I thought I’d left this life behind. I thought my We Tried tracking days were behind me. I spent the past week covering trades that happened. Real trades, where one player (or two players, or three players, or a theoretical pile of international bonus pool money) moved from one team to another in exchange for one other player (or two other players, or, well, you get it). But just when I thought I was out, the Brewers pulled me back in. Of all teams, the Brewers! I started tracking We Trieds following the 2024 season, and over two offseasons, Milwaukee put up two goose eggs. The Brewers never gave me a single We Tried to track. Now they’ve had such a dramatic We Tried that they’re dragging me kicking and screaming out of We Tried retirement. What a world. Oh, and the Red Sox roped me back in too, because of course they did. But let’s start in Milwaukee.

As you might have learned from Michael Baumann, the Brewers were considered a real contender to land Tarik Skubal. That alone does not a We Tried make, but on Tuesday, MLB.com’s Adam McCalvy spilled all sorts of beans about their ace chase. McCalvy talked to “multiple club officials” and found the Brewers uncharacteristically forthcoming. He learned that although top overall prospect Jesús Made was off limits, the Brewers offered shortstop Luis Peña, whom we have ranked 26th overall on our updated Top 100 Prospects list, and two other position player prospects. One of those other prospects was also a Top 100 talent, which, depending on whose top 100 you’re talking about, could mean Brady Ebel, Jett Williams, Josh Adamczewski, or Luis Lara (though probably not Lara, as the Brewers signed him to an extension in June). That’s quite a lot of specifics.

A friend sent this article to me within an hour of its publication. It hits all the We Tried hallmarks. It lays out the offer the Brewers made, speculates on the players included and the players the Dodgers would have liked them to include. As I read on, I couldn’t help myself. I knew I’d have to get back in the game. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the reasons I’ve enjoyed tracking We Trieds over the past year is that there’s so much gray area involved. When a team gets the word out that it was also interested in a player who signed with another team, that information takes a circuitous journey. Its source is indeterminate. It’s usually laundered through one or several reporters. When it finally makes its way into the discourse, it emerges on social media, slips out during a podcast, or appears in boldface at the top of a sports section. You’re never quite sure whether the phrasing comes from the reporter or the source or some combination of the two. Most importantly, you never know how much truth is behind it.

The Mets “had some interest” in Pete Alonso, “showed interest” in Raisel Iglesias, “checked in on” Robert Suarez, and “made a reasonable try” for Tyler Rogers. Which player did they want the most? Which player did they expend the most effort to land? Even if you have strong opinions about what all of those words actually mean, you can’t ever be sure. The absence of hard facts leaves plenty of room for interpretation and silly jokes. Today, however, we’re going to focus on two We Trieds that seem, if anything, too real. Will we still make stupid jokes? Yes, we will. We will make them extra stupid. That’s not just our right; it’s our sacred duty. Read the rest of this entry »

ORLANDO — Congratulations, everybody. We made it. It’s now Thursday, and the Winter Meetings have officially concluded. It’s time to reflect on the state of effort in Major League Baseball, and I am pleased to report that it is strong. At this time last year, we had seen 22 We Trieds (though a few more would be added retroactively due to a rule clarification). As of now, we’re sitting at 24, so let’s take a moment to congratulate all the agents, the anonymous sources, and the reporters who took us this far. As always, I invite you to peruse this vast bounty on the official We Tried Tracker.

Before we break down the last couple days, I should start with an important update on the most recent entry of this series. When news broke that the Giants asked for Tatsuya Imai’s medicals even though they didn’t plan on pursuing him, I gave it an intentionally cumbersome moniker: We’re Not Even Going To Try, So Don’t Bother Getting Your Hopes Up. This was a classic defense mechanism. I went with the big, long name to deflect from the fact that I couldn’t come up with a clever, pithy one. But the right name came to me this week. In the future, such a move will be known as a Pre-Tried. I have spoken.

Since that last update, Bob Nightengale took a new angle on this exercise, packaging the news that the Reds “were hoping to sign” Devin Williams with the news that they had actually re-signed Emilio Pagán. It’s a brilliant maneuver. You sign a lesser player while also announcing that you were also thinking even bigger. We Trieds are all about partial credit, but here are the Reds, breaking out the razzle dazzle and running an end-around in a bid for double credit!

This strategy is also something of a double-edged sword, though. Some fans might give the Reds the double credit they want, but it’s also easy to take the information in the other direction. The Reds held onto a good reliever, Reds fans! Let’s celebrate! Oh, also, they only got him because they tried and failed to get an even better reliever? Do you still want to celebrate? Try pulling that move with a child. Take them to an ice cream shop and get them a kid’s cone. Once they’ve given it a big lick and smiled their adorable little smile, lean over and say, “You know, I was hoping to get you a giant ice cream sundae, but you’ll have to settle for this little one because the New York Mets ordered it first.” Read the rest of this entry »

A lot has happened since we launched the 2026 version of the We Tried tracker a few weeks ago. With the Winter Meetings about to kick off, we’ve seen 14 We Trieds from 10 different teams concerning eight different free agents. (As always, you can keep track of them all at this link.) That may sound like a lot this early in free agency, but it’s worth noting that 10 of our Top 50 free agents are already off the board (though three of those players accepted the qualifying offer, which means nobody had the chance to try). I suspect we’re a bit behind last year’s pace. Hopefully more news about teams’ pursuits will leak out in the coming months. The big number we’re shooting for here is 100: Last year, the offseason closed with 99 We Trieds. Let’s make it to triple digits!

More will certainly come. Raisel Iglesias is currently leading the pack with four We Trieds, but don’t be surprised if Ryan Helsley overtakes him. Multiple reports said that fully half the teams in the league were interested in Helsley, but we only have two actual We Trieds so far, and one came from Helsley himself. Helsley told reporters that the Tigers were particularly interested in signing him as a starting pitcher, which isn’t a surprise, but his phrasing was particularly fun. He said the Tigers were “in on me heavy.” Honestly, I don’t have any jokes here. It’s just a slightly odd grammatical construction that I will probably think about twice a day for the next few years of my life. Before this week, you could be in on something. You could maybe even be heavily in on it. But now you can be in on it…heavy. Sometimes language evolves just like lifeforms, one mutation at a time. Read the rest of this entry »

Well sports fans, it’s that time again. We Tried season is officially upon us, and for the second offseason in a row, I will be keeping my eye fixed firmly on the periphery of the action. For the uninitiated, We Tried is a noun in this context. It’s the name for the phenomenon of reporters announcing, once a player has signed with a team, that another team was interested in signing that player too. Team A might have succeeded in landing the player in question, but Team B wants to make sure the public knows that they failed to sign him because they want credit for that failure. It is both our duty and great honor to award that credit. The illustrious Jon Becker has once again graciously offered to host the We Tried Tracker on his maniacally comprehensive MLB Matrices spreadsheet, so be sure to check there for all the latest in major league effort.

Jeff Passan, ESPN’s officially-licensed baseball bombardier, kicked off the real offseason bright and early on Tuesday morning (Becker tipped me off to the news not long after). At 7:00 AM, Passan published an offseason preview that featured a key piece of information about Josh Naylor, who agreed to return to the Mariners this past weekend:

The largest free agent contract the Pirates have ever handed out was more than a decade ago: three years and $39 million to Francisco Liriano. They are consistently a bottom-five payroll team. And yet the Pirates were primed to spend more than twice that on Josh Naylor before he re-upped with Seattle for five years and $92.5 million in the first signing of the winter on Sunday night — and they’re considering other possibilities to supplement Paul Skenes and a rotation that was among the five best in MLB in the second half.

Read the rest of this entry »

A lot has happened in the past week. When times were simpler, back when the Phillies signed David Robertson three lifetimes and somehow only two weeks ago, I raised the possibility that we might bring back the We Tried tracker for the trade deadline. It wasn’t a sure thing, because the trade deadline isn’t really the time for We Trieds. They tend to happen over the offseason, when news is slow and multiple teams are bidding on free agents – which is why Robertson had so many reported suitors – rather than when teams are trying to swing trades. Loose lips can sink the many relationships involved in trades, and in the aftermath of the draft and deadline, everyone’s too busy to reach out to a reporter with an unattributed attempt to assure fans they made an effort. At least that’s how it normally works. This deadline featured a record-setting number of trades, and a surprising number of We Trieds to go along with all the actual action.

I’m sure I didn’t catch every We Tried, mostly because I spent the entirety of the deadline with my head down writing up transactions, listening to intense film scores in order to push me to write faster. I didn’t have much time to comb headlines and social media, but I did have help from some friends. I offer special thanks to readers JD, Elizabeth, Joel, and Fox Mulder Bat Flip for sending We Trieds my way. If you’re aware of any that I missed, as always, you can let me know on Bluesky or by email at WeTriedTracker@gmail.com. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I wrote up the news that David Robertson had signed with the Phillies. In my (and, I assume, everyone else’s) favorite paragraph, I mentioned that several teams had reportedly been in on the veteran right-hander. Ken Rosenthal and Jon Heyman combined to mention interest from the Mets, Yankees, Red Sox, Tigers, and “many others.” Depending on your perspective, this marked either the last We Tried of the 2025 free agency period or the first of the trade deadline period. As a quick refresher, We Tried is a catch-all term for any time we find out, after a player has ended up with one team, that another team also tried to land them. In its purest form, the We Tried is a front office’s bid for partial credit, an attempt to curry favor with the fans by demonstrating that it is trying to build a winner for them. I spent the offseason documenting each and every one in a disturbingly comprehensive spreadsheet.

I didn’t make a meal of this yesterday, mainly because Robertson’s free agency was a real outlier. The offseason ended months ago. He’s a 40-year-old reliever who didn’t get an offer he loved, so he stayed in shape and spent the spring hanging out with his family, then held a workout for teams on Saturday in order to sign before the deadline. Lots of teams were in on him and lots of teams showed up to watch him pitch, so word of who was there was bound to come out at some point. It definitely represented a We Tried, but it didn’t seem earth-shattering, and it was by no means a typical one. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m sorry to be the one to break this news to you, but the baseball season is starting in earnest tomorrow. While I’m sure you’re happy that you’ll once again get to watch the baseball men do the baseball thing, this also means that We Tried season is very sadly drawing to a close. This will be our fifth and final entry in the series, but as a refresher, We Tried is the term of art for an ex post facto report about a team’s interest in a player who signed elsewhere. If a beat writer reported that your favorite team had interest in a free agent, but only after that free agent became a Dodger, or if a scoops guy laundered the claim that your team took aim at a trade target and missed, I added it to the We Tried Tracker. With 49 of our Top 50 Free Agents off the board – seriously, somebody sign David Robertson already – it’s time to look back on the offseason that wasn’t. How wrong Yoda was; there’s no “do” or “do not.” There is only “try.”

As I searched for the final few additions to the tracker, I continued to refine the criteria for inclusion. For example, I decided at the last minute to honor A.J. Preller’s solemn assertion during the Winter Meetings that the Padres were “involved in, so far, almost all the catchers that have gone off the board to some degree.” I awarded them five extra We Trieds, all for catchers. That pushed them all the way up to second on our leaderboard, but they still finished dead last in our catcher positional power rankings. I also decided not to include the Roki Sasaki circus. The defining characteristic of a We Tried is that the information is publicized after the player signs, and although a few details did come out after he chose the Dodgers, nearly every part of Sasaki’s courtship involved up-to-the-minute updates. Likewise, the Orioles and Braves were both widely linked to Nathan Eovaldi early in the offseason, but once Eovaldi decided to return to the Rangers, no new information on their pursuits emerged. They didn’t capital-T try; they just – yawn – actually tried.

By my count, we bore witness to 99 We Trieds for 39 different players over the last few months. As always, I’m sure that I missed some, and I implore you to help me make it right. What a joy it would be to reach 100. If you spot an omission, please message me on Bluesky or email me at WeTriedTracker@gmail.com, which once again is a real email address that I really check. I reply to every message, and I even read everything in the spam folder. The tracker recently received an incredible offer for a “diamond facelit sign” with a three-year warrantee. I don’t know what a facelit sign is, and because the email is riddled with spelling errors, for a while I actually thought it was for a diamond facelift. I was so confused about what would happen were I to avail myself of the three-year warrantee. Would I get my money back? Would they lift my face even further? Would they replace it with a new one?

Read the rest of this entry »

This is my first We Tried Tracker update since December, and I have missed you. I have missed who we were in that simpler, infinitely less cruel time of, you know, two months ago. A lot has happened on the We Tried front, far too much to cover in one article, but with Alex Bregman and Nick Pivetta coming off the board this week, all but one of the first 45 entries on our Top 50 Free Agents list have been signed. (No. 33 Andrew Heaney is the exception.) It’s time to reflect on the state of effort in major league front offices. First, I need to beg for your help once again. I have missed some We Trieds. I’m sure of it. If you see any out there in the wild, or if you notice any omissions in the tracker, please let me know on Bluesky or email me at WeTriedTracker@gmail.com, a real email address that I really check. (I even check the spam folder, which today contains an email from the daughter of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. She needs a trusted investment manager/partner for her $27.5 million fortune. I’m about to be so rich, you guys.)

From the very beginning of this exercise, the Red Sox have paced the league. As of Thursday, I have them credited with 12 different We Trieds in nine different categories. That’s nearly 18% of all We Trieds! No other team has notched more than six. The Red Sox are fully lapping the field. And until Wednesday evening, what did they have to show for all that effort? A trade for Garrett Crochet and a couple of one-year deals for pitchers in various states of recovery from Tommy John surgery. Well, all that has changed. Apparently, practice really does makes perfect, because the Red Sox have landed Bregman, our third-ranked free agent, on a three-year, $120-million deal with two opt-outs (and enough deferred money to lower the total present value to $90 million). Amazingly, Bregman is the first position player Craig Breslow has signed to a major league deal since the Red Sox hired him in October 2023. That’s why we keep trying. You never know when lucky number 13 is going to pay off. If you just stick to your guns, keep lowballing free agent after free agent, one of them will eventually be so beaten down by the process that he will accept your terms. It’s truly an uplifting tale of hope in these bleak times.

The moment Bregman signed, we got two very detailed We Trieds. Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free Press reported that the Tigers had offered six years and $171.5 million, including some deferred money, while USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reported that the Cubs offered four years and $120 million. MLB.com’s Jordan Bastian clarified Chicago actually offered $115, with opt-outs after the 2026 and 2027 seasons. Regardless of which Cubs offer is more accurate, Detroit’s and Chicago’s offers involve a lower AAV than what Bregman got from Boston, but more money and more years. The Red Sox offered something those two teams didn’t: the ability to leave immediately. If Bregman has himself a big 2025 in Boston, he can try again next offseason. If he doesn’t, he’ll have 120 million reasons not to feel too bad about how things turned out. Sometimes trying the hardest to sign a player means being the most willing to let him leave.

With nearly every notable free agent spoken for, I should probably reflect on what I learned during this exercise. I’ve never paid attention to the hot stove season this intently, and certainly not with this kind of odd, specific focus. I guess the biggest lesson is what a We Tried can tell you about how a team wants to be perceived. Unless I missed something, nine teams haven’t notched a single We Tried: the Astros, Brewers, Cardinals, Dodgers, Marlins, Pirates, Rockies, Twins, and White Sox. That’s a very eclectic group. The Dodgers haven’t felt the need to leak it to a reporter when they failed to land a player, because why would they? They’re actually improving their team, so they don’t need to keep up appearances. The White Sox, Marlins, Pirates, and Rockies are barely playing the same sport. They’re not competing for impact free agents and would never want their fans to get that impression, lest it raise expectations above their current level of negative infinity. The Twins and Brewers have spent the offseason trying to pull off a balancing act: trying to remain competitive without raising payroll. Unfortunately, they came into the offseason with a solid team and real expectations, and the silence has been deafening.

As for the Cardinals, I don’t really know where to begin. They are, in theory, starting a rebuild, but if there’s been any progress on that front, they’ve done a great job at concealing it. They haven’t signed a major league free agent. They haven’t even hinted that they’ve spent a moment considering the possibility of signing a major league free agent. Instead, they have tried so, so hard and so, so publicly… to get a little bit worse. The Cardinals have spent the entire offseason absorbed in an ill-fated attempt to trade Nolan Arenado, despite the fact that doing so wouldn’t make the team better in the short run (because Arenado is still a solid player) or in the long run (because his contract is so underwater that it’s not worth real prospect capital). The Cardinals were engaged in the noblest attempt of all: saving a few million dollars for the purpose of saving a few million dollars. On Thursday, lame duck president of baseball operations John Mozeliak essentially admitted that this lofty dream was dead. The Cardinals will spend the 2025 season furious that Arenado is still — if the projections are right — their second-best player, rather than what he could have become: a medium-sized pile of money.

Then there are the teams that have been out there trying like crazy. The top four teams are all in the AL East: the Red Sox with 12, the Orioles with seven, the Blue Jays with six, and the Yankees with five. The Cubs and Padres each have four. To some extent, this is just a reflection of reality. The AL East is a monster division where winning is expected. The Yankees play in the biggest media market in the country. They have the loudest fans in the country, and those fans expect them to sign everyone. Silence probably isn’t an option. The Red Sox have similarly demanding fans, and their front office has been publicly promising to break the bank for two straight offseasons now. They didn’t deliver at all during the 2023-2024 offseason, and until the Bregman signing, the only multi-year deal they’d handed out this offseason was still, in a sense, a one-year deal, as it went to Patrick Sandoval, who will be recovering from internal brace surgery for most of the 2025 season. In retrospect, it’s easy to see their We Trieds as assurances that they were acting in good faith.

The Orioles and Blue Jays are in a similar position: They want it to be known that they’re out there attempting to improve their teams. If they’re not trying as hard as fans might like, at least they’re trying loudly. However, there’s an insidious undertone, as all this trying comes while owners are publicly softening up the ground for a death march toward a salary cap. They’re getting ready to lock out the players, and toward that end, they’re getting an early start on painting the players as greedy millionaires. Through that lens, it’s easy to see each We Tried as an attempt to portray the billionaire ownership class as generous and benevolent, willing to go out and sign all those players you want them to, if only those players weren’t quite so expensive.

Rather than end on such a cynical note, let me tell you about my favorite We Tried. It came from Anne Rogers, the Royals beat writer for MLB.com. On February 4, Rogers reposted an MLB Trade Rumors article about Randal Grichuk’s signing with the Diamondbacks. “Royals tried to get Grichuck (sic) but he returns to Arizona,” she wrote. I clicked on the link to the article to find the part about the Royals trying. But when I read the article, I saw that the part about the Royals trying was just a link to that same post from Rogers. You can just keep clicking back and forth between the two links forever. It’s a We Tried ouroboros, and crucially, of the 69 We Trieds I’ve recorded so far, it’s the only one that uses that exact terminology. There’s no “We were in on,” or “We were in the mix,” or “We made a competitive offer.” It’s pure and simple: “Royals tried,” with absolutely zero further information.

This is also the funniest We Tried of the offseason simply because of the terms. Grichuk signed for one year and $5 million (technically it’s $2 million, with a $3 million buyout on a mutual 2026 option). Every other player who was the subject of a We Tried signed a contract that was at least twice as big as Grichuk’s. At least one player I can think of signed a contract that is 153 times bigger than Grichuk’s. There is no such thing as a major league team that can’t afford a one-year, $5 million contract. Hell, several little league teams could probably swing that deal if the right 12-year-old should come along. The Royals truly lowered the bar here. This is what minimum effort looks like.

DALLAS — The Winter Meetings have officially wrapped up, and our We Tried Tracker is starting to look mighty festive. At this point, it’s too full to tackle everything that happened in Dallas in one article, so we’ll just be breaking down the highlights. If you’re a completist, head over to the tracker, where each We Tried now contains a link its original report. Things have been moving fast this week, so I’m sure we’re missing some things. If you spot anything that’s not on the tracker, please reach out to me on social media or at WeTriedTracker@gmail.com. I so appreciate everyone who has participated. I have been reading and replying to every tip, and I will continue to do so.

I’d like to shout out one tipster in particular. Reader Chris Vena has been keeping me apprised of his softball team’s efforts to land several premier free agents, and they just cannot seem to seal the deal. First, they attempted to pry Shohei Ohtani away from the Dodgers, but were told that they lacked the prospect capital. Next, they tried to land Garrett Crochet, but the White Sox apparently wouldn’t agree to a deal unless Chris threw in his teammate Jimmy. “I know the writers at FanGraphs might accuse me of prospect hugging,” Chris wrote, “but I like this kid’s arm, his bat-to-ball skills, and I kind of have a crush on his older sister. I think our team can afford to pass on Crochet in this instance.”

One of the most interesting parts of this exercise is that when I originally proposed it, fans of several teams jumped in to opine that their particular ball club was sure to lead the league. That makes perfect sense, as the practice of claiming that you were in on a player is often specifically geared toward mollifying a jilted fanbase. If you ever heard Nationals Park explode with boos when Mark Teixeira – a Maryland native who chose to sign with the Yankees rather than the National League team closest to home – would come to the plate, you know that people take these things very much to heart. This offseason, Red Sox fans shouted the loudest that they would lead the league in We Trieds, and though the Blue Jays and Mets were very nearly as vociferous, Boston is not just pacing the field but lapping it. As I write, the Red Sox lead all comers with six We Trieds, twice as many as any other team. They’ve been in the mix for a pitcher, they’ve been in on pitchers, and they’ve even made aggressive runs at pitchers. Truly, no one is trying harder or failing louder than the Red Sox. Trading for Crochet seems like a decent consolation prize.

Now that we’re tracking everything, it’s been fun keeping tabs on all of the different ways that a team can describe its involvement. Classics “we were in on” and “we were in the mix” lead all other phraseologies with four instances each. After that, we’ve got a smorgasbord of one-offs: “We had interest in him,” “We were highly competitive,” “We made what we felt was a competitive offer,” “We had some back and forth.” A.J. Preller broke new ground by telling reporters that the Padres were “involved in, so far, almost all the catchers that have gone off the board to some degree.” How do you even unpack that? The Padres were involved in every single catcher who signed a deal? All six of them? What about Max Stassi, who signed a minor league deal with the Giants? “To some degree” is also the broadest blanket statement possible. Does that include zero degrees? If so, I was in on all those catchers too. I’m just like A.J. Preller.

As you surely know, Juan Soto had five primary suitors: the Mets, Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays, and Dodgers. At this point, two of those teams have made it onto the tracker in very specific fashion. MassLive.com’s Sean McAdam reported that Boston’s best offer to Soto was for 16 years and $700 million, while Bob Nightengale put a bit of poetry into his Yankees We Tried: “The New York Yankees offer for Juan Soto was $760 million for 16 years. He chose the Mets.” I’ve already heard Mets fans talking about printing up “He chose the Mets” t-shirts. While we can’t know for sure what made up Soto’s mind, that information makes it look awfully simple: No one wanted him as badly as the Mets did.

I haven’t seen any information about the Dodgers’ pursuit, but GM Ross Atkins addressed Toronto’s push while talking to reporters on Monday. “As things progressed,” he said, “we felt as though we were a great landing spot for Juan Soto and grateful to be in that process.” Now that’s a different approach. Rather than leaking a combination of years and dollars to a scoopster, Atkins invited a group of reporters into the team’s hotel suite and went on the record in order to say that the Jays were just happy to be there. I can’t decide whether it’s the epitome of the We Tried or the polar opposite, but either way, it’s delightfully Canadian.

We’re going to close this out with the A’s, because things are getting weird in Not Oakland. First of all, the A’s have to get out of their comfort zone and actually sign some players in order to avoid a grievance from the MLBPA. As you might recall, the A’s executed one of the first We Trieds of the offseason accidentally, when manager Mark Kotsay reportedly told a group of USC students that Walker Buehler told the A’s he didn’t want to play in Sacramento. During his media availability in Dallas, Kotsay disputed that report, making a point of telling reporters, “I want to say first, the article that came out with Walker, that wasn’t necessarily true. Walker never said he didn’t want to play in Sacramento.” There’s no way for us to know the facts here. Kotsay could be trying to clean up the classic gaffe of saying something that everyone already knows to be true – and I don’t think anyone would actually fault him for that – or there really could have been a misunderstanding or a rephrasing issue. Can you picture a scenario in which Buehler really is dying to play in Sacramento? Maybe if he’s a big fan of the legendary Sacramento band Cake, or if he’s always dreamed of playing in the California capital. Assuming that he’s not a huge “Sheep Go to Heaven” guy, I’m guessing he’d prefer to play in a big league stadium.

The last one gets even weirder. It started on Wednesday morning, when Bob Nightengale posted an entirely new kind of We Tried: “Believe or not, one of the most aggressive teams in the Max Fried sweepstakes were the Athletics before he signed his 8-year, $218 million deal with the Yankees.” Right out of the gate, things are getting hinky. “Believe it or not, we tried” is an instant classic of the genre. Any time a reporter has to preface breaking news with, “I know it sounds like I’m lying to you, but…” they’re off to a great start. And then after that, there is no specific information. Nightengale just says the A’s were “one of the most aggressive teams.”

Apparently, that was still too specific, though. Within three hours, MLB.com’s Martín Gallegos had a refutation from someone who would definitely know: “GM David Forst said the reports of A’s aggressively pursuing Max Fried were untrue.” Let’s start with the obvious: This is hilarious. Nightengale reports something so preposterous that he has to preface it with an avowal that he really is telling the truth, and the general manager immediately comes out and says it isn’t true. You have to believe him. What motivation could Forst have to refute this rumor aside from a desire to set the record straight? It’s the exceedingly rare We Didn’t Try, and it only makes sense for a team whose primary desire is to avoid getting anybody’s hopes up. “Please,” Forst seems to be begging, “don’t expect us to exchange money for baseball players. We’re still figuring out how Venmo works.”

Personally, I like to imagine that Forst wasn’t disputing the entire report; just the part where Nightengale said that the A’s were pursuing Fried aggressively. Maybe the A’s did try to land him, but their attempt mostly consisted of texting him pictures of the Sacramento skyline.

And that’s going to conclude our wrap-up. We will keep you updated as the offseason progresses. I’m sorry we couldn’t get to all of the week’s developments, but believe it or not, I really tried.