Ken Rosenthal is the best reporter in the business. On MLB trade deadline day, he made two mistakes that will live on the timeline forever.
First, Rosenthal reported the Washington Nationals had traded pitcher “Griffin Foster” to the Cleveland Guardians for four prospects. That is a great story. It is also completely fake, because the pitcher’s actual name is Foster Griffin. He is a 2026 MLB All-Star. He was traded to the Guardians for four prospects. But his name is Foster Griffin, not Griffin Foster. Rosenthal had first name and last name flipped, on a nationally recognized All-Star, on the biggest day of the MLB news calendar.
Then he issued the correction. Twitter took no mercy.
Then, on the biggest deal of the entire deadline, the Tarik Skubal trade to the Los Angeles Dodgers, Rosenthal reported that Dodgers starter Emmet Sheehan had been included as part of the return going back to Detroit. Sheehan was not part of the deal. It was a real Dodgers pitcher name that could have plausibly been part of a Skubal package, and Rosenthal put it out there, and it turned out to be wrong.
Two errors in one afternoon on the biggest news day of the MLB summer. Even for a reporter with Rosenthal’s track record, that is a bad afternoon.
The context is important though. Rosenthal has been the gold standard of MLB reporting for two decades. He broke every big story of the last generation. He is faster, more accurate, and more sourced than almost any other beat reporter in any sport. He also happens to be human, and the trade deadline is the most chaotic 12-hour window in the entire baseball calendar. If you break 40 stories in a day, and 38 of them are perfect, and two are wrong, the timeline is going to focus on the two.
Twitter did what Twitter does. The screenshots of “Griffin Foster” were still circulating hours after the correction was issued. Somebody made a meme about Rosenthal’s bow tie failing him. Multiple accounts pointed out that Foster Griffin’s mother probably had opinions about her son’s name being flipped on national television. Rex Ryan’s face was photoshopped into it somehow. It got a life of its own.
The Sheehan piece is the bigger error because it changed the way people initially graded the Skubal trade. If Sheehan really had been included, the Tigers would have gotten a proven big league arm along with a prospect package. When it turned out he was not part of the deal, the whole “Tigers got fleeced” narrative got a lot louder. Scott Harris eventually had to defend his front office in a press conference partially because the initial trade grade was worse than the actual trade.
Rosenthal will bounce back. He always does. The next big story he breaks, everyone is going to forget about the Foster Griffin mix-up because they are going to be too busy reading the scoop. That is how it works when you are the best in the business.
But for one afternoon, the internet reminded Rosenthal that even the pros are one mistake away from being a meme.
The whole deadline was already chaos. Rosenthal just added to it.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
