What's Wrong With Waffles?

We have breaking news from Scott Boras! It's an update on his client, Twins pitcher Brusdar Graterol: he's healthy, strong as an ox, and (since spring is here) in the best shape of his life™.

Tony Clark, the head of the players' union, issued what Yahoo Sports termed a "blistering" statement on Friday.

The proposed trades between the Dodgers, Red Sox, Twins, and Angels need to be resolved without further delay. The events of this last week have unfairly put several Players' lives in a state of limbo. The unethical leaking of medical information as well as the perversion of the salary arbitration process serve as continued reminders that too often Players are treated as commodities by those running the game.

Calling that "blistering" is a bit much. Its appearance is odd, though, since it's not unprecedented for trades to be held up for one reason or another. The players' union usually does not issue cranky press releases every time it happens. But with the CBA expiring after the 2021 season, this seems to be an early bit of publicly-expressed frustration.

The Idiotic Tweet Of The Moment goes to Jon Heyman:

Feels like Boston's Winter of Waffling could be a factor in the delayed mega deal. Getting under the threshold seemed like a mandate at times, only a goal at other times. Feels like there's been inner conflict all along, and trade blowback caused conflict to resurface. #Mookie

"Feels like ... could be ... seemed like ... Feels like ..." ... That's some superb reporting!

The first comment is good ("Should've kept this in the drafts Jon"), but a later one is better ("Thanks Scott"). It feels like the phrase "Winter of Waffling" could have popped into his head and he felt like a tweet should be constructed around it. Or Boras dictated it to his hand-puppet over the phone.

The Red Sox agree to a trade but then something wonky shows up in the medical records of one of their new players. They say "Wait, hold on" - and that's criticized as "waffling"? So Heyman believes that all baseball trades should strictly be "Buyer Beware", with teams having no recourse if a player's health has been inaccurately portrayed? 'Sorry, Red Sox, you should have known this secret, proprietary diagnosis before you agreed to take Sore Arm McGee.'

"Mandate" versus "goal": Yes, Jon, all 29 other teams are begging the Red Sox to let them pay David Price $31 million this year (and $31 million in 2021 and $31 million in 2022), but Boston simply cannot decide what to do about that obviously shitty contract.

The pressure is on the Dodgers. They have won the NL West for seven years in a row, but they lost the 2016 NLCS and then lost the World Series in both 2017 and 2018, they haven't won a title in more than three decades, they have a strong farm system, and they are in danger of letting one of the best players in the game slip through their fingers because they refuse to part with one of the many prospects they likely have no room for on the big club. ... But the Red Sox sabotaging this deal by not being happy to shut up and accept a pitcher with an arm that may not be as strong as advertised.