Don’t believe every tweet that shows up

A satirical tweet about Cleveland Indians pitcher Trevor Bauer left both ESPN and MLB Network red-faced after the All-Star called them out for presenting the joke as a serious report.

Bauer hit the disabled list Tuesday with a stress fracture in his right fibula, an injury expected to keep him out until at least midSeptember. Michael Baumann, a baseball writer for The Ringer website and a fairly prolific tweeter, posted a joke Friday afternoon that Bauer believed his rehab would be shorter thanks to a different course of treatment.

That treatment? A series of blood transfusions and colloidal silver supplements to flush out CIA nanites from his body. It was a joke meant to echo past controversial statements from Bauer, but it was obvious Baumann was not being serious. Well, it should have been. MLB Network, which ran with the report on its recap show

Quick Pitch and posted the tweet in full, said they were “additional comments from Bauer.”

MLB Network aired a clarification Saturday that it had made a mistake in reporting on Baumann’s tweet and provided the correct information about Bauer’s rehab.

That episode was bad enough, but then ESPN jumped into the fray. Bauer called out the network Saturday for taking the tweet seriously and posted the news on ESPN’s scrolling “Bottom Line.”

Bauer said news of the “reports” reached him when a Cleveland teammate approached him and asked where he was getting his blood transfusions. In what must have been a scene comparable to a post-modern Abbot and Costello, it reportedly took the players five minutes to figure out what they were talking about.

Bauer demanded public statements from both networks a few hours later, calling the reports “damaging and absurd.”

Baumann also seemed rightfully displeased that ESPN and MLB Network put his name on a clearly fake report.

That an incident like this involves Bauer isn’t a total surprise, as Bauer has always carried an unusual online presence and a hostile relationship with parts of the media, which are two key ingredients in the recipe that led to this bizarre situation.

Bauer has claimed he only signs one-year deals because a multiyear deal would result in him getting shot in the groin with a paintball gun because of a bet. He loves drones to the point he missed a playoff start after cutting his finger on one, and he publicly has accused the Astros of doctoring baseballs.

But this time, the controversy is no fault of Bauer’s.

AP/TONY DEJAK Cleveland Indians starting pitcher Trevor Bauer, who is on the disabled list with a stress fracture in his right fibula, was not happy when a satirical tweet about him using blood transfusions to treat his injury was taken seriously by ESPN and the MLB Network.