Deals … or no deals?
Twins post fake trades on board
Even the Twins’ scoreboard operator is swinging and missing.
In the middle of the Twins’ game against the Orioles in Minneapolis on Thursday night, the scoreboard operator posted a list of five trades, which purportedly had been finalized, in a scroll on one of Target Field’s side monitors.
The only problem was none of the trades listed actually had occurred.
It seems likely the scoreboard operator may have been tricked by one of the many fake Twitter accounts that spring up around the time of the MLB trade deadline.
At 8:45 p.m. Thursday, a fake Twitter account, supposedly operated by ESPN’s Buster Olney, posted a trade between the Indians and Yankees had been agreed to, with Carlos Beltran going to Cleveland in exchange for journeyman Mike Clevinger.
Without verifying the tweet’s authenticity, the scoreboard operator posted that trade and four others, which included the Athletics trading Josh Reddick to the Dodgers, the Brewers trading pitcher Will Smith to the Mets, the Angels trading Huston Street to the Nationals and the Royals trading Edinson Volquez to the Dodgers.
Beltran has been rumored as a target of the Indians and Smith has been coveted by the Mets, who want to improve the back end of their bullpen for a possible playoff push.
All the trades were proven to be false within minutes, but that didn’t stop the Indians from wishing for it to be true on their Twitter account.
At 9:07 p.m., the Indians tweeted directly at the Twins with the shortest of replies. “.@Twins thx guys,” they wrote. The MLB trade deadline is Aug. 1 at 4 p.m.