NL Cy Young Winner Trevor Bauer Exposes MLB Network's Jon Heyman For Being Fake News

Deciphering between the truth from a fabrication from sports writers is becoming a sport in itself. MLB Network's Jon Heyman reported yesterday that NL Cy Young winner Trevor Bauer, who is now a free agent, wasn't returning to Cincy because he was "too expensive".

We should be able to honor that report as factual "news", since that is Heyman's job, but that's not where we are in this era of click-bait journalism. Trevor Bauer decided he'd seen enough and dunked on Heyman.

Instead of Heyman recognizing he got too far ahead of himself--he doubled down. Yes, a sports writer is now insisting he understands the finances of the Cincinnati Reds more than a player who played for the organization. This is 2020 journalism in a nutshell.

Aside from Heyman's virtue signaling mask edit in his Twitter profile picture, you'd think he would be more self aware and understanding of his limitations. Jon Heyman didn't play professional baseball, so he should've grasped by now that he's simply texting and calling around to figure out what is true to report. By definition, that's the job description when MLB Network decided to bring him on.

Now, not even the players can stop our sports writers and their egos. If you dare to question their facts, then you're a "know it all" that doesn't accept the news that's presented. For anyone that's sat back and watched Trevor Bauer navigate his career, he's always strived to be transparent. Bauer used this decision making by Jon Heyman to illustrate a major problem in journalism today.

Athletes should have more say in how they're covered

Why can't Trevor Bauer, his agent Rachel Luba, or his media company (Watch Momentum) be in charge of communicating with the fans? Let's ditch the middle-man TMZ style worker that gossips their way into Twitter wars with our game's best players.

I should say, Jon Heyman is not alone in his negligence yesterday. Sports writers almost have to adopt this mindset of being more of an author than they are a factual reporter. Their job is described to us as a reporter, but maybe their job is more realistically to entertain with the news. If the news is boring and uneventful, then they don't get paid.

Instead of bashing writers, we should spend more time empowering our athletes to ditch these middle-man nerds. Unfortunately, Jon won't be able to get into it with me as he blocked me on Twitter a few months back. This serves as an open invitation to Mr. Heyman for a dialogue.