Juan Soto, Joe Simpson, and When Commentary Becomes Defamatory
Without a doubt — and this is an objective fact — the best thing about baseball in 2018 has been Juan Soto. I mean, you could say it’s Mike Trout, because the answer to almost every baseball question is Mike Trout. But Juan Soto is probably the best teenager baseball has ever seen, and baseball’s been around a while. Juan Soto has posted a .415 wOBA and 161 wRC+, both marks fifth in baseball among players with 200 or more plate appearances. He’s outhit Aaron Judge (157 wRC+) and Freddie Freeman (143) and Paul Goldschmidt (141) and a whole bunch of other people he has no business outhitting. Juan Soto is third on the Nationals in WAR (2.7) and has played in 68 games. Trea Turner, who leads the team with 3.5 WAR, has played in 113 games. Juan Soto is so good. And he’s doing this, again, at 19 years old.
For no other reason than because Juan Soto is my favorite thing about 2018 Major League Baseball, here is Juan Soto hitting a ball to somewhere past Saturn — off fellow southpaw Chasen Shreve:
“If he’s 19, he certainly has his man-growth,” Simpson said. “He is big and strong.”
Perhaps understandably, Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo reportedly confronted Simpson after the game about his comment, which led Simpson to clarify his remarks during the second game of that day’s doubleheader, as passed along by USA Today:
“If you were with us in Game 1, you might have heard me make a comment off the top of my head about if he’s 19,” Simpson said Tuesday night. “Well, he is. He’s bonafide 19. And he is a full-grown man. He is strong. And he is one heck of a player. You might well just write his name in on the Rookie of the Year award right now.”
You Aren't a FanGraphs MemberIt looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed. We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member. 1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other. 2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off. 3. Dark mode and Classic mode! 4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them. 5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects. 6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.) 7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only. 8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO. 9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members. 10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features! We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it. In case you didn't read all that, here's the short version. Membership includes:✓Ad-free browsing✓Unlimited FanGraphs & RotoGraphs articles✓Historical & platoon projections✓Leaderboard & player-page stat heatmaps✓One-click data exports✓Customizable player-page dashboards✓Dark & Classic site modes✓Weekly Members-only mailbag✓FanGraphs Walk-Off, your year in review✓Optional homepage photo removal✓Gift articles to non-members
It also led to this tweet from the Nationals themselves:
Noted 19-year-old Juan Soto puts the #Nats on the board with a solo HR in the first! pic.twitter.com/vQfVEoBaI7
— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) August 7, 2018
Age fraud hasn’t been a thing in Latin America in nearly a decade. But then again Joe Simpson is stuck in the past, so it’s not a surprise that he proffers this sort of garbage. Ignore it.
Juan Soto is 19. Period. Full stop. And he’s doing things the game never has seen before. https://t.co/V5iWMkkleF
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) August 8, 2018
Despite the attention earned by Simpson’s remarks at first, we have likely already witnessed the climax of this story. Rizzo had his say. Simpson clarified his statement. Neither the Nationals nor Soto seem interested in pursuing the matter any further, probably content with letting it fade away. Because I’m a lawyer, however — and because it is, in part, my job to consider such matters, if only in a hypothetical way — I thought I’d examine here what recourse Soto and his club could take if they were so motivated.
The answer, in short, is that they could sue Simpson for defamation. The answer, in something less short, appears below.
The District of Columbia has basically the same defamation law as most states, meaning Soto would have to plead and prove four different elements.
First, Soto would have to plead and prove Simpson made an objectively false or defamatory statement. False and defamatory are not the same thing, and Simpson probably didn’t make an objectively false statement; after all, he didn’t say “Juan Soto is 23” on the air. That said, even the implication may well be enough: under a case called Guilford Transp. Indus., Inc. v. Wilner, in D.C., a defamatory statement is one which isn’t true, and “tends to injure [the] plaintiff in his trade, profession or community standing, or lower him in the estimation of the community.” Nor would the fact that Simpson’s remarks were made more by implication than outright declaration matter too much; under a case called Moss v. Stockard, although an implication requires a higher burden of proof by the plaintiff, “[i]f it appears that the statements are at least capable of a defamatory meaning, whether they were defamatory and false are questions of fact to be resolved by the jury.” And Guilford said expressly that slander (spoken defamation) includes where the defendant “implied provably false statements of fact.”
It’s a fair bet that questions about Soto’s age could harm his earning power and his community and professional standing, and I’m willing to bet a reasonable juror could find Simpson’s statement capable of a defamatory meaning. One needn’t look far for mention of it, after all. Rather, the conversation regarding Soto’s age has been ubiquitous throughout sports media, with several different pieces on it. And the headlines include things like this:
For the record, Soto may be 19, but I'd bet money he isn't. Soto is filled out. He certainly doesn't look like a teenager.
— David (@AngryDingo) August 8, 2018
Sorry Nats fans, but I have a hard time believing Juan Soto is 19 yrs old. Of course I have no proof, but the defense of 'age fraud isn't a thing' is hogwash.
— Jaye Dub (@xXJayeDuBXx) August 8, 2018
The third element, under a case called Jankovic v. International Crisis Group, is ordinarily “that the defendant’s fault in publishing the statement amounted to at least negligence.” But here, mere negligence isn’t enough because Juan Soto is a public figure. That means Soto must prove that Simpson either knew that his statement was false or made the statement with reckless disregard for the truth. In other words, Soto must prove that, at the time Simpson made his statement, he either personally knew or should have known Soto was provably 19 and had no basis to say otherwise.
The best phrasing I’ve seen for this test from a D.C. court comes from Nader v. De Toledano: a “high degree of awareness of… probable falsity.” In other words, the statements must have been made in subjective bad faith. Ordinarily, proving a person’s state of mind is difficult. But Simpson’s second statement is helpful to Soto here, because he essentially concedes that there is no reasonable basis upon which to question Soto’s age. And given Law and Passan adding that age fraud is no longer an issue, it’s hard to believe Simpson had any sort of even subjective good faith basis on which to imply Soto was lying about his age.
Since none of us are Joe Simpson, it’s impossible for any of us to know just why he felt the need to make the implication he did. But if the sole reason was Soto’s birthplace, I think it’s absolutely possible a court finds that Simpson’s statement was made in bad faith. As the U.S. Supreme Court once explained, in a case called St. Amant v. Thompson,
Professions of good faith will be unlikely to prove persuasive, for example, where a story is fabricated by the defendant, is the product of his imagination, or is based wholly on an unverified anonymous telephone call. Nor will they be likely to prevail when the publisher’s allegations are so inherently improbable that only a reckless man would have put them in circulation. Likewise, recklessness may be found where there are obvious reasons to doubt the veracity of the informant or the accuracy of his reports.
Finally, Soto would have to prove some degree of damages. In D.C., defamation law is unusual in that damages are limited to “special damages“; that is, measurable pecuniary loss. But D.C. law also allows for an award of what is called “nominal damages.” Nominal damages is an award of one dollar ($1.00) given to a plaintiff who proves the existence of a wrongdoing by a defendant and either has no damages from that wrongdoing or can prove the existence of damages but not an amount. This case would be a great example; if Soto sued Simpson and won, he would receive $1 in nominal damages if he failed to prove a larger amount. Still, people can and will sue for nominal damages, even taking those cases to trial either by choice or otherwise. Sometimes the reason is simple vindication. Sometimes it’s to get a public hearing on the wrongdoing.
As I’ve noted above, Soto isn’t likely to sue Joe Simpson for defamation. But if he did, he might very well win. It would be a $1 verdict, but it be worth far more than that — not only in terms of Soto’s future earnings but also as a (well-needed!) reminder that public comments require substantiation. Undoing a lie frequently requires more than simply confronting it with a truth. Juan Soto is a 19-year-old teenager doing something most of us can’t imagine and that none of us has ever seen before. It’s enough pressure to be the best teenager ever. He doesn’t need, on top of that, to be answering for a lie he didn’t tell.
Sheryl Ring is a litigation attorney and General Counsel at Open Communities, a non-profit legal aid agency in the Chicago suburbs. You can reach her on twitter at @Ring_Sheryl. The opinions expressed here are solely the author's. This post is intended for informational purposes only and is not intended as legal advice.
Well written but way too many quality words for a non-issue. Let’s move on. So he looks older than LeBron James. So what!
Yeah, this was a big nothing burger. Nobody likes Joe Simpson but this half-pause “if he’s 19″statement is hard for me to get the outrage machine going.
Typical white person response.
(How does that hit your outrage machine?)
Trolls usually do better here when their cleverness and originality go up. Your 24 is not much of a score, and you have no replies (1 now). You’re simply not making anyone angry. We just don’t care.
I do think Fangraphs is going back to the ‘scour the mediaverse for someone who did/said something dumb today, and then go to twitter to harvest peoples’ reactions to it’ well a little too often.
They need to bring in some more hardcore numbers people to restore the balance between ‘cultural commentary’ and, what brought many of us here in the first place, data driven insight about the game, because I think we’re getting too many opinion pieces about stuff that happens in the game’s orbit and too few of the deep dives into stats that made Fangraphs a thing in the first place. It’s ok to have both, but the proportion is out of whack.
“They need to bring in some more hardcore numbers people to restore the balance between ‘cultural commentary’ and, what brought many of us here in the first place, data driven insight about the game”
They need to get rid of the ‘cultural commentary’ completely. This site is supposed to be about data driven insight into baseball, not “Political Correctness” or “Social Justice.” I have found every single one of the ‘cultural’ articles to be completely offensive and inappropriate.
Baseball, not politics! If I wanted political nonsense I would go read a political website.
wait? you’re actually pretending that you’re offended by even reading a discussion of the issue, including one that essentially agrees with your position. totally dishonest
Agreed; you weren’t at all “offended” by these articles, you just may not have liked or agreed with their conclusions, or felt they weren’t really necessary in the first place. Folks on both sides need to slow the outrage train and feigning offense at points of view they disagree with.
this is great
This might be my favorite Sheryl piece. Also, Soto is the best thing about baseball in 2018.
Your favorite is one where she embarrasses herself like this?
The “Actual Malice” hurdle would, given everything popehat has ever written, be nearly impossible for Soto to clear. Not just bad faith, actual malice.
There is a greater chance that Soto is actually not 19 than that he would win this case. The difference between an incredibly small number and zero. It’s not like he claimed to have “the best people” down in the DR and that he has “been hearing” that he’s not 19.
Yeah, I’d happily bet at, say, 500:1 against Sheryl on this one. There’s no chance in hell he’d ever win a suit based on this statement as a public figure. None.
I’m more offended by Greg Gibson’s ump show last night, than I am by Joe Simpson’s tone deafness or any members of the League of Internet Trolls who have seized on it as their latest cause célèbre. If the Nats or MLB was interested in fixing something, how about that instead?
NY Times v. Sullivan says the standard is actual malice for a public figure. I doubt you can get to that standard. Also unlikely that the statement tends to injure him in his trade. No one is really taking Simpson seriously. In other words, no one in the industry really believes Simpson has any special knowledge and they also know that since 9/11 there really isn’t the issue that there once was for falsifying birthdays.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=10183527771703896207&q=ny+times+v.+sullivan&hl=en&as_sdt=20006&as_vis=1
Soto is clearly a public figure similar to his teammate Zimmerman who filed a defamation case against Al Jazeera.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/nationals-journal/wp/2017/03/31/judge-allows-ryan-zimmermans-defamation-suit-against-al-jazeera-to-move-forward/?utm_term=.9743ff90b106
This post would be fine so far as it goes, but it is completely wrong insofar as it fails to mention “actual malice” even once. A rudimentary analysis of that standard shows clearly that there is essentially no way Soto could establish Simpson acted with knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth. See the St. Amant vs. Thompson case that was already cited, which articulates the necessity of the actual malice element. Actual malice would be an absolutely necessary element of the claim and you can’t possibly discuss this issue without mentioning it.
Sheryl absolutely did mention actual malice insofar as she wrote that Soto would have to prove falsity or reckless disregard for the truth, which is how that term is defined, though she did not use the words “actual malice.”
She does not apply the correct definition, and conflates the third and fourth elements into one. Further, it far too readily glosses over the fact that this all arises from the words “if he’s 19.” That is not a statement of fact, outright or by implication, for defamation purposes.
Not a First Amendment lawyer, but that 2016 DC Circuit case says the following, which seems awfully consistent with what Sheryl stated:
“Thus, “a public official” may not “recover[] damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with ‘actual malice,’ that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” Id. at 279-80. Since New York Times, the Court has explained that a similar rule applies to public figures, and, accordingly, speech relating to public officials and public figures, as distinct from private persons, enjoys greater protection under the First Amendment.”
“If he’s 19, he certainly has his man-growth” of course is a truth-claim, but it’s a pretty obviously true one — having to do with the player’s musculature, not his age. The entire argument here is about an inference that it’s not even necessary to draw from Simpson’s having said that.
I said a similar thing though my comment is pending presumably for links. To not mention NY Times v. Sullivan or that he is a public figure drops the ball. I respect the effort though.
The post was long enough without NYT v. Sullivan. Plus, the St. Amant case is actually the current standard for public figures in DC, insofar as what actual malice means.
This is fair. I missed where you called him a public figure. Should have read more closely. Appreciate your attempt to do more than simply pontificate.
I (and I hope the rest of the FG community) apprciate that you will still come down to the comment section section to clarifying one thing even though you are the author that takes the most heat. It seems that most commenters are focused on your claim that Soto is actually 19 (almost certainly true). They’re missing the point of the article being what would a court would more than likely find. Thank you and keep u the good analysis.
is it defamatory to claim that joe simpsons commentary was defamatory when it blatantly was not?
No. The “Rubber v. Glue” case of 1848 pretty much set the precedent on that one, but the “Herman v. Francis” of 1985 put the nail in the coffin for it.
We can all make up with some tasty licorice gum…
There is an actual malice standard for public figures, which you noted. You might argue that Soto isn’t a public figure, but as the “best thing about baseball”, I don’t think that is a reasonable argument. Actual malice requires knowing that it is false; or acting with reckless disregard for the statement’s truth or falsity. Simpson’s statements probably did not rise to the level of reckless disregard for the statement’s truth or falsity. I’d argue that posing a hypothetical (“ie., if he is 19 years old…”) does not even reach acting with negligence and that this case would get tossed on summary judgment.
Additionally, your entire conclusion is based on the assumption that the sole reason for Simpson’s statement was Soto’s birthplace. In my opinion, the fact that Soto looks like a grown man and that he is hitting better than any other teenager in the history of baseball is pretty relevant, don’t you think?
Any MLB player is going to be a limited purpose public figure, at least, when someone is talking about him playing baseball.
I think Simpson could easily avoid the “actual malice” requirement by testifying that he’s simply a blithering idiot, and show his Dodgers’ batting practice comments as evidence.
A lot of internet lawyers pop up in the comments whenever Sheryl writes an article, hmmmm….
I’m an internet lawyer but also a New York lawyer! I guarantee you that lawyers who read this site are over-representative of the country, and baseball fans, as a whole.
Are you inferring that people comment on her articles for a malicious reasons? A lot of internet baseball analysts pop up in the comments whenever anyone else writes an article. hmmm….
Without a doubt — and this is an objective fact — the best thing about FanGraphs in 2018 is Sheryl Ring. A great out-of-the -box hire, bringing a fresh new perspective, a solid knowledge of both baseball and the law, and the best pure writing on the site.
Yeah, Sheryl’s articles are probably the most consistently interesting reads. Not always best fangraph analysis type pieces, but that’s fine. Great writer.
Why the internet is terrible, exhibit 6,150,073:
Buff: “What a great hire! I sure enjoy Sheryl’s columns and perspective!” Just offering a nice compliment to the site and the new writer. Totally innocuous in every way.
Goons: BOOOOOOOO! *Downvote*
Don’t watch many Braves games (but am curious if he really meant it as a compliment as I’ve seen many saying he did), has he ever referred to Acuna that same way? Like has he said “If he is 20” about Acuna? Just seems like strange wording to use period, especially if you aren’t meaning to question his age and are trying to compliment the kid.
To me, hearing his comment, it sounds like he is actively suggesting that Soto’s age is a number greater than 19. The transcript does not convey it as clearly, in my opinion.
I think there’s a usage of “if” statements that would make this a weaker insinuation than it might otherwise seem. Where “if X” is not really saying there’s uncertainty on the factual status of X, but more like “despite X”. Let me look for some examples…
(In sports usage there’s the “if he throws that an inch lower” form for a hypothetical, but that’s different.)
Can we get a linguist on staff? We could have articles about pragmatics and sociophonetics, *and* you get mad internet clicks from grammar peevers who say you’re disrespecting their fourth grade teacher. It would be great.
Woosh
I would be into this too. The language of baseball is ripe for analysis. (It could also be a philosopher of language or even a literary critic of the right kind, instead of an actual linguist.) I’m not so into the alternative where we get lawyers pretending to be philosophers of language, but what can you do.
not that it would have anything to do with slander, although it could, there’s certainly a big enough corpus out there to do LDA/LSA/what have you on the countless hours of transcripts from announcers. It would be interesting to see what the structure of commentary is.
As a part-time philosopher of language though not someone with direct expertise on this, I agree with Jetsy. “If he throws that an inch lower” isn’t an example–that’s a counterfactual. But you can say something sometimes like “If Trea Turner is the Nationals’ leader in WAR, Juan Soto is not far behind him–and he’s only played three-fifths as many games!”
Having spent waaay too much time looking for a name for this, I see that the linguist Geoffrey Pullum at one point called these “bleached conditionals,” where the if-clause is actually being presupposed. His famous example was “If Eskimos have dozens of words for snow, Germans have as many for bureaucracy”; which is problematic because (as Pullum has been pointing out for decades, following the anthropologist Laura Martin) Yup’ik and Inuit languages don’t actually have many distinct words for “snow.” BUT the idea is that “if” here plays a role kind of like “given.” On that reading, what Simpson said would’ve meant something like “Given that he’s 19, he’s got his man-growth.” Which makes sense.
(As far as I can tell the phenomenon of bleached conditionals hasn’t been studied much at all, which is a shame.)
Anyway, is that what Simpson meant? I don’t know. He seems like an ass, a smart guy would try to stay away from pernicious stereotypes if he didn’t mean to invoke them, and as Easyenough said above the audio sounds worse than the transcript. But I would guess that the possibility of this reading would be more than enough to allow him to prevail in court, if it were to come to that.
(Max Scherzer is the WAR leader tho)
He could have said “I don’t think he’s actually 19” and still never lose the case in court. She’s just wrong about this.
My fav tweet was mudbug…
“Some latin players lied about their age in the past. How is it racist to just assume that ALL latin players lie about age? Like…it’s a known fact that that type of person lies about age, so obviously Soto lied, because he’s one of those types of people. How is that racist?”
Dude literally defines stereotyping as his reason for why it’s not stereotyping.
Great insight, except you put a whole bunch of words into that person’s mouth in order to gild the lily on your so-called analysis.
deleted
What’s the implication of Simpson’s apology, on the air, the following day? In other big cases that are being written about these days, the person accused typically doesn’t recant or apologize.
It doesn’t seem like reckless behavior to correct the record promptly – is there any way that a prompt, thorough apology can be exculpatory?
Maybe not if the harm is essentially media coverage and related endorsement potential. By the way, I think the immediately measurable harm would come from the negative reputational impact as measured by advertising algorithms that track media and social media sentiment and that are often used in assessing endorsement value. Teams can obviously do their own diligence. Soto would need to sign an endorsement for something for less than he was originally offered, but that might not be hard.
I may be the only one, but I didn’t think Simpson was accusing Soto of falsifying his age when I heard his comments. I use the ‘if X then Y’ string of logic in instances where X is clearly true.
For example:
wife (knowing I’m hungry): ‘where do you want to go to eat tonight?’
me (implying I want tacos through an obviously true conditional): ‘if I’m hungry, I like tacos’
The entire point of the conditional is that it only holds if the antecedent is true! It’s really weird how this article skates right by the manifest literal meaning of the words.
I don’t get what you’re saying, I don’t think? Of course the consequent only holds if the antecedent is true, but that doesn’t mean the conditional implies that the antecedent is true. I could say “If he’s nineteen, he’s the biggest nineteen-year-old I’ve ever seen!” but even though the consequent can only be true if the antecedent is true, it still suggests I don’t think he’s nineteen.
‘if I’m hungry, I like tacos’ doesn’t seem exactly the same thing to me because it’s a habitual repeated thing, like saying “Whenever I’m hungry I like tacos.”
The whole argument that Simpson’s statement is defamatory hinges on the meaning of Simpson’s statement being, obviously and unambiguously, “he isn’t nineteen.” Not that he “suggested” that he “thought” something.
No it doesn’t. Sheryl Ring, who is a practicing lawyer, wrote a whole paragraph in her article about how a statement can be defamatory if it has a defamatory implication, even if the statement itself is not literally false.
Yes, I apologize for being imprecise. The absurd stretch here (or rather, one of them) is the inference that Simpson must’ve been implying — exclusively via his tone of voice! — a claim of fact rather than a potentially unfounded personal belief or conjecture. This is getting silly enough that I’ll let it go now.
IF you had listened to the broadcast instead of just looking at the transcript, you would not miss the implication.
To put it mildly, it’s quite unusual to characterize a statement as a “lie” because of an implication carried by the tone of voice in which it was said.
“if you’re intelligent, you’re the dumbest smart person i’ve ever met!”
am I implying that you are dumb, or smart?
Compare to what BronBron looked like at 19. Look at numerous sophomore college football players look like. Yeah he doesn’t look like a normal 19 year old, but athletes aren’t normal.
Remember when Fangraphs was about statistics? It’s a shame this site is constantly losing it’s best analysts.
There’s a shitload of columns on FG. You read what you want, I’ll read what I want, but remember that’s all just a matter of personal taste. It’s selfish and rude to complain that a column several people are discussing should not have been posted here.
Also, maybe learn what “it’s” means.
“Remember when Fangraphs was about statistics?”
Yes, I used to really love it in those days. These days, with articles like this? Not so much.
That’s me exactly! Except I’m fine with the mix of stories — it’s when I didn’t encounter commenters such as you so often.
It’s SO HARD to skip the articles we don’t like apparently?! WE SIMPLY MUST REGISTER OUR CONSTERNATION FOR ALL TO SEE…
Making allegations that a player is cheating is a big deal, but so can be overreacting to slips of the tongue. Simpson’s first comment wasn’t scripted and likely wasn’t planned; he may have been thinking about it for three seconds and then it came out wrong. He then basically said he misspoke and corrected himself. It’s a stretch to turn that into bad intent on his part and a likely winner of a lawsuit. Frankly, suing would be a bad move for Soto. It could just as likely keep the issue in the public, along with the doubt, like the Streisand Effect. A judge could also get annoyed at the meaningless case and give Simpson attorney fees.
I mean, if you’re not thinking “maybe he’s lying about his age” to yourself, then the natural thing to say would be something like “he’s only 19 and he’s already got his man growth [or whatever dumb term he used] and isn’t it cool that he’s so good already!” instead of “if he’s 19….”
Even if he wasn’t thinking about how his comment would come out, it’s clear he was thinking “I have doubts about this guy’s age” ahead of time
which is not illegal or actionable.
it is if you are someone who says it on TV to a national audience. In all of your comments you seem to ignore the fact that this was said on TV, not just at the bar.
<<—- is my very existence defamatory?
Just neighing.
By the way, Casey Stengel lied about his age when he was a player.
First, Orlando Cepeda was about 19 when Whitey Lockman said, “He’s about a year away – from the Hall of Fame”. So young power hitters are not uncommon at a young age. SImpson’s statement was inappropriate and likely indicative of his intellect and his employer’s lack of professional standards of conduct.
However in 2018; “Pirates Prospects has learned that the Pittsburgh Pirates voided the contract of 16-year-old shortstop Gregori Custodio from the Dominican Republic. He was signed on July 2nd for $230,000, which was the fifth highest bonus that they handed out that day. We also learned that his contract was voided due to age/identification issues and problems with his paperwork.” Although this case was found and rectified, potentially there may have been other, even maybe a successful one, attempts to deceive MLB over the past fifteen years.
The article you’re referring to was published on February 17, 2018:
shorturl.at/gxyJ8
But Gregori Custodio was signed by the Red Sox in July after the Pirates voided his contract. Milb.com, MLB.com, Fangraphs, Baseball America, and Baseball Prospectus list him as 17 years old, born on March 18, 2001. This means he was 16 at the time the article you are referring to was published. It seems he is the age he says he is but wasn’t able to provide the right paperwork at the time. No doubt the Red Sox knew about the issue the Pirates had with paperwork and would not have signed him if they couldn’t confirm his age.
I see no reason to believe a player has lied about their age at any point in the last decade or more. Gregori Custodio doesn’t seem like evidence of it.
I dunno if Simpson actually meant what it is assumed he meant.
I live in Georgia, and I’ve been to several youth football and baseball games. It’s not uncommon here to hear someone say something like, “That kid’s 12? Holy crap, he’s one corn-fed mother f*****!” or, “What the h*ll they feedin’ those boys down in Decatur? He’s a full-size man against those kids!”
The folks who say this stuff are not, in fact, calling into question the player’s actual age. They’re just commenting on his size.
Absent other evidence that Simpson is racist or has an axe to grind against Latin players, in my own experience these sorts of comments aren’t unusual in the context of how other Georgians talk.
When I heard it, I was thinking basically the same thing, minus the Georgia specific context.
Kinda like saying “I can’t believe Dolph Lundgren has a Masters Degree in chemical engineering!” I don’t think most people would interpret that statement as me literally accusing him of lying about his academic credentials.
And while I certainly acknowledge that the historical context makes it possible that there were deeper racial undertones behind what he said, this is much ado about nothing, IMO. But I really don’t know anything about Simpson or his work, so I may be missing other relevant info that could inform a new opinion.
I’m pretty sure I’m not biased in Simpson’s favor, but I would be flat-out astonished if there is a precedent for a finding of defamation in a case TRULY similar to what happened here. None of the quoted passages seems all that on-point or persuasive.
While Simpson’s statement was unpleasant, it amounts to “he doesn’t look 19 to me,” which I’d bet most of us here have said more than once about young pro athletes. The degree of implication — of suggesting that he actually IS older than 19 — is far weaker than even a commonplace hyperbole such as “if he’s 19, I’m a monkey’s uncle!”
An even milder interpretation is that it’s just a logical conditional statement. I can say “if he’s human, he’s mortal,” without fear of being sued for “implying” he’s not human, just for starting with “if.”
Lastly, on “reckless disregard” — Could Simpson even have gotten access to a legally definitive proof of Soto’s age? I’m not questioning Soto’s age, but what actual proof is open to the public, or to Joe Simpson? And if there’s no access to the definitive truth, is it legally possible to “recklessly disregard” that truth?
Wouldn’t it be great Juan Soto lied about his age but did so like Adrian Beltre and he’s actually YOUNGER than 19?
Sheryl, hypothetical question:
If I said on TV that “I’ll believe he’s 19 when I see the birth certificate,” would you consider that meaningfully different from what Simpson said:
(a) just as a matter of human communication, and
(b) from a legal perspective?
Thanks.
Opinions can’t be defamatory. Defamation requires false statements of fact. Hence, Donald Trump and birtherism.
That’s why people opine factually incorrect things all the time and there are almost never successful defamation/slander suits about them.
“I think his birth certificate is fake” is an opinion. “His birth certificate is forged” is a statement of fact that can be provably true or false.
I hate to bring up politics but birtherism is actually a great example; even the stuff you might consider borderline slander were usually presented as “Our expert thinks this is forged”, etc.
Fangraph writers aren’t lawyers, and if they are this site shouldn’t be to bait and debate there agendas in the Baseball world. Also, this is a big what if, but…. what if Simpson is right? MLB, Teams, and Fans have been duped before by a players age.. especially ones being from the D.R.. You’ve got to admit, he does look a bit older than a 19 year old that’s for sure
This Fangraphs writer is a lawyer, which you could see by clicking on the bio, and it is her job to write about law + baseball.
Interesting discussion for the the legal minds among us. I’m guessing those lawyers would prefer to come to this site for something else however.
One point I would question… Soto could seek damages based on lost future income . The examples you cite earlier…. Tejada, et’al, I would argue suffered no such harm over the course of their careers.
His comment is a thing, but not a very big thing. Are we really this sensitive?
I honestly doubt anyone would have noticed this if Joe Simpson hadn’t made an ass of himself recently before this. Though I actually approve of anything that shines a spotlight on his tendency to say stupid and joyless things.
No one including the author is at all suggesting Soto SHOULD sue, ar least that I’ve seen. She’s simply running a thought experiment of “is this actionable? And If he were to sue what is the likelihood of success?” from a legal perspective, which makes perfect sense given her legal background.
I think most all would readily agree that a) the words were ill chosen, b) he’s since apologized, and c) no harm no foul, so we’re all done here.
“Without a doubt — and this is an objective fact — the best thing about baseball in 2018 has been Juan Soto.”
Not just no, but He’ll no. He’s not even in my top 100 best things. Maybe not even in the 500 best things.
My #1 and #2 are a tie between the A’s and Braves suddenly becoming competitive. And Mike Trout, as great as he is and hands down the #1 among players, is only at #3.
You can quibble with placing him first, obviously, but placing him outside the top 100 (!) or even 500 (?!?) stories is plainly, clearly, objectively wrong.
You can say you don’t get, or buy, the hype (or like the Nationals generally or Soto specifically) without resorting to rank hyperbole.
No hyperbole. Soto doesn’t interest me, means almost nothing to me, and certainly doesn’t strike me as one of the best things about baseball at all. Your mileage may vary.
Bartolo Colon lied about his age (he took two years off his actual age) and got caught at it.
Given that Latin American record keeping is generally not up to snuff (I used to work there) and sometimes could be readily altered for considerations it’s certainly not racist to suggest that someone from there might have falsified records. It’s like a thousand times more likely that could have happened if they were from Latin America rather than from the USA, and race has nothing at all to do with that.
I’m not Joe Simpson, but I can still feel I know why he made the implication, and why he took issue with kids’ cancer charity T-shirts in BP: because he’s garbage. He wasn’t always, but he is now.
In early days, there was a direct line between Joe’s quality and who he was paired with; he was fine with good announcing partners and terrible with bad ones, more or less mimicking his partner at all times (even when Boog Sciambi was endorsing sabermetric ideas, which is impossible to imagine now). And Chip Caray is just the worst, so that may still be part of it, but I don’t think so. In the last 5-6 years, he has turned into an absolute caricature of “old man yells at clouds.” A few years back the man literally went on air and threatened to hunt down half of the internet and kick their asses over a mistaken identity with a TMZ report about some reality TV guy also named Joe Simpson getting a DUI. He and Chip can spend entire innings ignoring the game while they rant against anything in baseball invented after Chadwick. Every time we play the Cubs, they spend more time ranting about Joe Maddon not using sac bunts than they do announcing the game. They once spent a full three innings ranting about how won-loss record is the only real measure of a pitcher (an exchange in which Chip called ERA a useless advanced statistic. ERA. Advanced.)
He says garbage things because he is a garbage announcer with garbage ideas. And together, he and Chip are an absolute embarrassment.
“And together, he and Chip are an absolute embarrassment.”
Well, at least neither one of them is Hawk Harrelson.
There have been a few days, usually when he’s on the longest of his ignorant rants, that I’d have taken some evil science experiment creation bastard child of Harrelson, Santangelo, Gilbert Gottfried, and Fran Drescher over Chip.
Watching TBS for years, the sound of Simpson and Chip is just Braves baseball. Love it.
This article sums up why so many people hate attorneys. Twisting this guy’s words into defamatory speech and then speculating that a defamation case against him “might very well” be successful is the essence of using the legal system to bully people.
One interesting aside to the story was Mike Rizzo’s strong reaction and how he confronted Simpson. From one perspective, Simpson is implying that Rizzo may have been duped about Soto’s age…which means Rizzo is somehow failing at his job. Perhaps Rizzo explained this finer point to Simpson during their conversation!
Regarding an attorney writing articles on FG…I think she can bring her expertise and knowledge to issues like this. If I am interested, I can read. If not, I can pass. There is certainly plenty of other (expected) FG content on the site.
Congratulations, sheryl, you’re baseball’s first ambulance chaser.
Sheryl you had me fooled. Shame on me. No, shame on you, This piece is as far from being a journalist as you can go. Did National Enquie have you on retainer.? You were almost there…
Simpson said “if” not that Soto wasn’t 19. There is a big difference in those two statements. There is nothing wrong with wondering if someone is something or not. Not defamatory at all. When you look at people in general it is easy to question their age. People lie about age in regular life all of the time and it has happened in these cases with athletes as well.
Soto hardly looks older than his age.
Somehow I missed this the other day. This is among the worst takes I’ve seen on FG in a long time. No attorney who knows more than a Google search’s worth of 1stAm law would find this remotely plausible (yes, I’m an attorney). Good grief.