So the Dodgers signed Shohei Ohtani. Big whoop, whatever, I’m not mad, you’re mad.
But Ohtani will not pitch this season. And the Dodgers are in desperate need of pitchers. And they are a rich team, with lots of money to spend. And there happens to be an excellent pitcher on the market right now — like, right this second! — who will cost an uncommonly large amount of money. And did the Dodgers have a meeting with him, to which they brought several of their superstar players, including their newest one, who personally directed that more than 85% of his salary be deferred solely so that the Dodgers could make further big free agent signings?
Well that seems ominous!
Now, as Substack’s officially sanctioned Rumor Patrol, we here at It Would Be Nice If The Giants Were Good have a duty to inform you of every rumor we’ve heard, no matter how small. We must keep you, the faithful IWBNITGWB reader, informed about goings on in baseball, and the best way to do that is to pass on unsourced information and then say, “Trust me, it’s legit,” while never backing this up in any way.
So is Yoshinobu Yamamoto signing with the Dodgers? Well, I may or may not have a source that says he is. Is my source two children in a trenchcoat, one standing on the other’s shoulders? I can’t comment on that, but if it was, then that would technically be two different sources, and therefore corroboration.
You might be wondering, hey, if you can’t actually tell us that something is happening, how do we know if there is any truth to these rumors at all? How do we know that this entire newsletter is not a bald-faced desperate attempt to get more eyeballs on your website? What exactly is stopping you from making up a rumor, using it to drive traffic, and then distracting us with some cute picture or something?
My answer to that is simple: Look at this monkey.
Aw, adorable! Who even remembers any complaints that you may or may not have had against me personally anymore? I sure don’t!
But look, any alleged-but-unproven-in-a-court-of-law cynical attempt that I’m making to juice pageviews is not actually the main point here. Because we all remember this happening on Friday just last week, when a Dodgers website reported that Ohtani was going to the Blue Jays. And then he didn’t! That worked out for the writer of the article, who had a fair amount to gain by being incorrect, at the cost of some embarrassment that will last forever.
So why not leverage that same universe laughing at you for being wrong energy into doing some good for the world? Because no one wants Yamamoto on the Dodgers, aside from some easily ignored Dodger fans, all I have to do is claim to have a source that says he’s going to the Dodgers, and he’ll go somewhere else. Maybe that somewhere else will even be the Giants! Probably not, because they’re rarely a destination for the top of the market free agents, but you might as well try, so here I am, trying.
Now, if you’re entering Baseball Analysis Mode, you might think that the Yankees, a deep pocketed team with a disaster of a starting rotation (after Gerrit Cole, anyway) would be the natural favorites for Yamamoto. But I have EXCLUSIVE INSIDE INFORMATION (Yet another scoop for the Rumor Patrol!) that the Yankees are absolutely not signing him:
You can always trust Bob to be completely wrong about these things. So we don’t have to worry about the Yankees.
No, at this point, it’s looking like the Dodgers will sign Yamamoto. And sure, to you that’s just a rumor, but remember, we here are the Rumor Patrol, and we are therefore in charge of these kinds of things. Is my source legitimate? Well, I can assure you that there is a person who is legitimately my source for writing this, and whether that person is me or not, you have to trust that he would not lead you wrong unless there were some kind of personal motivation spelled out three paragraphs above this one.
In conclusion, I do not make up the rumors, except for possibly right now. I only report on what I’m told. I can assure you that no agent is using me to discuss a team in order to get a better deal from a wholly different team. That’s because I’m smart. It’s because I have integrity. It’s certainly not because my newsletter isn’t influential enough for someone to want to do that. I can tell you that for sure. I mean, I heard a rumor about it.
Dunno who's the bigger eejit, Nightengale, Bowden, or Law.
Enough hot air to reinflate the Hindenburg.