Baseball Rumor Mill About To Get Ridiculous

You're bored at work, so you're using your internet to do something other than whatever work you have on your plate.  Your favorite team is a buyer at the trade deadline for the first time in ages.  Or maybe you've been through this every year.  Or maybe you're a Royals or Pirates fan and you're just wondering if you'll ever have a veteran last beyond a trade deadline.

You'll click on stories by 10 different columnists, all giving you "the latest scoop" on rumors involving players potentially on the move.  Maybe you're a Washington Nationals fan - yes, rumor has it that they exist - and are freaking out that Stephen Strasburg may not sign a contract by the August deadline.

You're hearing tweets.  You're seeing conflicting information.  Your blood pressure is going up.

Guess what?

You're wasting your time.

These people think they know.  And some of the elite media (Peter Gammons, for one) get juicy tidbits more than some of the lessers, because front offices around baseball know this is a scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours business.  They'll give a guy like Gammons, a Hall of Famer, small scoops because in turn, he will be the guy who makes you look great as a GM down the road somewhere.  He also knows fact from freak-tion.

People freak out so much about things like the Roy Halladay dealings.  The chances that he gets dealt are remote, but stories about the Mets being in on them are only printed because of the size of the New York readership of most prominent sports websites and magazines.  He's far more likely to go to friggin' Milwaukee than the Mets, people.  And it's not likely that he's going to either.  But the Mets have no farm system left and are almost dead out of contention.

You'll hear that Adrian Gonzalez is about to be traded to Boston.  Of course, you'll ignore the direct quote from the new owner of the team two days ago saying he absolutely won't be traded.

Front offices know just how much the media - and in turn, us the fans - salivate at rumors.  They feed misinformation out there sometimes on purpose, so as to either trick fans into thinking they are trying, or to stave off other teams from knowing their game plan.

Worried that Strasburg won't sign?  Don't believe the ESPN.com rumors.  They printed a story Tuesday whose title suggested the Nationals were near failure in their negotiation efforts.  The same story, buried at the bottom, had a quote from an important club official saying that this would not be played out in the media.

The best thing you can do to decipher these rumors is look at things like contracts, controllable years, prospect depth, and the standings.  The worst things you could do are to take team or agent quotes at their word, or believe that any sportswriter is truly giving you a true scoop.

(Photo: Getty Images)

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Chase Parker believes in the East Coast bias, stretching triples into doubles, and considers Tommy Boy to be the greatest athlete of our generation.

Unless otherwise stated, no particular sexual orientation of anyone depicted is implied or should be presumed.