Sandy Alderson Blames Social Media for Wilmer Flores Crying

Mets GM Sandy Alderson blames social media for Wilmer Flores crying during game. pic.twitter.com/O7ZnFrZFSf
— Jimmy Traina (@JimmyTraina) July 30, 2015

If you happened to pry yourself away from the computer Wednesday night, you missed everything … and you missed nothing.

The Mets decided to trade pitcher Zack Wheeler and infielder Wilmer Flores to the Brewers for Carlos Gomez. Every media member on planet earth tweeted the deal was done; ESPN had a story on the front of its baseball page announcing the deal.

Flores was on the field when the news hit twitter, and clearly he knew what was going on because he started crying. It was sort of heartbreaking, and the Mets were crushed on social media and by their own announcers because why couldn’t they just take him out of the game?

Here’s why: the deal supposedly fell through because Wheeler is coming off Tommy John surgery, and the Brewers kind of freaked out about something in his medical report.

After the game, Mets GM Sandy Alderson blamed social media for Flores crying, which is partially comical since the only way the media found out about the deal was because the Mets leaked it. Giddy to let everyone (read: their perpetually angry, postseason-starved fans) know about the trade and their efforts to catch the Nationals in the NL East, the leaky Mets front office jumped the gun.

New York writers ran with the deal, and many forgot to add those three all-important words that could ruin every trade: “pending the physical.” From the Alderson video:

"Social media, etc, got ahead of the facts, and it may have had an adverse effect on one of the rumored players to be involved."

Two unanswered questions remain: Various reports have the Mets telling Flores he was going to be traded before the game. So why’d he start crying in the middle of the game? Were fans yelling at him? Did he check his phone? And if the Mets really wanted Gomez – they are desperate for a bat – why not just toss another player into the deal to get it done?