Crazy season is upon us. The semi-annual rumor-fest, in which people hear this and that and run wild with speculation. Occasionally -- very occasionally -- there is actually some hard news in all of this nonsense.
But as Jeff Sullivan of Baseball Nation notes in an on-point column today, the least valuable of all of the rumors are the ones in which a team is said to be “willing to listen” to offers:
What general manager would ever not be willing to listen to listen to offers for a player? Do you understand how little effort it takes to answer a phone call? This isn’t even like checking your voicemail. Everybody hates checking their voicemail. This is like pressing the “answer” button and putting the phone on speaker while the other person talks. How stubborn, lazy, and closed-minded would a general manager have to be to not want to listen to offers?
As Jeff notes, everyone loves trade rumors. It’s one of the reasons why, for all of their faults, we keep track of them here.
But you gotta keep your critical-thinking skills handy when it comes to this sort of thing.
