Beltran Trade Rumors: Sports Journalism Or Word Vomit?

The reporting on the Carlos Beltran trade front is now so full of mindless ramblings that it has become too difficult to separate the fact from the fiction.

It has deteriorated into a non-stop barrage of endless speculation, passed off as facts, from about a dozen different sports journalists all caught up in a manic, never-ending game of “Twitter Tag”. It’s a new low in sports journalism – shoddy reporting, too many inaccuracies, no fact-checking and everything is based on unnamed sources which is somehow supposed to assure us of it’s veracity. The problem is that It doesn’t.

It’s become a 24 hour news cycle on crack and I use the word “news” very loosely.

I don’t even know if the Carlos Beltran coverage can still be construed as sports journalism anymore. Rather it’s just a handful of ego-driven writers from a dying print media industry, trying to keep their names out there by tweeting like a bunch of teeny boppers after a Justin Bieber concert.

If you erased all their names and mixed it all up with everything else in the blogosphere, could anyone tell what came from the actual sports writers or what was produced by a 16 year old blogger at home on his notebook computer? I think not.

The worst and most irritating part to all of this is that none of these journalists or columnists seem to agree on anything. Not one damned thing. They spend hours upon hours, and tweets upon tweets reporting indiscernible gibberish and word vomit – 140 characters at a time.

They attribute quotes almost daily to Carlos Beltran, who then has to deny making those comments each night before every Mets game in front of a dozen cameras and recorders.

“I never told the Mets I would refuse a trade to an American League team”, Beltran said. “I don’t know where these guys get all this stuff. It’s not coming from me.”

How are we supposed to follow it all when they themselves are clueless as to which team is interested in Beltran and what that level of interest is?

The rumors are not even believable most of the time and it’s almost as if their goal is to see who among them can be the most absurd. I’ve already called out the most outlandish of these reports, numerous times on this site – pointing out the sheer lunacy in what they portray as facts, but are really just fabrications.

I wish the Mets would just trade Beltran already so we can get all this needless drama behind us.

I’d much rather discuss other Mets topics like who will be our opening day right fielder in 2012, do Parnell or Beato have the stomach to close, and what will our middle infield look like next season.

Regarding Beltran, I stand by what I’ve said all along, and that is that when all is said and done, the Mets will get a mediocre prospect, maybe two, and the team will still kick in a bunch of cash. If Alderson is really playing hardball and asking for a team’s top prospect in return for Beltran, most of them will simply bow out and turn their attention elsewhere.

The real story about Carlos Beltran is that there isn’t any story… not yet anyway.

In 4-5 days, we’ll tell you which team traded for Beltran and what the Mets got in return for him. Until then, enjoy Carlos Beltran Appreciation Week at MMO.

Let me suggest the following great posts for your reading pleasure: