Bob Nightengale’s Yankees-Padres trade report disputed by The Athletic

It wouldn’t be trade deadline season without somebody, somewhere, having to walk back a Bob Nightengale report.

Nightengale, of USA Today, reported Sunday that the Padres had turned down a Yankees offer built around right-hander Will Warren for left-handed reliever Adrian Morejon, a report that quickly rippled through both fan bases given Morejon’s standing as one of the better setup men in the league. By Monday morning, The Athletic’s Brendan Kuty and Dennis Lin had a very different account of what that offer actually was, and who was actually saying so.

“The Yankees never even made a Warren-for-Morejon formal offer to the Padres, as was relayed in a published report on Sunday that the source called inaccurate,” Kuty and Lin wrote, citing a Yankees source who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the club’s ongoing trade deadline deliberations.

The source didn’t deny the two teams have talked. Kuty and Lin noted the Yankees have checked in with the Padres on Morejon specifically, just not on anything resembling the terms Nightengale described.

Anyone who follows baseball Twitter closely enough has seen this movie before, since Nightengale’s reporting has needed correcting more than once. There’s an entire treasure trove in Awful Announcing’s archives of Nightengale’s reporting gaffes to choose from, starting with December 2024.

A’s GM David Forst called Nightengale’s report on the club’s pursuit of Max Fried “untrue” at the 2024 Winter Meetings in Dallas, dismissing the idea that his team had been a serious player for the free-agent lefty who ultimately signed an eight-year, $218 million deal with the Yankees. Nightengale had to walk back a report last August that had the Phillies facing the Mets in the 2026 Field of Dreams game; it’s actually the Twins, a mistake that forced multiple outlets to scramble and update their own stories hours after the fact. In December, he reported the Cubs were “close to finalizing an agreement” with free agent Zac Gallen, worth an average of $22 million a year, which ESPN’s Jeff Passan shot down within minutes, though not before the news reached Gallen’s own family, including a fiancée who called him directly to ask if they were moving to Chicago. And in March, he mistakenly reported that Bryce Harper had died, mixing him up with San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Bryce Miller, who had actually passed away at 56 from bladder cancer.

As of Monday afternoon, Warren is still a Yankee. And Bob Nightengale is still Bob Nightengale.