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Trevor Bauer has said a lot of outlandish things, baseball related and otherwise.
But no matter what you think of the guy, if you’re a major news outlet reporting on the status of an injured player, you might want to do some extra fact-checking when you decide to report on a tweet.
Would hate for you to get got by a claim as silly as a player “ridding his body of CIA nanites” using “colloidal soliver,” such as this fairly obvious joke by The Ringer’s Michael Baumann.
Trevor Bauer says that the doctors' timeline for his return is based on outdated mainstream medicine and he's begun a course of blood transfusions and colloidal silver to rid his body of CIA nanites. He anticipates missing two starts, three tops.
— Michael Baumann (@MJ_Baumann) August 17, 2018
Wait a minute
*holds earpiece*
I’m being told that’s exactly what happened.
MLBNetwork just aired this and read it in a serious tone lol. They have no idea. @MLBNetwork pic.twitter.com/KwHqKSC2IH
— @__hoss (@__hoss2) August 18, 2018
While I don’t have video of it myself (despite putting a gracious bounty of five Schrute Bucks out for it), multiple people on Twitter have claimed to see Baumann’s tweet stated as fact on MLB Network and on ESPN’s crawler, including Bauer and an unnamed teammate.
For anyone who thinks this is actually true, it’s not. Saw this on the crawl of espn. Couldn’t hear the audio so not sure how they’re presenting it but it is not true at all. @espn https://t.co/cwITJLrrxi
— Trevor Bauer (@BauerOutage) August 18, 2018
A teammate actually informed me about it and asked where I was getting my blood transfusions. Completely took me by surprise and took us 5 minutes to figure out why neither of us knew what the other was talking about.
— Trevor Bauer (@BauerOutage) August 18, 2018
I mean, sure, on one hand Baumann is a guy who reports on baseball players and occasionally may tweet real quotes from players for context. If you’re some guy scrolling quickly on Twitter without knowing Michael Baumann’s sense of humor, maybe you think that’s real because your eyes glaze over the words “CIA nanites” and move on with your life.
But if you’re ESPN or MLB Network and presumably multiple people read the tweet before it goes on air, you might want to re-evaluate some things. Like, holy hell, that should be the job of several people to make sure whatever you’re making some poor soul read live on television isn’t just a joke.
Maybe that’s just the CIA nanites talking, though.