When asked by Jon Heyman if he had checked in with the Brewers to discuss Ryan Braun, Mets GM Sandy Alderson joked and said, “If you could count a four-word sentence as checking.”
When Heyman pressed for more details, Sandy replied that the entire extent of his discussion with the Brewers slugger was, “What’s up with Braun?”
Click.
That’s it, that’s the entirety of all the hubbub.
There was no discussion, no negotiation, and certainly no talk of swapping Ike Davis.
Braun is not available. Neither is Tulowitzki. Neither is Stanton.
Can we please suspend all this nonsensical chatter about players who are not available and that we can’t afford and discuss realistic options and possibilities instead? Can we?
Original Post 11/21
Since my interview yesterday with Brew Crew Ball’s Noah Jarosh who weighed in on the now famous (or infamous) Ryan Braun for Ike Davis trade rumor generated by SNY MetsBlog’s Matt Cerrone, things have reached a fever pitch.
Cerrone stated matter of factly that “there is a better chance the Brewers trade Ryan Braun for Ike Davis than deal Norichika Aoki, according to people familiar with the team’s thinking.”
He then added, “Braun is guaranteed $113 million over the next seven seasons, and buzz from Milwaukee suggests they’ll pay a good chunk of it to force a change of scenery.”
The problem here is that after a day of reaching out to several writers in Milwaukee, there is no such buzz. Everyone we asked all responded the same and called the rumor many things but mostly “laughable” and “weak.”
Let me share Noah’s original quote from my interview with him yesterday:
If anybody reported that seriously, they should probably be required to give off at least 10 credible sources. There’s no way the Brewers trade Ryan Braun this offseason. He is way, way too valuable at this point still and there is no chance the team would receive fair value for him.
Even if the Brewers wanted to trade him (they don’t), GM Doug Melvin is smart enough that he wouldn’t take a deal for below-average value.
Braun for Ike Davis is laughable, unless the Brewers are getting something like Wheeler and another top prospect or a healthy Harvey thrown in. If Mets fans think that’s way too much, that just shows why Braun won’t be moved.
Of course Noah is spot on. Can you imagine the Brewers not only trading “Braun for Davis,” but also asking them to “eat a sizable chunk of his contract?”
Preposterous. I would expect more from SNY. I would expect more from Matt Cerrone.
I reached out to Matt yesterday afternoon and asked him if he was now a news source and journalist, but he declined to comment. Too bad, I really wanted to get his backstory on this.
“With great power comes great responsibility.”
The danger of having as large a soapbox as Matthew Cerrone is that you also run the risk of the “Pied Piper Effect”.
Whatever he says is swallowed whole by tens of thousands who hang on every word he says. You know the old saying, “If you repeat a lie often enough it begins to sound like the truth.”
And wouldn’t you know it – about a dozen other Mets sites and a half-dozen more mainstream sites ran with the Braun/Davis rumor and either took to their keyboards to post on it or left about 600 comments mostly saying “the Mets gotta do this trade!”
I’m sure they all believed in the veracity of it, even though they ignored everything about that rumor that made it patently false and wholly unrealistic. It came from Matt Cerrone so it must be true.
It says a lot when Tim Dierkes of MLB Trade Rumors makes no mention of it on his great site. No doubt that he did his due diligence, made some calls, and saw there was nothing real or tangible there.
Even Adam Rubin who was asked his thoughts on this trade last night by our own Ed Marcus, responded by laughing and then saying,
“Sorry, I’d rather not comment on some internet sourced rumor.”
This morning, Noah Jarosh gave some more in depth thoughts to his readers at Brew Crew Ball.
Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear dear dear. Poor, sweet, Matthew Cerrone. I understand page views are important. I do. We, the viewers, are the product being marketed to those advertisers. I love page views! But oh my god you aren’t going to get more page views by making stupid articles like this.
Stop making fans who read your site stupider by writing about inane things like this. Whoever these people familiar with the Brewers thinking are, next time they come up to you, just pretend you’re listening while writing about something that might actually have a grain of truth to it.
You can read his full post here and I’m quite sure that once you’re done you’ll get this Braun for Davis nonsense out of your heads.
I think we have a responsibility to our readers to be up front and straightforward.
If you’re going to post that the Brewers would trade for Ike Davis and eat a sizable portion of Braun’s contract as well, back it up with some quotes or names or links.
You can’t just fling a peanut butter sandwich on the wall and hope it sticks. There are many who do this and get away with it all the time – usually small mom and pop blogs that are trying to get some attention. But MetsBlog should be above this sort of behavior.
Blogs like ours should be held to higher standard. We have a responsibility to our readers who expect a lot more from us. They entrust us with providing them accurate reporting as well as strong and passionate opinions about our team.
This heavy handed response by me and others is not a knock on your opinion, God knows I tick my own readership off all the time with my own opinions. But when it comes to the “reporting news part of our jobs”, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it.
Yesterday, you did it the wrong way, and many Met fans and bloggers ran with a rumor about Braun that was not credible according to everyone I spoke to who who covers the Brewers on a daily basis.
Our readers deserve better than that.
And so today we have this:
- The Brewers say they do not intend to trade OF Ryan Braun, according to multiple reports. However, “Keep an eye on him in the future,” writes Andy Martino.
- The Brewers do not intend to trade Braun, who has a partial no-trade clause, according to the team’s GM writes Ken Rosenthal.
- A team source discounted the idea of the Mets trading for Braun, who would likely cost Noah Syndergaard writes Mike Puma.
And so it goes…
