Fucking Will Carroll.
On Tuesday he reported: "Johan Santana to the Red Sox is all but done. Jon Lester, a center fielder, Justin Masterson and Ryan Kalish are the package. More details now."
1. A center fielder? You tricky bitch. Is it Crisp or Ellsbury? Do you know or not know? Use parallel structure or explain the deviation, motherfucker.
2. "More details now" is already wrong the moment anyone reads it.
3. And Carroll's next post didn't come until Wednesday, when he reported that medical issues were holding up the deal. Cancer, Carroll speculated in a sentence reeking of bullshit, was "not likely the issue here; the Sox, with their connections to The Jimmy Fund, have access to some of the best oncologists in the world." Will Carroll did not elaborate on when he became Baseball Prospectus writer by day and Jon Lester's doctor by night, along with when the cure for cancer was developed but kept secret to everyone but Jimmy Fund-affiliated doctors, the Red Sox, Jon Lester, and Will Carroll.
So, no Santana yet, but sports reporters enjoy the power trip.
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3 comments:
1. I didn't know, at the time it was posted. I knew that either Ellsbury or Crisp (more likely the latter) but couldn't get confirmation. So you call me a tricky bitch for admitting I didn't know?
2. Typo.
3. As a cancer survivor, I find your tone offensive -- and that's after your POS title. Lester's cancer isn't going to be able to be analyzed in a quick medical record set up. The reason medical records are requested are to check for things to check on. If the Twins (or any team) wanted to have Lester see an oncologist, they know enough to do so.
Next time I see you working at the Meetings or a ballgame, we'll see how you do.
- Will Carroll
I apologize, especially if you were offended by a seemingly flippant tone toward cancer. I hope and think an empathetic reading of my post would show what I intended—for the hostile tone to be directed entirely at your apparent lack of justification of your claims. My concern, here and throughout the post, was with the truth status of reporting surrounding the Johan Santana talks. The claim whose veracity I doubted incidentally involved cancer, and what I was doubting was your own foundation for your claim, as you were writing the claim, that Jon Lester's history with cancer was not the Twins' concern because the Red Sox have access to excellent oncologists. The foundation for your claim would have been clear if you had included in your original report the same concise explanation you gave me above. This would have clarified that your claim was based on an apparently sound logical guess, though not on specific knowledge of the Twins' concern or Lester's medical history. That was a fine foundation for the claim, under the circumstances, but without being more explicit about the basis for your claim, you opened yourself to critique when your claim didn't seem self-evident.
More broadly, in commenting on your report, I employed language that I thought was obvious hyperbole, with an exaggerated rage intended to be humorous. I was, that said, truly frustrated at what passed for reporting during the winter meetings. Suddenly, generally mature people seemed to act like stereotypical schoolgirls, reporting whatever they heard. You weren't the worst in absolute terms, but precisely because I regard your and Baseball Prospectus' work to be more credible and insightful than other baseball reporting and analysis, I found your near-guarantee that the Santana deal was "all but done" to be most frustrating of all. Especially when the basis for your claim that the deal was "all but done" went unexplained despite your promise to provide "more details now," in the context of a frequently updating rolling-blog format. Rather than keep readers guessing, you could have taken 10 seconds, later in the day, to say that you didn't yet know more but were working on it.
Regarding the mystery center fielder, your original post again could have easily contained what you wrote me--that you didn't know whether Crisp or Ellsbury was the center fielder. Your post didn't quite admit you didn't know. Readers could infer you didn't know but were left wondering why you didn't know. Was it because, as I quite reasonably inferred, there was serious discussion between the Sox and Twins of including Lester and Ellsbury together? Apparently you had no knowledge of such discussion, but you kept your readers wondering for some time and I'm not sure why.
At any rate, I am, believe it or not, one of your fans, a status to which the "Fucking Will Carroll" post is an admittedly unconventional tribute.
Jack
PS On further review, Will's work really sucks.
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