsey Adler, who pulled no punches by rallying around a “one-yard line” GIF of their own.

Yankees beat writers dunked all over a fake Matt Olson report.

You know why we don’t try to be insiders on Twitter? Because being an insider is hard. It’s even harder if you don’t have sources. 

Adler continued the conversation in the aftermath, wondering when fandom flipped from “enjoying and analyzing the games” to “attempting to do journalism for free.” Unfortunately, there was a Patreon attached to this particular scoop that didn’t happen. That’s probably the ickiest thing about the situation.

This rumor spread far and wide, even seemingly reaching someone extremely close to Yankees catching prospect Austin Wells. That person spoke with such certainty about the deal that it seems like Wells himself believed he was getting dealt on Tuesday afternoon.

Also, the “trade talks” were happening while Wells was still actively playing in an Arizona Fall League game, but we digress.

Trafficking in rumors is a serious game. If you’ve spent your whole life making sure everyone knows that everything spoken on Twitter is completely binding and must be devoid of emotion and dominated by rational thought, then you’d better deliver when your number is called upon.

That sort of self-seriousness can make this app a very unpleasant place. Hope the followers were worth it. If a deal was going down, it ain’t anymore.

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