Bloops: Who Gets the Scoop?
Posted by Andy on January 23, 2011
Dave Gershman of Beyond the Box Score has posted a chart showing which reporters have broken the most correct stories regarding major-league deals this off-season. Ken Rosenthal and Jon Heyman come out particularly well.
January 23rd, 2011 at 8:40 am
I don't like it! There is no penalty for reporting false or incorrect stories.
January 23rd, 2011 at 10:15 am
@1 -
I agree.
January 23rd, 2011 at 11:37 am
It's a fair point, but when it comes to reports of signings or trades, I don't think there are many incorrect reports. Keep in mind this guy isn't looking at rumors, guesses, etc--lots of journalists make predictions that don't come true. Rather this guy is looking at when a player has moved teams, who is the first to report it? It's not too often that someone reports that player X has signed with team Y and later it turns out to be wrong.
January 23rd, 2011 at 1:18 pm
Raise your hand if you believe there is a connection to Rosenthal and Heyman being on the top of this list and their employment with MLBNetwork.
The former players who are analysts at the Network get the info and share it around the office, with Heyman and Rosenthal standing outside like two 15 year old girls, seeing who can text or update Twitter the fastest.
January 23rd, 2011 at 1:24 pm
Chuck, that's one good example of what I'm sure are many complexities in baseball journalism. For example, I'm sure that it's not uncommon for an agent to call one of the journalists to give them "the scoop" on a signing in exchange for having that same journalist float some other story out there--for example that a mystery team is interested in some other free agent. That way, the player agent can take advantage of one piece of news to try to get a better deal for another client, and he and the media are using each other for their own ends.
January 23rd, 2011 at 1:55 pm
Buster Olney admitted to fabricating the Howard for Pujols rumor last year.
I'll never forget the images two years ago with Olney on the radio "breaking" the story Mark Teixeira had been traded from Atlanta to.......Boston, while, simultaneously, Tim Kirkjian was live on ESPN saying the Angels.
Two guys, employed by the same network with the same job responsibilities, with one looking like a complete ass just because he wanted to be first with the story.
And that commerical with Olney walking out of the ESPN building getting a phone call from Ichiro and talking Japanese makes me want to take a shower everytime I see it, for two reasons....
1) Players don't talk to the media unless it suits their own agenda;
2) Ichiro doesn't talk to anyone, ever.
January 23rd, 2011 at 7:13 pm
Thanks for using my post, I have to admit that I didn't think of this article on my own. It was just common sense. I love the work of Heyman, but I think Olney takes the cake as my favorite. He is like a role model to me!
January 24th, 2011 at 3:12 pm
I always wonder -- what's the big deal about being the first to report a trade? The team is going to make an official announcement, right? How do we benefit by having the information for a few hours or days before the announcement comes?
I really don't understand this phenomenon. It's similar to the "coverage" of the annual "story" of whether or not Brett Favre will (finally) retire. What can we possibly gain from all the speculation? When it happens, we'll know. Until it happens, we won't really know a thing, no matter what we hear.
I would just as soon never hear a rumor about ... anything, really.
January 24th, 2011 at 3:17 pm
JA, I think it's part of the immediacy and instant gratification that is so prevalent these days. See also Facebook updates, Twitter, etc. Information seems to be traveling a lot faster although I am not sure that anybody at all is benefiting.
January 24th, 2011 at 11:01 pm
"Information seems to be traveling a lot faster although I am not sure that anybody at all is benefiting."
Certainly, there are drawbacks from all this quickly traveling information. But news by definition has some immediacy. Also the official announcement often comes earlier -- in some cases much earlier -- because it has been reported by the news media.
Of course, you are free to ignore all those reports with unnamed sources and wait until the team or the league calls a press conference if that makes you feel better.
January 25th, 2011 at 12:38 pm
@10, Tom: "But news by definition has some immediacy."
-- Well, yes, but isn't that statement veering towards tautology? What I'm saying is, a large portion of what is treated as "news" actually has no immediacy. I'm still waiting for someone explain the value -- as he sees it, for his own purposes -- of getting the dope on some big trade 6 hours, 12 hours, or 24 hours before the official announcement.
I think newness (or "news-ness") has become a fetish. We have habitual urgency for its own sake. People want to know what is going to happen before it happens, even when the advance timing of that information cannot possibly be of any use to them, except to have a conversation about it on Monday instead of on Tuesday.
January 25th, 2011 at 12:54 pm
JA, my own take on this is that the "newness" is a fad whereby people feel a sense of superiority if they are the first to tell their friends or colleague about a piece of news. He who has the "new news" appears to be someone who is tapped in to the inner workings of society, who somehow has an elevated social status. To me, it's all utter BS--a contest among nobodies where one person "wins" simply by making the other person feel like a loser.
January 25th, 2011 at 4:20 pm
This is so stupid, what skill does this represent? Is this supposed to show anything besides who knows the most people or who has the most damning photographs of agents? This is worse than ranking pitchers by wins or fielders by fielding%. I totally agree with #8 and #12, but I have an addition possible reason which is that ESPN NEEDS to have a certain nnumbers of "stories" to be new every single day so their morons have enough things to talk about on PTI and all the other terrible shows/radio shows. Therefore these trade rumors/all the other speculation crap/Brett Favre fabricated rumors need to be reported because if the only thing to talk about was sports themselves they wouldnt be able to have "new" stories to fill up 10 hours of sportstalk with everyday.